Babies, boxes, and cool tools - Publisher's Statement

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002 by David Bolling

The baby on the cover is one of nature's most perfect packages; temperature controlled, padded, ambulatory, heat-seeking, with a powerful alarm system that can signal potential damage for hundreds of feet.

We chose the child because we wanted a dramatic image to illustrate the issue of packaging. And because, as Janine Benyus and Dana Baumeister point out in their article on biomimicry (page 26), nature has much to teach us about the containers surrounding the things we value.

The package pictured below, one of perhaps millions mailed recently by AOL to promote its Internet services, is a different story. An alloy box, it contains a single CD and demonstrates what author Dan Imhoff has called the "collision course" between our industrial, consumer culture and our planet's life support systems.

The box may be an effective means for promoting AOL. But it's also a perfect example of the packaging problem. According to one estimate by a direct mail marketing authority reported on ZDNet News, AOL mailed some 40,000,000 marketing CDs in 1999 alone, although not in metal boxes. (AOL prefers not to comment on the numbers of its promotions.) If my math is right, that many CDs, laid end-to-end, would make a five-inch wide trail stretching from San Francisco to New York. Clearly, the overwhelming majority of those CDs were thrown away, which amounts to a staggering waste of resources. We can assume a similar fate awaits most of the metal boxes in the recent promotion.

Ultimately, Imhoff argues, one important answer to the packaging problem isn't smarter, smaller or even more biodegradable, it's simply using less. Some countries, like Germany, have made encouraging steps in that direction. But there's a long way to go and meanwhile the global load of blister packs, single-use beverage containers, Styrofoam peanuts, six-pack rings, paper and plastic produce bags, and AOL CD containers, has grown past 300 pounds per person per year.

Having said all that, if you end up purchasing any of the roughly 200 Cool Tools guest editor Kevin Kelly has assembled in the 47 pages of his latest mini-Whole Earth Catalog, you will most likely find yourself contributing to the packaging stream. Still, there's enough stuff here (beginning on page 33) to interest almost anyone, and we're enormously grateful for Kevin's encyclopedic collection, which he assembled and designed gratis. (We also review Kevin's new book of extraordinary photos from his travels through Asia; see page 102.)

There's a lot of other cool stuff in this issue, including a thoughtful reflection on the wisdom of chickens, from poultry pundit Shepherd Bliss (page 30), who has the courage to confess that the not-so-lowly chicken is his power animal.

Audrey McCollum, a New Hampshire psychotherapist, explores her unique relationship with Pirip Kuru, a feminist/activist from the highlands of Papua New Guinea (page 80), and asks whether ancient traditions can survive the onslaught of Western, industrial culture.

A very different culture is profiled by Gary Bolles, a Whole Earth advisory board member, who gives us a provocative peek behind the curtains of the TED Conference (page 86) where, for $4,000, you can hang out with sixty or seventy of the most creative and provocative people you can imagine. This is the first of a two-part peek, the second to be a report from inside the conference after TED 2003.

Some of you can now find Whole Earth outside the pages of the magazine in a weekly radio program I'm hosting on the Icicle Network. Icicle is a new production company with a focus on environmental affairs, alternative media, and other progressive issues. Plans are for the one-hour Whole Earth program to be syndicated nationally and streamed on the Icicle website (www.iciclenetworks.com). The first three programs are in the can, including conversations with Kevin Kelly, Theodore Roszak, Zenobia Barlow, Howard Rheingold, Peter Warshall, and Mark Dowie, among others.

Whole Earth is reaching beyond itself to expand its voice and attract a new generation of readers. By now many subscribers will have received our annual appeal for help in our effort to become self-sustaining. Reader donations have kept the magazine alive and are more important now than ever. We're grateful for whatever you can give.

I hope to see you on the radio.