The 1969 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, left, and the new 2011 edition of WorldChanging, a User''s Guide for the 21st Century, right.
My whole life I've been a fan of projects like this. First it was the Whole Earth Catalog (above left) and its periodical sister Co-Evolution Quarterly. It was like having the internet before the internet. A stream of ideas, tools, visions, and dreams of what could be. Whenever an issue showed up in my mailbox it was the highlight of the month, I'd lose myself for hours at time, it was a continuing education. I've still got them all. Luckily they have been put online:
Of late it has been the labor of love over at WorldChanging. Lamentably the organization has closed, but in addition to a website full of ideas and examples, Alex Steffen and colleagues have left us with a new gift, a revised and updated Worldchanging book. It's a vision of what our world can become and how we might get there if only we get to work. More than an update of the original, they say it's a whole new book. The new Worldchanging 2.0 is due March1. I ordered my copy yesterday, and will be looking forward to its arrival next week just like the old days when Whole Earth regularly graced my mailbox.
From Worldchanging: "....Worldchanging 2.0 is an urban book, focusing on cities and the systems we need to change to make them carbon-neutral, zero-waste, walkable and equitable engines of prosperity. It's an ambitious book, full of the kinds of bold thinking we need to engage with to build a truly bright green future: climate foresight and planetary thinking; sustainable design innovations and passivhaus buildings; walksheds, ubiquitous technology and sharing systems; biomimicry and green chemistry; adaptive re-use and rugged green infrastructure; telling the backstories of the things we buy, making transparent the functioning of our governments and rebuilding the ruins of the unsustainable. On a planet hurtling towards not only a population of 9 billion people, almost all living in or around cities, facing a massive ecological crisis and an unfaltering technological revolution, ideas like the ones in Worldchanging are no longer just provocative, they're essential. Worldchanging is a guide to building (and living in) bright green cities. Now, not in some distant, perfect future...."
Posted via email from Signs From Earth Notes