BEg2 ch 7 Well people (nostalgia for Whole Earth Catalog)

[Mark Kohut]

I once read a decent article about the major happening that almost killed
off The Well and led many of the early
users to leave......utopianly open, once admitted into the community you
were a part.....the story went that one
person obsessively rode her problem and arguments relentlessly......cut
down most back-and-forth conversation...
....evidently no way to block her (I believe it was a woman) .....she
ruined the meaning of the whole thing.....for many, many.

I am remembering that TV guy John Laroquette, who alluded to Thomas Pynchon
a couple times on his show, was said
to be a part of the earliest WELL membership.......John was rumored to be
on contact with Pynchon and a huge fan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL

On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 2:58 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> “Nobody here in the Alley’s about to snoot you the way you get snooted by
> those folks in Marin. Oh, I’m sorry, you’re not Well people, are you?”
>
>   “Hell no,” cackles Lucas, “we’re as sick as they come.”
>
> The Well - “whole earth ‘lectronic link” was - egads, it’s still around! -
> is a virtual community.
>
> I remember logging in from a 386 and getting snooted back in the 90s
> myself.
>
> The members there - at least some of them - really did refer to themselves
> as Well people.
>
> And to be fair I was quite ignorant (some things never change (-;)
>
> The Whole Earth Catalog was a publication that came out in the 60s &
> purported to be a manifesto as well as a source for things people might
> want to get involved in like back to the land, community organizing, just
> about anything really.
>
> The founder, Stewart Brand, in 1966, had an LSD insight like, “why haven’t
> we seen a picture of the whole earth.” So he went to NASA and got them to
> release such a picture. Then Brand - using insights from Buckminster
> Fuller, Lewis Mumford, and anthropologist Gregory Bateson - proceeded to
> found the whole earth catalog and to be an early adopter of computers,
> worked with internet pioneer Douglas Engelbart, used his influence to
> “bring it to the people” & thus came about the Well.
>
> I think the Well had many of the problems of the internet in miniature
> years before they became apparent elsewhere. And many of the good things.
>
>
> Steve Jobs said the (printed) whole earth catalog was like Google before
> the internet.
>
> It was fun to read. The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971) was printed on huge
> paper, and had a story serialized on the bottom corners of the pages, about
> this hippie driving around in a VW van and finally becoming rooted on a
> farm he inherited, raising chickens and revitalizing the soil with their
> manure.
>
> Looking up from the story, you might see info about geodesic domes,
> intentional communities, yadata yadata yadata - seed catalogs, recycling,
> book reviews, anything really. Drinking from a firehose. Really was like a
> print Google. They stressed access to tools but a lot of that stuff was
> heavy duty pumps and whatnot that lightweights like me noted only briefly
> in passing. “Drill press, yeah okay, but is DR’s girlfriend going to leave
> him? He just hung out with those Swedish girls in their tent briefly, but
> she’s mad because he wouldn’t spring for a motel room in Vincennes.”
>
> Pretty cool though, all in all.
>
> So maybe they had something to snoot about.
>
>
> There was even a “next whole earth catalog” that came out in the early 80s
> with a story on the page corners by Paul Krassner, which if anything was
> even better. By then they were already flogging computers big time.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>