Stewart Brand produced the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), a collection of tools and techniques. His aim was to provide knowledge to amateurs to develop a positive, sustainable society through direct participation. Is there a modern day equivalent to the Whole Earth Catalog?
Take, for instance, TikTok. Data controversies aside, TikTok enables the individual to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, and share their adventure with whoever is interested. TikTok has taught me, an amateur, about skincare, foraging, pottery, coding, and small business hacks. Additionally, small communities have bubbled up within TikTok. Fred Turner goes on to explain that Brand established digital networks within which members of multiple communities could meet and collaborate and imagine themselves as members of a single community. Within TikTok, LGBTQ+ communities join with alt communities who join with cosplay communities, who all join together into a super community of members who support free love, inclusivity, rights for all, and other modern counterculture beliefs. It’s even suggested that TikTok communities were responsible for sabotaging a right-wing political convention, potentially making WEC’s vision of technology as a counterculture force a reality?
Introduction to Turner, Fred, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Steward Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Uptopianism, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
Stewart Brand, “Whole Earth Catalog Purpose and Function
Claire Evans discusses the origin of the internet, the early intent of the space, and how it has evolved from a communicative technology to a consumptive technology. We are addicted to our devices and dependent on real-time updates to the point where our attention span has decreased dramatically. The internet of today is full of wicked problems, some addressed and some not by the leading tech companies that rule our lives. Data is hacked and stolen, consumers are ripped off, people are still being catfished. Evans encourages attempts at stemming these wicked problems by implementing values early in the design process, at the beginning. These mindful approaches, applied early and often, could produce more equitable systems with the world wide web. Easier said than done, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but – is it too late? Can we really begin (or continue?) to reshape and rebuild the Internet to include more equitable systems? Despite the gloomy revelations of the inner workings of the titans of the tech industry, users still flock to the Amazons, Apples, Googles, and Facebooks of the world. So much seems so wrong with the world and with the Internet, sometimes it seems like we’ll never reach the light at the end of the tunnel. If there is hope, how can designers change our process to be more equitable? I don’t want just overarching “be better” advice, but more concrete steps, guidelines, resources, etc. Just as those involved with WEC, I am in a process of constant self-education, and I’m ready to learn.