Stewart Brand: whole earth vision for the 21st century

E: The Environmental Magazine, May-June, 1996 by Kellyn S. Betts

Brand has been optimistic about the transformative power of computers since 1972, when he published an article called "Computer Bums" in Rolling Stone. In 1985, he co-founded a bulletin board system called the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) as a "pioneering experiment in electronic discussion." At present, his projects include the Global Business Network, a management consulting firm. An extremely broad-minded and generous thinker, Brand's perspective undoubtedly derives in part from his life experience, which includes a stint as one of the Merry Pranksters featured in Tom Wolfe's classic Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

Brand has some provocative ideas about how future technology might change our world, ranging from newspapers that are continuously reprinted on the same paper to vastly more efficient cars. To put the recycling responsibility in the hands of manufacturers, he envisions consumer goods - from carpets to refrigerators - rented to consumers, then returned to their makers when they wear out. Whole Earth thinking, he says, is all about finding innovative and Earth-friendly solutions to some notoriously vexing human problems.

E caught up with Brand on a day he was in his office, a landlocked fishing boat propped up in a parking lot that's walking distance from his converted tugboat home in Sausalito, California. On four weekdays out of five, he telecommutes via PC and modem to his office at the Global Business Network, across the bay in San Francisco.

E: When you consider present and future developments in computer and communications technology, what environmental impacts do you envision?

BRAND: It depends a lot on what environmentalists do about it. If they wade in and participate, they'll have tremendously favorable environmental impact. If they demonize it, then it'll be a mixed bag - the reason being that most of the computer and communications technology has the possibility of lightening the load on the environment and increasing efficiency. You don't have to do as much physical travel to undertake your economic and intellectual pursuits.

In your opinion, how has computer-based technology affected our environment so far?

We're still in the early part of the curve on these things. Computers have made for greater material and energy efficiency, less need for physical transport, more widespread intelligence basically throughout civilization and culture. All of those things are good news for the environment.

What do you mean by "more widespread intelligence"?

One of the homilies of the information age is that industry is more and more a matter of knowing than "stuff." Knowledge is much less environmentally damaging than stuff, and is very often environmentally enhancing. If you get out the knowledge that forest fires are actually a good thing some of the time, and you get enough people knowing that's the case, then you get over the Smoky the Bear problem of [building] up 60 or 70 years of highly flammable understory that wouldn't have happened if we let a few fires burn. That's a standard piece of knowledge within the environmental movement these days, but how do you get it out to the people? More and more by computer-mediated communications. Anything that enhances global communication is clearly good.

In what ways may the current mass acceptance of the Internet affect the global environment?

It makes it more aware of itself as a global environment. We saw the photograph of the Earth from space that we got from the Apollo program - a highly computerized activity - in...1969. The first Earth Day was in 1970. This is not an accident. The ecology movement really took off once we had those photographs from space. To the extent that with the 'Net we more and more live with the whole Earth, that's good for Whole Earth thinking.

You've written that networked personal computers are making everyone an author and perhaps extending the freedom of the press to an unprecedented degree. Do you have any thoughts about the quality of online information?

Online information is both worse and better than edited information. I think that makes it better overall; because when it's better than edited stuff, it's just priceless. It's so specific that you could never imagine it getting through to some broadcast media, or it's so wonderfully quirky that you could imagine it never getting through editing. Some of it is worse, and that puts you in the mode of actively figuring out what information is good and what information is not so good for your purposes. But that's better than taking it as it's provided in both respects.

Do you believe that the paperless office is coming closer to being a reality?

Well, it goes two ways. One trend is toward printing things like newspapers, magazines and books much closer to the customer, either in the home or the local copy shop. [If the printing distribution system] is less centralized, you save the costs of physical distribution. So far, paper is still a better display and storage medium than computers for most people. The paperless office was much vaunted 25 years ago, and instead it went the other way. With computers, people print even more paper. It certainly makes me print more paper.