In the fall of 1968, the first Whole Earth ­Cat­a­log offered a first look at Earth seen from space. The ­catalog’s sub­ti­tle, “access to tools”, sug­gest­ed a wide-­rang­ing scope of ­counter-cul­ture alter­natives to that era’s sta­tus quo.

Fifty years after the Whole Earth Catalog’s first pub­li­ca­tion, we won­der how its themes of ecol­o­gy, self-suf­fi­cien­cy, and holism can be updat­ed to account for the sweep­ing cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal change that has occurred over the inter­ven­ing years. Although some of the con­tent with­in that book may appear quaint in ret­ro­spect, in our minds, much of it should remain rel­e­vant to con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties. Some of the tools from the Whole Earth Cat­a­log include: Geo­des­ic domes for pre-fab shel­ter, veg­e­tar­i­an cook­books for healthy diets, and even ear­ly per­son­al computers.

Con­verse­ly, the avant-garde tools we’re deal­ing with in our cur­rent cli­mate include: shape-shift­ing / 4D mate­ri­als, auto­mat­ed robot­ics, and inves­ti­ga­tions into AI and quan­tum com­put­ing. Cer­tain as cater­pil­lars con­tin­ue to change into but­ter­flies through meta­mor­pho­sis, so too do we believe inno­va­tion will trans­form dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the com­ing decades. Yet, no mat­ter how advanced our capa­bil­i­ties become, basic tools should not be negat­ed. Ham­mers, fire, wheels. Eye con­tact. Breath­work. These are tools that will nev­er go out of fashion.

We believe prac­ti­tion­ers of inno­va­tion will soon begin direct­ing ini­tia­tives to replace the prof­it-dri­ven mod­el. After all, it doesn’t mat­ter how much mon­ey you have when your city is sub­merged by the ris­ing oceans. So we need to see our way beyond the sta­tus quo and make our work as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble so oth­ers can join forces with us. Inno­va­tion must focus on whole sys­tems, begin­ning with sys­temic issues most in need of revi­sion. Our cat­a­log acts as an inquiry into human-made prob­lems and the prob­a­ble solu­tions we have found thus far. Chang­ing Mat­ter refers to shape-shift­ing pri­or­i­ties, sub­jects of focus, as well as mate­r­i­al con­cerns. We are inspired by the pro­posed abil­i­ty of the mind to direct mat­ter and the poten­tial for humans to respond to our ongo­ing cre­ation of waste with inno­v­a­tive approach­es for renewal.

We feel our­selves step­ping into change. Our per­spec­tives con­tin­ue to open and syn­chro­nize around new sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tions and spir­i­tu­al insights which con­tin­ue to con­firm our reliance on the nat­ur­al world. The more we look into this pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship, the clear­er it is that we still have much fur­ther yet to go.