I was at my in-laws this weekend and they put on a video made from old home movies, of some relatives of theirs I didn’t know; 70’s vintage stuff. As the camera panned around the room it focused on one guy sitting on the couch reading The Whole Earth Catalog. God, did that bring back a memory! I see the milennium edition on sale at Amazon, but ordering that on-line just seems so un-70’s. I used to have one back then, anybody else?
My dad has an old one- The Last Whole Earth Catalog.
I’ve got the 1994 version.
I lost mine sometime in the 70’s. What a great book it was. I think the subtitle was “Access to Tools” and mine was well worn from being read by all my hip friends. Hydroponics, earth homes, tractors, clothes, tents, motorcycles. It was the original “Straight Dope” !
“Hope is not a method”
Well, all those 70’s folk amazingly went through time like everyone else, and would be pleased as punch for you to utilize the Web and get the book. Who fer hippies sake do ya think is behind all this stuff? Al Gore???
Making a note the grab The Catalog (if it is still there,I recall ‘Access to Tools’ also) from my old bedroom next time I visit my parents. Good flashback, lil’ Buddy.
Note that the 1994 version has a large section devoted to WWW tools. . .
See:
Wow, thanks for that link to nostalgia. I had an edition of the The Whole Earth Catalog sometimes in the early 70s. It was quite a big book, about the size of a telephone directory and maybe an inch and a half thick, maybe more. Appeared to be printed on newsprint type paper, IIRC. Man, does that bring back very old memories of idyllic youth!
Are you TRYING to trigger acid flashbacks?!
Right, I obviously led a sheltered life. What’s a Whole Earth Catalogue? I didn’t realise that the whole earth was for sale at some point?
I’ve got one someplace. Not sure which edition.
A few years ago I found a copy at a flea market and knew that I just had to have it. It first came out when I was in my early teens, and my brother had boughten one. Hey! there was even some low-res nudity in it!
Anyway, the reason I bought it decades later was that I had started teaching a web programming class, which I started off with the question “What did people use to find information before the internet?” When I passed it around the classroom some students found it fascinating, even if it was on paper. It was good for finding about random crap that you didn’t think you needed to know about, kind of like random Wikipedia pages.
It was fascinating, and often useful for finding out about random stuff that you hadn’t known existed. Not all of which was crap.
And there was a running story, a couple of paragraphs every four or five pages. I no longer remember it, but I remember reading it. If I come across it this winter, I think I’ll read it again.
My copy is “The Last” Whole Earth Catalog from 1972. Cover Price: $5.
From the title page:
FUNCTION
The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting.
An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:
Useful as a tool,
Relevant to independent education,
High quality or low cost,
Easily available by mail.
CATALOG listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of CATALOG users and staff.
PURPOSE
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far remotely done power and glory–as via government, big business, formal education, church–has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing–power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.
I loved flipping through it (the 1970 edition), as a child in the late 70s. Still have it, and occasionally dip into it. Coolest thing ever. I could tell that the running story at the bottom was hip, too, even if I didn’t understand everything.
I’m impressed that those hippies in an office in San Francisco could solicit, organize, cut and paste, and print out those thousands of disparate items in a timely fashion (fast enough that the offerings would still be available after printing). Clearly they weren’t all stoned, all the time. 
Some have likened the Catalog to a sort of proto-Internet. There’s something to that claim.
(Decades later, in the 1990s, I read Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn,” and only after realized he was the driving force behind the WHC).