Who is Stewart Brand?
Issue #6: Stewart Brand & The Whole Earth
👋 Hey Friends,
At WaitWho.Is, we help you find the most innovative thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs from across the globe to inspire you to think deeply and explore curiously.
Each week, we introduce you to one of our favorite thinkers and highlight some of their best content. We’ll also let you know about the new folks that we’ve indexed so you can see all of their best content in one place.
Who is Stewart Brand?
Earlier this week, we were doing some research on the cultural shifts that took place in the 1960’s and 1970’s as a way to add more color to the question, WTF Happened in 1971? While that’s not what we’re here to share with you today (although, Patrick Collision might have some ideas), we do want to share what we discovered digging around the internet late Tuesday night.
First, it was the 1960’s Counter Culture Movement, which led to Acid Tests and the Trips Festival, then to the Environmentalism Movement, Earth Day, and The Blue Marble (one of the first photos of the earth from space). Then we landed on the Whole Earth Catalog, which the late Steve Jobs described in his 2005 Stanford Commencement address:
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation ... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
It was a good Wikipedia rabbit hole and we were intrigued. What we found most interesting though was that there was a common denominator between all of these links.
Meet Stewart Brand — a man who has been described as the real “most interesting man in the world.”
You’ve likely heard of his projects, but (like us) were never prompted to explore deeper. That’s why today we want to break the veil by introducing you to Stewart and his work we’ve found fascinating.
First, you’ve got to check out the Whole Earth Catalog, which you can explore here and read about the backstory of here (hint: it involves a little bit of LSD, buttons, and San Francisco). Then take a look into:
The 10,000 Year Clock being built into the side of a mountain through the Long Now Foundation.
His controversial Woolly Mammoth revival biodiversity project.
His 4 environmental “heresies” talk covering interesting positions on nuclear energy, cities, GMOs, and genetic engineering.
While these links should keep you plenty busy (and thinking deeply), we also loved Stewart’s conversation with Chris Anderson on the TED stage where he covers a handful of his stories, the Woolly Mammoth project, and his predictions for the future.
Enjoy!
Of course, if you want to learn more you can follow Stewart on Twitter @StewartBrand and find all of this content on WaitWho.is/Stewart-Brand.
Who else?
This week we also want to introduce you to the amazing:
Greg Brockman — CTO & Cofounder of OpenAI
Drew Houston — CEO of Dropbox
Li Jin — Founder of Atelier Ventures
Amira Yahyaoui — CEO of Mos.com
Who do you want to see?
Is there a certain person you would love to see featured?
We’d love to hear from you and get suggestions about who to feature next or who to add to the directory. Just hit reply :)
Have a great week!
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