From one of our greatest chroniclers of technology and society, the definitive biography of iconic technological, cultural, and environmental visionary Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people he is best known for his famous mantra “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Steve Jobs’s endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live.
The contradictions are striking: Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer amidst the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of our shared planet, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his
Whole Earth Catalog
, the defining publication of the counterculture. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was “Access to Tools”; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world.
John Markoff, a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brand’s life against its proper landscape. The streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brand’s life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.