In conjunction with the UN-led Stockholm+50 conference on the environment recently, there have been a few articles reminiscing about the original conference 50 year earlier.
The 1972 UN conference had been set during the war in Vietnam, and a topic at the time had been US' military's use of the herbicide Agent Orange.
Stewart Brand had been there (with his top-hat on), as a leader of a large group of American hippies that had been flown in.
They were widely seen as a nuisance by the other activist groups at the time, there to discredit the environment movement with their behaviour and to direct attention away from the "ecocide" in Vietnam. In one incident, Stewart Brand himself forcefully removed a speaker from a podium for mentioning Vietnam, even.
I find it interesting that the article on Brand in The Nation mentions the CIA, because there had been several indications that Brand's and the hippies' Stockholm visit in 1972 would have been funded and organised by the CIA.
I watched a pretty good docu in German which follows Ted Kaczynski's targets and they connect them to the edge foundation (some were members, like David Gelernter and John Brockman). They act like they're just asking rote interview questions, then they drop the ted k connection on the interviewees which is hilarious cause they get pretty mad a most of the time that they would draw such a thread. Stuart Brand is included as an interviewee. Isn't it interesting how the edge foundation kind of ended up in a real pickle because of Jeffrey Epstein hanging on?
The docu was entitled Das Netz: Lutz Dammbeck und der Unabomber
David Gelernter is a whole other piece of work. He did co-author a pretty good textbook on parallel programming (_How To Write Parallel Programs_), but the guy was basically a huckster when it came to distributed systems research. The real ironic thing is that it can be hard to tell Gelernter's Wall Street Journal op-eds from Kaczynski's manifesto.
Wow, it'd be one thing to point out Brand's shortcomings, but to review a biography that does some of that in order to produce a non-stop stream of snark and putdowns seems excessive. It could well be that Brand is a jerk (I haven't met him), but I think it's flippant to dismiss his accomplishments - WEC, The Well, even books like _How Buildings Learn_ are all real contributions.
It isn’t really that bad until the end, FWIW. Mostly. The D.C.-based author is apparently writing a book titled Palo Alto; I bet we’re gonna love that one...
I like the review; it’s just that it’s unbalanced and extremely biased towards the present, with almost no attention to the time and place that Brand came out of as a person. Harris is evaluating Brand from the perspective of 2022, which is anachronistic and out of place.
This is something I have wondered about having listened to a lot of the Long Now Talks. If you listen to Brand in these talks, he has the aura of an elder statesman. This book review raises far more questions than it answers, and doesn’t really show an understanding of the history that has occurred.
Tom Wolfe and John Markoff both portrayed Brand as a likable figure in their earlier works. Both Wolfe and Brand are contemporaries from the Silent Generation. Markoff was the boomer. There wasn’t much distance between the three. Now enter Malcolm Harris.
Harris gives us a new review with an altogether different viewpoint than his predecessors. Harris, a Millennial who was born in 1988 and who came into his own during the turbulent 2000s, sees the world that the boomers built and perceives its failures upon class lines—and he’s not wrong.
The problem with this well-written book review is that it fails to take into account the world Brand came from in 1938. Harris glosses over this historical dichotomy in favor of his own much more recent account. It’s something every generation tends to do to the ones before them, not realizing that someone will eventually do it to them in their later years. And so, the tradition continues.
Have met Brand on a half dozen occasions or so and I even did a 1 hour interview with him as part of a never released documentary on the origins of scenario planning and foresight.
Can confirm, he is the opposite of a jerk. He was lovely, insightful, generous and kind every single time I met him.
I think your analysis of Harris' article is spot on, thank you.
I finally read the whole thing. The word that comes to mind is "unremitting." He must name over a hundred details from the closely-read book and interprets--or just declares--each one to be proof of my worthlessness.
If I suffered from imposter syndrome, this would be the dreaded exposure of the horrible truth about me, but I don't, so it's not. It's certainly an impressively complete theory.
And I just marvel--and feel sort of honored--at someone taking so much trouble about such a thing.
More than a little-jaundiced take on Brand and the WEC as seen from a great distance, more in the spirit of that other Lebowski. The tools in the catalog were indeed practically counter-cultural, and its environmental focus was indeed prophetic (if widely ignored by the mainstream as long as possible). Compare the shelters of Lloyd Kahn to today's out-of-reach-of-most real estate. Whatever Brand's role was, the WEC's prophecy rings true. For better or worse: the Long Now has begun.
Agreed. I enjoy Harris’ take, but it’s narrow and full of tunnel vision, and fails to engage in the slightest bit of charitable coverage. It’s more of a cartoonish depiction of Brand as a one-dimensional villain, rather than a fair appraisal of a human being with all the idiosyncratic fallibilities we’ve come to expect. Surely, he could find at least one good thing to say about Brand? Harris comes off as slightly tone deaf with this piece, as it lacks nuance and attention to historical dynamics.
The Nation is a reasonably venerable publication with a small staff. I used to subscribe back in the Arthur C. Danto (art criticism) days.
When I look at it now, it’s no longer for me, and as annoying as their paywall might be, in this case they may be more than “these websites” would suggest.
