Stewart Brand, Silicon Valley’s Favorite Prophet, on Life’s Most Important Principle
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Who is Stewart Brand and what is his significance in technology and culture?
I'm opening up cross play. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. Kat's played another move. She played stoop for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close, but I did win. New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two-player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games.
We've got an announcement before we begin the show today. I am going to be hosting a forum on housing and affordability with some of the top California governance candidates on Friday, May 8th. We're gonna discuss why housing in California, my beloved home state, is so damn expensive and what each candidate hopes to do about it. The event is being co-hosted by the New York Times, Housing Action Coalition, and the Turner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Foundation. Tickets are on sale now, so get them while they're available. We'll include a link and a promo code in the show notes.
I think if you were to look for the philosopher, the thinker who is most influential in the culture that became the internet, who sort of laid down the way Silicon Valley thought, at least in its more idealistic era, the person you come up with is Stewart Brand. Brand has one of these amazing lives where he seemed to be present, at least for a part of the culture, at almost everything that mattered. They're in the 60s and the moment of the hippies in a $20 a month apartment in San Francisco with other beatniks. They're at the mother of all demos that creates much of the structure for modern computing that foresees many places we're ultimately going to go. They're creating the well, one of the earliest online communities.
They're with the whole earth catalog, which Steve Jobs describes as an early inspiration for what we now think of as the internet. 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 created by a fellow named Stuart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. A list of all the places Brand was and all the things he influenced from the clock of the long now to his long-running correspondence with Brian Eno, it is very, very long.
And along the way, Brand has been writing these very beautiful, unusual books, not just the whole Earth catalog, but How Buildings Learn in 1994, which I love, and if you've not read, you really should. And then most recently, this book, The Maintenance of Everything, Part 1, which explores something many of us would rather avoid. The constant and almost spiritually important work of fixing our cars, of doing home repairs, of caring for each other. Brand makes maintenance sound philosophically potent, even beautiful. And one thing I think is interesting about this book at this moment, to be written by somebody with the weight of brand, is that it points towards maybe a different way of thinking about technology.
What was the vision of the Back to the Landers movement in the 1960s?
It points towards maybe a different ethos on which Silicon Valley, with its great man of history, conquerors of the world dimensions now, can maybe move towards. Something a little bit more humble, something a little bit more rooted, in the natural relationship we all have to each other and that we all have to aging and to loss. So I wanted to have Brandon to talk to him about that and so much else that he's seen and thought over the years. As always, my email is reclineshow at nytimes.com.
Stuart Brand, welcome to the show.
Well, thank you, Mr. Glad to be here.
I want to start a little bit back in your history. In the 1960s, you were part of a movement that got called the Back to the Landers, Communards.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Stewart Brand and what is his significance in technology and culture?
0:01–3:57
2
What was the vision of the Back to the Landers movement in the 1960s?
3:57–7:39
3
How did the Whole Earth Catalog influence the internet and technology?
7:39–10:44
4
What is the philosophical importance of maintenance according to Stewart Brand?
10:44–14:43
5
How does maintenance relate to our relationship with technology and nature?
14:43–18:59
6
What insights does Stewart Brand offer regarding AI and humanity?
18:59–24:28
7
How does the concept of maintenance apply to personal and societal care?
24:28–27:50
8
What are some recommended books that reflect the themes discussed in this episode?
27:50–51:17