Whole Earth Catalog

A few of my WEC items

[Prompted by this John Markoff article about WEC in the LATimes]

I was a huge fan of The Whole Earth Catalog (see also the Wikipedia page). I have many issues of the catalog and its offshoots, CoEvolution Quarterly, Whole Earth Review, Whole Earth Software Review, etc.. It drove my reading for many years. I made countless library purchase recommendations based on its listings.  I visited the Whole Earth Truck Store on one of my first visits to the San Francisco area.

When I was at PARC, in Alan Kay's group, I was pleased to see so many WEC-recommended titles in the library, but until I read Markoff's piece I didn't know that Kay had started that!

When asked for my favorite book, I sometimes say The Whole Earth Catalog, despite that not being the kind of book the questioner had in mind. It was more important to me and influenced me more than anything else I read. It led me to so many new ideas and writers.

The timing was ideal for me, just as I went off to college. It also accelerated my shift away from TV to more reading, which has continued for my entire adult life.