CoEvolution Quarterly
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CoEvolution Quarterly (later re-named Whole Earth Review) was one of the publishing ventures of Stewart Brand, a visionary biologist with interests in cultures and in art. (Brand is also known for having launched the Whole Earth Catalog and an early Internet community, still functioning, called the WELL.)
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. 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, and many other topic areas, Stewart Brand founded the CoEvolution Quarterly in 1974, aimed primarily at the educated layperson. The industrial designer and educator J. Baldwin served as the technology editor. 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, various arcane subjects (e.g., island biogeography), and at times explored futuristic scenarios. Stewart Brand, J. Baldwin, and other early editors usually sought to ground the more unusual and speculative feature articles in good science — in natural science, social science, engineering principles, etc. Notably, the journal espoused some sensible and sage avenues of thought, such as architect Christopher Alexander's approach to building and planning. Clearly, there was a strong editorial interest in small, creative private enterprise. The magazine was a lively multi-disciplinary meetingplace that didn't smack at all of academia.
Besides giving space to unknown writers with something valuable to say, Brand's quarterly (under its several successive names) presented articles by many highly respected authors and thinkers, including Lewis Mumford, Howard T. Odum, Witold Rybczynski, E.F. Schumacher, Gwynne Dyer, Karl Hess, Christopher Swan, Orville Schell, Ivan Illich, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Bateson, Amory Lovins, Steve Baer, Hazel Henderson, Gary Snyder, Lynn Margulis, Peter Calthorpe, Sim Van der Ryn, Paul Hawken, John Todd, Kevin Kelly (future editor of Wired magazine), Malcolm Margolin, Jay Kinney, Robert Gilman, Wes Jackson, Jerry Mander, Jeremy Rifkin, Mark Satin, Donella Meadows, and Daniel Imhoff.
Brand invited reviews of books and "tools" from experts in specific fields, to be approached as though they were writing a letter to a friend. In this, he adopted a technique which editor Byron Dobell had worked out with Tom Wolfe, early in the latter’s career, a method which had started a whole literary genre called “the new journalism” known for its intimacy and impact. Other new-journalism characteristics to be found in many of the magazine's articles included telling the story (or describing the situation) using scenes rather than historical narrative, when possible, and recording everyday details to provide tangible reality.
The Quarterly was one of the journals born in the 1970s that, in effect, bridged the gap of what has been called the two cultures (science and the humanities). This was an inheritance from the Catalog, which had, for instance, run a review of Gerald Heard's work.
In 1985 CoEvolution was merged with the short-lived Whole Earth Software Review; the combined publication was called Whole Earth Review. The journal's pages began to give more emphasis to the personal computer revolution and to useful software. Later the journal's title was again modified, to the simpler Whole Earth.
Publication has ceased, at least for the time being, but this unique journal was for a long period in touch with the concerns of the sustainability movement and also the forefront of technological innovation (being an early vehicle for articles about personal computers, speculation about the possibilities of space colonization, and molecular nanotechnology). Stewart Brand also founded the Point Foundation and is now active in the Global Business Network.
