John Markoff is a Pulitzer Prize winner who has been reporting on Silicon Valley since 1977. He first met Stewart Brand in the early 1980s. In his recently published book, "Whole Earth: the Many Lives of Stewart Brand," Markoff chronicles Brand's life story. This biography is the result of Markoff's years of reading Brand's personal diaries and letters, many of which are special collections at Stanford University Library, as well as extensive interviews conducted in Brand's Bay Area office.
Recently, http://slowdown.tv interviewed John Markoff, discussing Stewart Brand's trajectory and guiding principles, as well as his incredible ability to immerse himself in emerging trends and social movements, sometimes even creating them himself.
http://slowdown.tv: Elucidating Stewart Brand's philosophy and work seems like a daunting task. What do you think is his greatest achievement? What impact do these achievements have on society and the planet?
John Markoff: For a generation of people in the 1960s and 1970s who were trying to break the boundaries of the American middle class, Brand was an inspiring figure. "The Whole Earth Catalog" was not only a guide to creating one's own life, but its spirit was captured by Steve Jobs in 2005 when he told Stanford University graduates, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish." He was quoting Brand. "The Whole Earth Catalog" was an engine of serendipity - when you read it, you would find interesting ideas, and your whole life would take a orthogonal turn because of something you stumbled upon. This viewpoint, this set of ideas, came from the same force that created Silicon Valley.
Brand's most recent creation is the Long Now Foundation, which aims to push our culture in a long-term direction. It is too early to judge whether this effort will have a significant impact. But they are building a clock that can run for ten thousand years, which they call "the long now," to signify their point of view.
http://slowdown.tv: Stewart Brand's efforts revolve around seemingly disparate themes - environmentalism and technology. Can you explain in detail how they are interconnected for him?
John Markoff: The subtitle of "The Whole Earth Catalog" is "Access to Tools," and that's important. The opening line of the first issue's introduction is also legendary: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it." If you were to ask Stewart Brand today where that line came from, he would tell you it was inspired by Buckminster Fuller. The insight he got from Fuller was that if you give someone a tool and teach them how to use it, they can use it to change the world, and the introductions in the catalog captured that vision.
The personal computer fits that bill; it's a general-purpose tool. Brand was also influenced by Douglas Engelbart, an engineer and internet pioneer, who introduced him to the idea that computers could be tools for guiding society.
http://slowdown.tv: Do you think it is these core focuses that helped him accurately predict the future?
John Markoff: Stewart Brand always had ideas early. He often had early exposure to things that would become important forces, and in many cases, he was actually a factor in creating those forces. He was a member of an organization called the "Merry Pranksters" around writer Ken Kesey. He also participated in a series of gatherings called "Acid Tests" and eventually organized the largest Acid Test in January 1966.
After leaving the military in 1962, Stewart Brand briefly wanted to become a photojournalist. His first paid job came from architects who were founding the Stanford Student Union, and they gave him an assignment to photograph the buildings. While on campus, someone took him to visit the computer center, where there was a large mainframe computer with a graphic display. He saw two young people playing an electronic game - the first electronic game, in fact - called "Spacewar!" What impressed him was that both of them had a transcendent experience while playing. What he saw was what we now call cyberspace or the metaverse. He didn't write about this experience for the next decade, but when he wrote an article for Rolling Stone in 1972 called "SPACEWAR - by Stewart Brand," it was a truly groundbreaking article. He put forth all the ideas that would become the way we use computers today, long before the personal computer industry emerged. In fact, he coined the term "personal computing" in a later book he wrote called "II Cybernetic Frontiers."
Another example is when he started thinking about why there were no pictures of the whole Earth. Stewart Brand started a campaign: he eventually wore a sandwich board and sold buttons with the question "Why haven't we seen an image of the whole Earth yet?" He sent buttons to every member of the U.S. Congress and even to the Kremlin. Subsequently, NASA released a photograph that had a huge cultural impact. The iconic image of the 1950s was the mushroom cloud. It was a very dark vision of the future, but it changed. NASA's images were adopted by Earth Day and the environmental movement that formed in the early 1970s. Stewart Brand played a role in that.
http://slowdown.tv: What makes Stewart Brand's ideas so influential and enduring? What inspired him to think about the world in the way he does?
John Markoff: To understand the clues that drive Stewart Brand's activities, you have to understand that at the age of eight, he took a pledge from Outdoor Life magazine: "I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country—its soil and minerals, its forests, waters, and wildlife." He can still recite that pledge today, and it forms the basis of all his plans, thoughts, and writings.
http://slowdown.tv: What surprised you most about Stewart Brand while writing this book? Or, what aspects of him might surprise readers?
John Markoff: The biggest surprise to me in researching his biography was a "missing" diary from 1967 that he gave me in 2018, 18 years after he donated his diaries to Stanford University. This diary chronicled a failed project he undertook during that year, an attempt to create an "Education Fair" at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. The project failed because he couldn't raise the funds for it.
However, in his diary, I found things that made me rethink his role in Silicon Valley. In August 1967, he wrote that he came to Menlo Park to "let his technology happen." That, in itself, is remarkable. Many of his friends were leaving the city and going "back to the land" to establish communes. Brand went in the opposite direction and somehow ended up at the center of what would become Silicon Valley, which was then becoming the high-tech center it is today.
I also discovered that he was much more influenced by computer scientist Douglas Engelbart than I realized, whom I mentioned earlier. Engelbart invented the computer mouse, hypertext, and many of the ideas that form the basis of modern computing. The conclusion is that it is a mistake to view "The Whole Earth Catalog" in the context of the "back to the land" movement. Instead, it emerged from the same force that shaped Silicon Valley and represented an early influence of Silicon Valley on American culture - a sensitivity to independence and entrepreneurship that later became the hallmark of the region.
http://slowdown.tv: In the book, you note that Stewart Brand has always had a strong commitment to science, but over time, some of his views have changed quite significantly, such as those that drove "The Whole Earth Catalog." How do you view these shifts and their impact on his thinking?
John Markoff: You can't easily pigeonhole him. Stewart Brand calls himself a conservative, but he refuses to read The Wall Street Journal because he hates their editorial page. What kind of conservative is that? In 2009, he wrote a book called "Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto," where he broke with the environmental movement. He changed his views on several technologies that the environmental movement opposed, particularly genetically modified food and nuclear power.
He did change his views over time. But there are things about Brand that remain constant. The responsibility humans have for their environment has been an overarching viewpoint of his throughout his entire life.