From TheBestLinks.com
CoEvolution Quarterly was one of the publishing ventures of the same visionary biologist (with interests in cultures and in art) who launched the Whole Earth Catalog and an early Internet community, still functioning, called the WELL. Stewart Brand was the name of this editor, writer, and de facto publisher.
Brand chose the term co-evolution, important in biology, as the title for his journal, which grew from the Whole Earth Catalog project. Brand and his staff and contributors adhered to the idea that co-evolution can and should occur in the spheres of ideas, human social life, and the development and use of technology.
Issues of the Catalog - concerned with "access to tools" - were put together by Brand, his wife, friends and associates. They were published regularly until 1972, and sporadically until 1998. The Catalog embraced many sorts of things as useful "tools": books, maps, garden and carpentry tools, specialized clothing, forestry gear, tents, welding equipment, professional journals, early synthesizers and personal computers. Brand invited "reviews" of the best of these items from experts in specific fields, as though they were writing a letter to a friend. The articles also told where the reviewed items could be located or bought. The Catalog's publication coincided with the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and "do it yourself" attitude associated with the "counterculture."
A 1972 edition of the Catalog sold 1.5 million copies, winning a U.S. National Book Award, and its influence was widespread, especially perhaps in promoting appropriate technology. To publish full-length articles on specific topics in natural sciences, invention, social evolution, arts, etc., Stewart Brand founded the CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974, aimed primarily at the educated layperson. The Catalog's sort of tool and book reviews were still there in abundance, and ecological and technology topics were interspersed with articles treating social and community subjects.
Content wandered through many byways of modern life, and at times explored futuristic scenarios. Besides giving space to unknown writers with something valuable to say, Brand presented articles by many highly respected authors and thinkers, including Ivan Illich, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gregory Bateson, Amory Lovins, Howard Odum, Gary Snyder, Lynn Margulis, Peter Calthorpe, Sim Van der Ryn,Paul Hawken, John Todd, Kevin Kelly (future editor of Wired magazine), and Donella Meadows. The industrial designer and educator J. Baldwin served as the technology editor.
In 1985, CoEvolution's name was changed to Whole Earth Review. Later it was again modified to simply Whole Earth. Publication has ceased (at least for the time being), but this unique journal was for a long period in touch with the forefront of technological innovation, being an early vehicle for articles about personal computers, space colonization and molecular nanotechnology. Stewart Brand also founded the Point Foundation and is now active in the Global Business Network.
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