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CoEvolution Quarterly
Encyclopedia
CoEvolution Quarterly is a descendant of Stewart Brand
's Whole Earth Catalog
. It eventually became the Whole Earth Review
.
founded the CoEvolution Quarterly using proceeds from the Whole Earth Catalog
. It evolved out of the original Whole Earth Supplement in 1974. Brand founded it "to see what would happen if an editor were totally unleashed. I would print anything that kept me turning its pages." It introduced a number of topics and works by authors including, "The Gaia hypothesis
, watershed consciousness, voluntary simplicity, personal computers, the flat tax
, the effects of chemicals on the human gene pool; the ideas and stories of Amory Lovins
, John Todd
, Christopher Alexander
, Donella Meadows
, beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and Michael McClure
(who edited an issue), Paul Ehrlich
, Ken Kesey
, Gary Snyder
, R. Crumb, Mary Catherine Bateson
, Gregory Bateson
, Admiral Hyman Rickover, James Baldwin
, Sallie Tisdale, Ivan Illich
, Paul Hawken
, Kevin Kelly
, Howard Rheingold
, Anne Herbert."
Issues of the Catalog — concerned with "access to tools" — were put together by Brand, his wife, friends and associates. They were published regularly until 1972, and sporadically until 1998. The Catalog embraced many sorts of things as useful "tools": books, maps, garden and carpentry tools, specialized clothing, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The articles also told where the reviewed items could be located or bought. The Catalog's publication coincided with the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and "do it yourself
" attitude associated with the "counterculture
."
The offshoot publication, CoEvolution Quarterly, was aimed primarily at the educated layperson. The industrial designer and educator J. Baldwin
served as the technology editor. The Catalog's sort of tool and book reviews were still there in abundance, and ecological and technology topics were interspersed with articles treating social and community subjects. Content wandered through many byways of modern life. Stewart Brand, J. Baldwin, and other early editors usually sought to ground the more unusual and speculative feature articles in good science — in natural science, social science, engineering principles, etc. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something valuable to say, Brand's quarterly (under its several successive names) presented articles by many highly respected authors and thinkers, including Lewis Mumford
, E.F. Schumacher. The magazine was a lively multi-disciplinary meetingplace that didn't smack at all of academia.
Brand invited reviews of books and "tools" from experts in specific fields, to be approached as though they were writing a letter to a friend. In this, he adopted a technique which editor Byron Dobell had worked out with Tom Wolfe
, early in the latter’s career, a method which had started a whole literary genre called “the new journalism
” known for its intimacy and impact. Other new-journalism characteristics to be found in many of the magazine's articles included telling the story (or describing the situation) using scenes rather than historical narrative, when possible, and recording everyday details to provide tangible reality.
The Quarterly was one of the journals born in the 1970s that, in effect, bridged the gap of what has been called the two cultures
(science and the humanities). This was an inheritance from the Catalog, which had, for instance, run a review of Gerald Heard
's work.
In the early 1980s, Brand pulled back from hands-on editorship of CoEvolution Quarterly, turning over editorship to Art Kleiner and Jay Kinney
(1983-1984), and then to Kevin Kelly
, Howard Rheingold
, and others.
Fred Turner
notes that in 1985, Brand merged CoEvolution Quarterly with The Whole Earth Software Review
(a supplement to The Whole Earth Software Catalog
) to create the Whole Earth Review
. This is also indicated in the issues themselves. Fall 1984, Issue No. 43 is titled The Last CoEvolution Quarterly.The cover also states, "Next issue is 'Whole Earth Review': livelier snake, new skin." In January 1985, Issue No. 44 was titled Whole Earth Review: Tools and Ideas for the Computer Age. The cover also reads "The continuation of CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Software Review." The journal's pages began to give more emphasis to the personal computer revolution and to useful software. Later the journal's title was again modified, to the simpler Whole Earth.
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
's Whole Earth Catalog
Whole Earth Catalog
The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...
. It eventually became the Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the Whole Earth Software Review and the CoEvolution Quarterly. All of these periodicals are descendants of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog...
.
History
In 1974, Stewart BrandStewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
founded the CoEvolution Quarterly using proceeds from the Whole Earth Catalog
Whole Earth Catalog
The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...
. It evolved out of the original Whole Earth Supplement in 1974. Brand founded it "to see what would happen if an editor were totally unleashed. I would print anything that kept me turning its pages." It introduced a number of topics and works by authors including, "The Gaia hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
, watershed consciousness, voluntary simplicity, personal computers, the flat tax
Flat tax
A flat tax is a tax system with a constant marginal tax rate. Typically the term flat tax is applied in the context of an individual or corporate income that will be taxed at one marginal rate...
, the effects of chemicals on the human gene pool; the ideas and stories of Amory Lovins
Amory Lovins
Amory Bloch Lovins is an American environmental scientist and writer, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades...
, John Todd
John Todd (biologist)
John Todd is a biologist working in what is sometimes considered the general field of ecological design, in that his ideas often involve applications that become the basis of alternative technologies. His principal professional interests have included solving problems of food production and...
, Christopher Alexander
Christopher Alexander
Christopher Wolfgang Alexander is a registered architect noted for his theories about design, and for more than 200 building projects in California, Japan, Mexico and around the world...
, Donella Meadows
Donella Meadows
Donella H. "Dana" Meadows was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth, which made headlines around the world.- Life :Born in Elgin, Illinois, Meadows was educated in science, receiving a B.A...
, beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
and Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
(who edited an issue), Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich was a German scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel laureate. He is noted for curing syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, calling it "horror autotoxicus"...
, Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
, R. Crumb, Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson is an American writer and cultural anthropologist.A graduate of the Brearley School, Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Since 1960, she has been married to Barkev Kassarjian, a professor of business management at Babson College...
, Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
, Admiral Hyman Rickover, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, Sallie Tisdale, Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich was an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and "maverick social critic" of the institutions of contemporary western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development.- Personal life...
, Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author.-Life:Paul Hawken had a Swedish grandmother and a Scottish grandfather with a farm. His father worked at UC Berkeley...
, Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.-Biography:...
, Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
, Anne Herbert."
Issues of the Catalog — concerned with "access to tools" — were put together by Brand, his wife, friends and associates. They were published regularly until 1972, and sporadically until 1998. The Catalog embraced many sorts of things as useful "tools": books, maps, garden and carpentry tools, specialized clothing, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" of the best of these items from experts in specific fields. The articles also told where the reviewed items could be located or bought. The Catalog's publication coincided with the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and "do it yourself
Do it yourself
Do it yourself is a term used to describe building, modifying, or repairing of something without the aid of experts or professionals...
" attitude associated with the "counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
."
The offshoot publication, CoEvolution Quarterly, was aimed primarily at the educated layperson. The industrial designer and educator J. Baldwin
J. Baldwin
James Tennant Baldwin is an American industrial designer and writer...
served as the technology editor. The Catalog's sort of tool and book reviews were still there in abundance, and ecological and technology topics were interspersed with articles treating social and community subjects. Content wandered through many byways of modern life. Stewart Brand, J. Baldwin, and other early editors usually sought to ground the more unusual and speculative feature articles in good science — in natural science, social science, engineering principles, etc. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something valuable to say, Brand's quarterly (under its several successive names) presented articles by many highly respected authors and thinkers, including Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
, E.F. Schumacher. The magazine was a lively multi-disciplinary meetingplace that didn't smack at all of academia.
Brand invited reviews of books and "tools" from experts in specific fields, to be approached as though they were writing a letter to a friend. In this, he adopted a technique which editor Byron Dobell had worked out with Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...
, early in the latter’s career, a method which had started a whole literary genre called “the new journalism
New Journalism
New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...
” known for its intimacy and impact. Other new-journalism characteristics to be found in many of the magazine's articles included telling the story (or describing the situation) using scenes rather than historical narrative, when possible, and recording everyday details to provide tangible reality.
The Quarterly was one of the journals born in the 1970s that, in effect, bridged the gap of what has been called the two cultures
The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major...
(science and the humanities). This was an inheritance from the Catalog, which had, for instance, run a review of Gerald Heard
Gerald Heard
Henry Fitzgerald Heard commonly called Gerald Heard was an historian, science writer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books....
's work.
In the early 1980s, Brand pulled back from hands-on editorship of CoEvolution Quarterly, turning over editorship to Art Kleiner and Jay Kinney
Jay Kinney
Jay Kinney is an American author, editor, and former underground cartoonist. A member, along with Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch and R. Crumb, of the original Bijou Funnies crew, Kinney also edited Young Lust, a satire of romance comics, in the early 1970s with Bill Griffith...
(1983-1984), and then to Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.-Biography:...
, Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
, and others.
Fred Turner
Fred Turner (academic)
Fred Turner is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Communication and the acclaimed author of two books:* From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism...
notes that in 1985, Brand merged CoEvolution Quarterly with The Whole Earth Software Review
Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review
The Whole Earth Software Catalog and The Whole Earth Software Review were two publications produced by Stewart Brand's Point Foundation as an extension of The Whole Earth Catalog.-Overview:...
(a supplement to The Whole Earth Software Catalog
Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review
The Whole Earth Software Catalog and The Whole Earth Software Review were two publications produced by Stewart Brand's Point Foundation as an extension of The Whole Earth Catalog.-Overview:...
) to create the Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the Whole Earth Software Review and the CoEvolution Quarterly. All of these periodicals are descendants of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog...
. This is also indicated in the issues themselves. Fall 1984, Issue No. 43 is titled The Last CoEvolution Quarterly.The cover also states, "Next issue is 'Whole Earth Review': livelier snake, new skin." In January 1985, Issue No. 44 was titled Whole Earth Review: Tools and Ideas for the Computer Age. The cover also reads "The continuation of CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Software Review." The journal's pages began to give more emphasis to the personal computer revolution and to useful software. Later the journal's title was again modified, to the simpler Whole Earth.
External links
- Official website
- "Futurism and All That: The CoEvolution Quarterly $2.50 at newstands in Harvard Sq." – Harvard CrimsonHarvard CrimsonThe Harvard Crimson are the athletic teams of Harvard University. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2006, there were 41 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country...