Fewer, Richer, Greener

24“We Are as Gods”: The Fertile Mind of Stewart Brand

We are as gods,” wrote the Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand (see Figure 24.1) in 1968, “and we might as well get good at it.”¹ What in heavens was he talking about?

Figure 24.1 Stewart Brand. 

Source: Photo credit: Ryan Phelan (his wife). http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/SB_photos_big.html.

Living fruitfully on the Earth, using technology responsibly, and harnessing our collective brainpower to improve our lives, that’s what. Important stuff. To better understand Brand’s unique contribution to thinking about humans and the environment, it’s helpful to first get to know the man.

Unlike many of the thinkers and doers cited in this book, Stewart Brand, Renaissance man, author, businessman, and futurist brims with left-liberal credentials: he is one of the founding fathers of modern environmentalism. It was Brand who printed the NASA photo of the whole Earth, taken from the Moon, on the cover of the first Whole Earth Catalog, thereby directly inspiring Earth Day (April 22, 1970). Brand was one of the few hippie radicals who did not disrespect the space program as a costly and militaristic misadventure; he thought it would yield a cornucopia of benefits.²

A computer and technology enthusiast from the start,³ and educated as a scientist (Paul Ehrlich was his ecology professor), Brand helped build the bridge between ...