Game Changers | Stewart Brand | Game Changer Emeritus

The Whole Earth Catalog, edited by Stewart Brand and first published in 1968, very quickly achieved cult status in American counterculture. This DIY-er’s bible introduced people to the most advanced thinking of the time—from tensile structures to computers. That in itself should be enough to reserve Brand a place in the annals of architecture and design, but he was also present at the birth of many of the technologies that drive our lives today—assisting with the first demonstration of a mouse and of e-mail, and creating one of the first online communities, before the World Wide Web existed. Arguably, his most enduring legacy in our information age is expressed by the subtitle of the first WEC, Access to Tools, which stresses the idea that technology should be democratic and give people the power to transform their own lives.

Research by Derrick Mead