I discovered the Whole Earth Catalog when I was at college and working in a small independent bookstore in Brighton in the UK. The catalog was originally published in 1968 and contained a wealth of information from books to tools to classes and beyond. It had a joyful DIY, countercultural feel and every page contained huge amounts of amazing ideas. I discovered Buckminster Fuller through Whole Earth and immersed myself in his ideas about “whole systems.”

Whole Earth had a profound influence on many technologists. People have described it as a kind of pre-internet internet. Steve Jobs called Whole Earth one of the bibles of his generation, “It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth colleagues have shaped many aspects of our contemporarty digital world, inspiring the birth of the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) and WIRED magazine. As Tim O’Reilly says, “A huge amount of the O’Reilly sensibility, a mix of practicality and idealism, was learned from the Whole Earth Catalog. And of course, the Whole Earth Catalog is one of the wellsprings of the modern DIY movement, for which Make: magazine is now carrying the torch.”

The sections of the catalog included industry and craft, communications, and community, all ideas that continue to inspire us at Shooting People as filmmaking moves into the world of Web 2.0. In this spirit we have launched our new TOOLS blog where we will continue the fine tradition of communicating and sharing resources with each other. It’s not quite as nice as the Whole Earth Catalog to hold in your hands but I hope that it will be useful nonetheless.