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55+ Works 3,778 Members 72 Reviews 6 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Steve Jurvetson: Flickr

Series

Works by Stewart Brand

The Clock of the Long Now (1999) 588 copies
The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools (1971) — Editor — 277 copies
II cybernetic frontiers (1605) 54 copies
Soft-tech (A Coevolution book) (1978) — Editor — 24 copies
The Coevolution quarterly — Editor — 5 copies
The Maintenance Race (2021) 4 copies
CoEVOLUTION QUARTERLY. No. 15. Fall 1977. (1977) — Editor — 1 copy
CoEvolution Quarterly: #14 — Editor — 1 copy

Associated Works

The Essential Whole Earth Catalog (1986) — Editor — 124 copies
The Seven Laws of Money (1974) — Contributor — 108 copies

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architecture (281) buildings (21) Catalogs (16) catalogue (47) climate change (18) computers (39) counterculture (32) culture (33) design (64) ecology (62) engineering (20) environment (54) environmentalism (21) essays (46) future (34) futurism (22) goodreads (19) history (62) ideas (24) Kindle (19) media (24) MIT (26) non-fiction (302) philosophy (120) popular science (21) psychology (42) read (35) reference (97) science (220) self-help (26) self-sufficiency (21) sociology (22) sustainability (33) technology (117) thinking (19) time (51) to-read (345) tools (30) unread (24) Whole Earth (33)

Common Knowledge

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Reviews

If you are concerned about the future of human life on this planet from an ecosystem point of view this is a key book to read. Stuart Brand brings up issues that will be controversial to ecologists, conservationists and lay people alike but approached pragmatically as contributors to ecosystem stability. Some of the key ideas and references in this text are the most well thought out, practical, internally consistent I have ever found collected in one place.
The biggest question is that we may need to rethink the idea of man vs. ecosystem in the sense that we may need to engineer it for our own long-term survival. That to assume that the environment is resilient enough to sort things out on its own might be a dangerous existential view.… (more)
 
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yates9 | 13 other reviews | Feb 28, 2024 |
The idea itself of a clock designed to run 10,000 years is incredible: on the one hand preposterous, ridiculous, pharaonic even. My first reaction was to think that the idea was a bit crazy, and I could not see the point to such a construct. The process that took me from absurd to enthusiastic follows the words of this book.
Only if we seriously work on projects for our deep future, can we come to respect and care for it, like we would our personal descendants. And I do believe many of the most complicated problems we face today seem to transform and become less severe in the perspective of millennia ahead for our species. And new tricky classes of problems gain in importance, it is my running question whether humanity will manage to start paying attention to the threats that most endanger its long-term survival.
The clock of the long now, matters as an idea even before its real construction.
… (more)
 
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yates9 | 9 other reviews | Feb 28, 2024 |
I enjoyed this book a great deal. It's still quite relevant, but occasionally shows its twelve-year-old age. Lots of activity in the climate sector in the last few years, and you'll need to read more broadly to get coverage of that.

Stewart Brand is a captivating writer and a genuine polymath, though, so this is an outstanding overview both of the seriousness of the coming climate crisis, and of the practical work that we can do that will address it.

Strongly recommended.
 
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mikeolson2000 | 13 other reviews | Dec 27, 2023 |
Another 'gee whiz' pop account of the wonders and inevitable progress of American ingenuity and big business. The holography references looked over-egged then, and particularly naive now. It's debatable whether any substantive elements of the future came from the Media Lab.
 
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sfj2 | 1 other review | Nov 20, 2023 |

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Works
55
Also by
4
Members
3,778
Popularity
#6,711
Rating
4.0
Reviews
72
ISBNs
51
Languages
6
Favorited
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