Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/07/kevin-kelly-talks-about-the-el.html
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As always, I have to recommend Fred Turner’s book which discusses the WEC:
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Surely there’s got to be an ISO of that disc floating around somewhere…
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A quick google search found this on the Internet Archive:
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I was hoping for something on the windows side of the equation, as Broderbund probably would have released for both MacOS and Windows (or DOS).
I’ve gone circles around with the MacPlus emulator and its gotten the best of me.
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I second that recommendation and would also recommend Markoff’s What the Dormouse Said. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/725789.What_the_Dormouse_Said
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I still have my giant white paper Whole Earth Catalog from 1994 on account of the Jim Woodring Frank comic running one panel on the bottom corner of every page
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I haven’t thought about HyperCard in decades! I did a little project with it when I was working at Mann Library at Cornell in maybe 1988, and I think the manager of the lab eventually got a publication out of it…
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Awesome recommendation, thanks! I’ve read @moortaktheundea’s recommendation, but iirc, it focuses more on Doug Engelbart, PARC, SRI et al.
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It does, but it also ties the 60s counterculture together with the rise of cyberculture, just focusing on a different group… it seems like it does so a bit less critically too than does Turner. Turner’s is also a bit more “academicy” than Markoff’s book… both are worth the time.
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The Internet Archive site has a working in-browser Mac emulator. Only caveat is you’ll need to go into the Apple menu and turn up the volume (from 0) before opening the stack. You also have to download the whole 450MB disk image to run it. The number of people who had CD-ROM drives back in 1988 was tiny, especially on Mac. These guys were way ahead of the game.
Unlikely that there is a Windows version of this software from 1988. Windows 2.0 was kind of a flop. It’s also unlikely that there was PC version at all since it is a Hypercard stack.
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Does anyone know if the source for Hypercard was ever released? I read that some Apple things like MacPaint are supposed to be open source now
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All you need is this
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Booting this up and poking around I was struck again on just how credulous the counter-culture was, though. In the learning section they praise a book called “Super-Learning”, although they didn’t really explain it. I was intrigued by the concept as I like to play around with Anki and spaced repetition. Maybe “Super-Learning” was a predecessor of this? No. It turns out that it is a mystical/ESP work of newage sewage created by the same people who came up with pyramid power!
Thanks for the info. Most of my day is on a PC, so the need for instant gratification was getting the better of me. I’ll have to boot the ol’ Mac at some point and give it a go. Beyond that, even in my youth I don’t know if I ever ran across HyperCard in the wild, beyond some magazine articles referencing it, so I’m rusty on its provenance and history. I feel like it’s a gap in my computing knowledge that I need to fill in now. Why, I don’t know, but then who needs a why?
The in-browser emulator works on any OS, or at least it works on Linux, Windows, and probably Mac (I didn’t test this one). Just go to the page and press the big “play” button, then wait for it to download the full 450MB and the emulator starts right up.
Oh yeah, the Whole Earth Catalog was heavily into hippy dippy new age crystal energy nonsense. It’s fun to read but I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Lots of ads for people selling “alternative medicine” and other dubious products and services.
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Whoa… sweet! I didn’t even notice the play button. Thanks for pointing it out!
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