Tools for a Revolution
Part 1
The story of rebuilding a strategy and design agency to get ready for the era of digital platforms and epic challenges
Part 1 — The Rationale for Change
ACCESS TO TOOLS
In the summer of 1966 a thin blond guy with a blazing disk on his forehead wandered the streets of San Francisco and hitch-hiked across California to sell and distribute buttons asking “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” He was Stewart Brand, a 28 year old photographer, former soldier and a graduate of biology at Stanford University, who was on a personal mission to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite image of the entire Earth as seen from space.
According to Brand himself, he got the idea after taking “few mikes of acid” and gazing over the city, experiencing he could actually see the curvature of the Earth as he looked towards the horizon. This lead him to assume the first image of the whole Earth, seen from the above, would make for a potent symbol of global unity and the then nascent environmental movement.
Fast forward two years to 1968, when Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog, with the recent NASA photograph of the blue planet on its cover. The publication quickly became the de facto compendium, how-to manual, literary review, lifestyle guide, and shopping catalog for the counterculture movement of the late 1960s that brought together—perhaps for the first time—the seemingly disparate tribes of cyberneticists, hippies, naturalists and tech geeks.
The Whole Earth Catalog gets kudos as being both the analogue forerunner of Google and one of the most influential publications for the generation that built the foundations of today’s technological world.
The catalog’s cover image summed up its purpose. Viewed from above, the world did not look fragmented and chaotic anymore, but could be understood as a holistically integrated system — as was proposed by the catalog’s ideological godfather, Bucky Fuller. Under this rubric, the catalog promoted “access to tools”, and provided a cross-disciplinary selection of all the essentials one would need — geodesic domes, self-actualizing technologies, solar energy applications, instructions on raising bees, whole system thinking, and much more—to prosper in the New Age.
It’s no wonder that the Whole Earth Catalog gets kudos as being both the analogue forerunner of Google and one of the most influential publications for the generation who went on building the foundations of today’s technological world, including, of course, Steve Jobs and many fellow technocrati in the Valley.
All revolutions require their conceptual and practical tools that allow people to see the world in new ways, come up with new ideas, act differently, and make novel things. Stewart Brand made sure the ‘60s and ‘70s counterculture got its tools, now the disruptive counterculture of the 21st Century should get theirs.
All revolutions require their conceptual and practical tools that allow people to see the world in new ways, come up with new ideas, act differently, and make novel things.
THE NEW WAVE OF REVOLUTION
To understand the impact of the Whole Earth Catalog, we need to of course consider the broader socio-cultural, economic and technological context of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a defining era in the Western history, which was marked by consequential technological, ideological and social upheaval. The trends and events—from the Vietnam War to the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism, the 1967 Oil Embargo, and the emergence of personal computing—created massive waves of change that affected deeply our economic and political structures, and our collective identities, ideals and values.
It was then, when the emerging digital network culture, the new systemic ecological paradigm and the forceful socio-cultural movements for betterment collided for the first time.
It was then, when the emerging digital network culture, the new systemic ecological paradigm and the forceful socio-cultural movements for betterment were brought together and collided for the first time. They promoted lofty ideals, such as personal empowerment, communal wellbeing, social equality and global unity, which provided the higher ground for building many of our everyday technologies and institutions.
However, the general cultural overtone—as was the case also with the Whole Earth Catalog—remained about individual freedom and personal fulfillment. The basic assumptions of rational and self-interested ‘economic man’ and the priority of profit were echoed across the society, forcefully pushed forward by the neoliberal economics. Unsurprisingly, the influence was exceptionally intense in the business sector, where consumer needs and desires went to became the Holy Grail of corporate value creation.
We got sucked into an alluring fallacy of never-ending progress that made us believe that the meaning of life was about maximum consumer satisfaction.
It seems that in the following global economic transition of the late 20th Century we managed to lose the holistic and integrated way of looking at the world and understanding its workings. It was like we got sucked into an alluring fallacy of never-ending progress that made us collectively believe that human prosperity—or the meaning of life in general—was about maximum consumer satisfaction.
We have now became painfully aware of the dire consequences of this decades-long collective myopia. The epic challenges we face arise from escalating climate crisis, drastic technology and culture shifts, and mounting social issues. This parallel transition to the Anthropocene, the era of complex networks and global digital platforms, and the age of extensive polarization will force us to rethink what good life is made of, and how companies and institutions can help us get there.
Nearly 50 years later, the revolution is about to happen again, at the same intersection of technological, natural and socio-cultural systems. Yet, this time the problems, the solutions and the momentum are all on a very different scale.
So nearly 50 years later, it seems evident that the revolution is about to happen again, at the same intersection of technological, natural and socio-cultural systems as it did in the ‘60s. Yet, this time the problems, the means for solutions and the momentum are all on a very different scale.
The 21st Century ‘counterculture’ will certainly build on the legacy provided by its predecessors (systems thinking or self-actualizing tech, anyone?), but the new realities also require better tools and updated visions what to do with them. Design as a field of practice is adapting to the rapid change, not least by exploring the new frontiers of Big Design, but we might need more.
The bottom line is that we have to find the ways to build exponentially better businesses, platforms and solutions that will create more and better value to the world. Because accelerating our businesses and institutions to deal with the challenges at hand might be the only way to prosper in the changing environment of the early 21st century, and beyond.
This is the reason why we are as individuals and as a company at Wevolve rethinking our own purpose, and redesigning our agency model to be more suitable for the era of digital platforms and epic challenges. Because all revolutions require their conceptual and practical tools, and we believe we can help you to get them.
We would love you to join us for the ride. If you are interested, drop us a line. Or maybe read the second part of the story below to learn how we are planning to do it.
Read the second part “Our Strategic Shift” of Tools for a Revolution here:
