Stewart Brand was at the right place at the right time for the majority of his life. He has had a knack to sense, be first to a new frontier, then gone before the masses show up on to something more interesting. His current cause is doing whatever he can to promote and champion reintroducing lost species to the planet. The one he is focused on is the woolly mammoth. Bringing them back using DNA to the Siberian tundra to slow down and eventually reverse the thawing of the permafrost and on a larger scale stop the release of greenhouse gases. Opponents will take the other view that man messing with nature always brings unexpected and unintended results. But even at 82 he is optimistic always seeing the good in people. So it pains him visibly when he is on stage at various events promoting de-extinction often beside like-minded geneticist George Church from Harvard how people he respects and admires could have such strongly held and vigorously argued views that are polar opposites of his. His lifelong philosophy has been to try stuff early on before there are rules against it to be part of the new thing in the world.
Stewart got his problem-solving gene from his M.I.T. educated engineer father and his love for books from his mother. She was also big on preserving nature. His best friend as a kid where chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, and opossums. From the homestead in Rockford Illinois, he went to Stanford where he moved in the direction of ecology and evolution. His biology training told him that taking species out of an ecosystem affects the evolution of every other thing remaining. His first adult job was a commission to photograph a tribe of Indians in Oregon. Through this project he met his first wife Lois Jennings. They put all of their stuff in a trailer and moved to San Francisco embarking on bohemian lifestyle and meeting Ken Kesey author of One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest. Kesey was the defacto boss of the Mary Pranksters. Stewart fit in perfectly fuelled by LSD. His biggest contribution was the Trip's Festival designed to Pass the Acid test as the Pranksters called it when one of the flock attempted to make the grade. It was very successful with bands like the Grateful Dead showing up to play. The birth of Height Asbury and the Hippie movement took shape.
From there, his focus moved to Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet? He lobbied everybody then NASA went and did it. The photo changes everyone's perspective. the earth is fragile and must be protected pushing the photo of the mushroom cloud the last dominant image to the side. Inspired by the image environmental movement was born. Keeping to type Sturt was on to the next. thing A catalogue to effect change by providing people with the tools. With that thought as a guide, he started the who Earth Catalogue in 1968 which Steve Jobs later described as google in paperback before google existed. In the catalogue's pages lies the title of this film under Purpose: We are as gods and might as well get good at it. Lois was the perfect foil to Stuart's devil may care unemployed artist mentality. She had a head for business. The catalogue was all the information in one place. Tools and technology on display for everyone to see. It won the National Book award and made Stewart Brand a household name.
Two characters show up halfway through the film Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita. Both are in charge of Pleistocene Park in Siberia. The spot where Stuart and George Church want to put their de extinct Woolly Mammoths. The Zimovs are preparing the ecosystem for the Mammoths. The plan is forming not too late as there are signs the permafrost is getting rapidly faster and melting. Nikita tells it in an underground ice bunker that the temperature has increased from -6 to zero since he was a kid. Melting leads to Carbon release leads to methane greenhouse gasses being released. Demonstrated by fire on the water. But Stewart was back on the wrong side of environmentalists. Intervention is bad as is technology nature is always right and humanity wrong. His clash back in the sixties and early seventies send him into a deep depression isolated and cut off. The catalogue went, his marriage went and Sturt spent most of the 70s alone. His next move was in the direction of personal computers. Stewart wrote an article for Rolling Stone and found himself again on the ground floor for the next big thing. He had a connection to the Homebrew Computer Club where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak met before they went on to start Apple. Stuart played organizer for them and in this forum, he met his second wife entrepreneur Ryan Phelan. Setting up a different event than he did in the sixties. The hacker's conference. Ideas were exchanged, codes shared and the plan was to free the tools from the likes of IBM and those buried in government vaults. The latest project that Stuart joined is the building of the 10,000 year clock that ticks once a century. The goal is to change the perception of time leading them to act more responsibility as the photo of the whole earth did 50 years earlier.
**** Out of 4.
We Are As Gods | David Alvardo / Jason Sussberg | U.S.A. | 94 Minutes.
Tags: Wholly Mammoth, De-Extinction, Stanford, Photography, San Francisco, Counter Culture, Hippies, Environmentalists, Depression, Pleistocene Park, Homebrew Computer Club, Conservationist, Technology, 10,000 Year Clock, American Chestnut.
The whoe earth catalog descrid by Steve Jobs at Google in paperback Why haent ck from was a Brand creation.
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