The Entire Earth Catalog Was the Web Earlier than the Web: NPR
To Martinez, host:
Lately, the reply to virtually any query is just some keystrokes away.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
However earlier than the arrival of the Web, trying to find data took for much longer, so many individuals turned to a single publication that gathered giant quantities of data collectively.
Stuart Model: The hippies known as it the hippie bible. Steve Jobs known as it the Web earlier than the Web. We known as it Entry to Instruments.
MARTINEZ: Stuart Model was a co-founder of the Entire Earth Catalog, which was type of a how-to information to life within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies.
BRAND: And, you recognize, for the value of a guide, you may discover ways to make guitars, nevertheless it’s simply as straightforward to repair a motorbike or elevate goats or elevate bees.
MARTIN: By 1972, Entire Earth Catalog had bought greater than 1,000,000 copies and received the Nationwide Ebook Award. It additionally permits readers to take heed to what was then known as the counterculture.
FRED TURNER: While you open it, there are, you recognize, footage of wagons and tractors, but additionally calculators and psychedelic footage. It is like wait a minute. The place is that this world?
MARTINEZ: It is opened the door to a digital world, says Fred Turner, a professor at Stanford College.
TURNER: And so the pc turns into a device just like the one launched earlier within the Entire Earth Catalog. The catalog itself turns into a mannequin for a very necessary early digital neighborhood.
Martin: The model had a hand in one of many earliest on-line communities when it pulled content material from the unique Entire Earth catalog to create the Entire Earth hyperlink and provides customers a spot to share concepts in actual time.
BRAND: And that led to an actual speech.
MARTINEZ: Due to San Francisco artwork collective Grey Space, virtually all the assortment of Entire Earth publications is now accessible for guests to browse on-line — placing the Web earlier than the Web.
(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX’S “JUNGLE”)
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