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The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

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Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#71

Post by solomonb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68
solomonb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they didn't maintain their own inventory, but it pretty clearly gives you contact info and pricing for ordering all the various products. A ton of items also say "OR Whole Earth Catalog" which I think implies you could send the money to WEC and they would make the order for you?

That came later, when they opened the store. It only applied to stuff they decided to carry, though given that they reviewed it in print that was likely because the reviews were almost all positive.

You can look at the Spring 1970 issue and see the price, the seller's contact info, and the "or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG" statements:

https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-catalog-spring-1970?fo...

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#72

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

solomonb wrote: post #71
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That came later, when they opened the store. It only applied to stuff they decided to carry, though given that they reviewed it in print that was likely because the reviews were almost all positive.

You can look at the Spring 1970 issue and see the price, the seller's contact info, and the "or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG" statements: https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-catalog-spring-1970?fo...

Thanks for correcting me. I could have sworn that this did not happen for quite a number of years after that. I was wrong.

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#73

Post by solomonb »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #72
solomonb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at the Spring 1970 issue and see the price, the seller's contact info, and the "or WHOLE EARTH CATALOG" statements: https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-catalog-spring-1970?fo...

Thanks for correcting me. I could have sworn that this did not happen for quite a number of years after that. I was wrong.

No problem! Lucky for us they uploaded all the issues of the catalog. : )

If you look on the Wikipedia page there were a few related physical stores over the years:

> the Whole Earth Catalog was preceded by the "Whole Earth Truck Store" which was a 1963 Dodge truck. In 1968, Brand, who was then 29, and his wife Lois embarked "on a commune road trip" with the truck, hoping to tour the country doing educational fairs. The truck was not only a store, but also an alternative lending library and a mobile microeducation service.

> In 1969, a store which was inspired by (but not financially connected with) The Whole Earth Catalog, called the Whole Earth Access opened in Berkeley, California. It closed in 1998. In 1970 a store called the "Whole Earth Provision Co.", inspired by the catalogue, opened in Austin, Texas.[27] It has six stores in Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#74

Post by solomonb »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #29

I didn't realize it was so commercial. It's just advertisements for hippie? So you can engage in consumerism and still feel good about yourself? The Whole Earth Magazine seems much more interesting than the Catalog

The Whole Earth was never really anti-capitalist. Rather Brand and company leveraged the ideas early cybernetics research to build loose networks of engaged individuals with the goal of creating their own centers of power and authority in society and the economy.

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#75

Post by jh00ker »

bookofjoe wrote: post #60
jh00ker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story about a set of books from the 80s that weren't as much as inspiration for me and the future, but instead became a major source of forming my own broad general knowledge on core topics: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia. Every week, at the local grocery store, a new volume would be available for purchase, covering a new subject area (Anatomy, Animals, Aircraft, Watercraft, Electricity, Space, Weather,…

Just ordered this (used) for my 7-year-old grandson after reading your review. We thank you! N.B. There are many used sets available on eBay/Poshmark/Mercari/Amazon etc.

Full disclosure, they're from the 80s so they're out of date on some topics (space, aircraft, etc.) and there's some occasional insensitive language, e.g. "stupid".

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#76

Post by jh00ker »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #51
jh00ker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story about a set of books from the 80s that weren't as much as inspiration for me and the future, but instead became a major source of forming my own broad general knowledge on core topics: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia. Every week, at the local grocery store, a new volume would be available for purchase, covering a new subject area (Anatomy, Animals, Aircraft, Watercraft, Electricity, Space, Weather,…

I had the Marshall Cavendish Tree of Knowledge - a collectible encyclopedia week by week. This is one of the few areas where paper really wins. You get concentrated information in one physical object with hard boundaries which arrives on a regular slow schedule. You have plenty of time to read it thoroughly and start thinking and imagining. The web is a constant hurricane of distractions. Wikipedia has far more infor…

There's another benefit of an encyclopedia set of books over Wikipedia: in the physical process of looking up a desired topic in a book, you can stumble upon COMPLETELY unrelated topics as you flip through the pages. This serendipitous effect led to reading random encyclopedia articles for HOURS as a kid, an interaction that's hard to replicate with Wikipedia today. Sure there's Wikipedia:Random [0], but you have to intentionally access it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#77

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

bane wrote: post #10

I never grew up knowing the Whole Earth Catalog, but in the early '80s I was a precocious elementary school student who practically lived in any library I could get access to. My school library happened to have a copy of a particularly magical book that was loosely patterned after the WEC, the "Kids' Whole Future Catalog". https://paleofuture.com/blog/2007/4/27/the-kids-whole-future... I obsessively checked it out of…

Similar story : Growing up , my mother bought us an encyclopedia set (in Spanish) hardcover set with blue covers , where each volume was named after a question, and there were at least 8 with names like:

What? When? How? Why? Who? Where? etc

The questions would range from the "how do planes fly" , to "who discovered gunpowder?". They would have illustration, which was super helpful to picture steam power, and the Cretacean period duration relative to other periods, etc. It was all in color so I suspect they have aged well. I remember coming back to certain questions over and over. Some that I still remember - "When did the universe begin?" "What happened to the dinosaurs?".

IN short I cannot recommend this set enough. I tried to google, I'll need to come back and post it once I find the original that is hanging out at a relative's library.

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#78

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #46

While this is amazing, I wonder if there is any modern print book series or magazine series that comes close. I'd love to share this with my kids, but digital format is not ideal. Any suggestions (in EN but also any other major European languages in my case).

I'd like the same. I know the spanish version, but not the english one

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#79

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

jh00ker wrote: post #75
bookofjoe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ordered this (used) for my 7-year-old grandson after reading your review. We thank you! N.B. There are many used sets available on eBay/Poshmark/Mercari/Amazon etc.

Full disclosure, they're from the 80s so they're out of date on some topics (space, aircraft, etc.) and there's some occasional insensitive language, e.g. "stupid".

thanks for the heads up - looks like a sharpie sanitization pre-read is necessary

Re: The whole of the Whole Earth Catalog is now online

#80

Post by rexpop »

cc101 wrote: post #28
8bitsrule wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They paved paradise and put in a parking lot. WEC: Eye-opener. Lot of fun to order exotic stuff (tools, foods, materials, clothing) from. A few for-examples: it got me to cane a seat on a (once-expensive) thrift-shop store ... and try some east-coast kinnikinic ... order tea from Canada (Merchies, still there) ... and a lot of previously unseen books (including Lloyd Kahn's). The cool comments (and stories) around th…

Talking about paving paradise, Kepler's is now a huge multi-story store. Several decades ago I looked in vain for even a little table or shelf with leading-edge counter-culture literature. Couldn't find anything resembling that.

All that hippie stuff was never hard enough to actually counter the culture. It capitulated to "the man," and now we've got Amazon and SUVs. You're not going to find CrimethInc in Menlo Park.
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