Not just the Whole Earth Catalog, but Hippies. In 1968, Stewart Brand starting thinking about the counterculture in America, or the Hippies of the 60’s and how they could form their own society. How would they survive? His thoughts stumbled on an L.L. Bean catalog and viola! The Whole Earth Catalog came about, filled with items to start a new life (tools, clothing, machines, transportation, etc.) They would shape the Hippie culture forever. Many of the people of the counterculture thought that technology was controlling and bad for the American society, but small technologies were okay and things like desktop-calculators were needed to survive. The catalog listed the items, but did not sell them. They also added reviews of each item under them from scientists to artists. These reviews also came from people who read the catalog and would send in what they thought about the item. This method was described as a feedback loop and would be the beginning of the social media hype.
Time goes by when Larry Brilliant makes a proposition to Brand to put the catalog online for the WELL or Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Ink, which is a “Text-only environment” to meet other people who shared the same thoughts, feelings and to build relationships. He could post all of the items in the catalog and let people talk and respond to them. Brand suggested that users could create their own topics, which made it an even freer forum to write. The Catalog itself never went online,but Brand wanted to make the new online community able to talk about people’s ideas, beliefs and interests in this new virtual world. This leads to forums, which leads to Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more where people can put up their own thoughts and feelings for others to see!
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