alt Hacker NewsIf you look at the first 10 years of Whole Earth Review, starting in 1985, it's startling to see the similarities to the issues of today.
January 1985: Computers as Poison - "It is not our hand that we put into the computer, it is our attention."
July 1985: Digital Retouching - "The end of photography as evidence of anything"
Winter 1985: "Islam: Beyond the Stereotypes"
Spring 1986: "Peering into the age of Transparency" - about space surveillance
Summer 1986: “This text tries to explain how minds work. How can intelligence emerge from non-intelligence? To answer that, I’ll show that you can build a mind from many little parts, each mindless by itself.”
Fall 1986: The Fringes of Reason - Strange myths and eccentric science
Winter 1986: AmerRuss - Joining America and Russia into one country
Summer 1987: What is real & A No-Cash Economy that Works
Fall 1987: Doing Drag & Male Identity
Summer 1988: The Far Left & Far Right Converge Summer 1988: The Rights of Robots
Summer 1989: Is the body obsolete
Summer 1991: Electronic Democracy
Winter 1991: Questioning Technology
Fall 1992: Artificial Life
Whole Earth published a whole spectrum of ideas, so you can cherry pick and find things that were prescient of the trouble we would find ourselves in. But overall the publication held a very optimistic view that stands at odds with present day reality.