Stewart Model is just not a scientist. He’s not an artist, an engineer, or a programmer. Neither is he a lot of a author or editor, although because the creator of the Complete Earth Catalog, that’s what he’s finest identified for. Model, 83, is a huckster—one of many nice hucksters in a time and place filled with them. Over the course of his lengthy life, Model’s salesmanship has been so excellent that students of the American twentieth century have secured his place as a historic determine, selecting out the blond son of Stanford from amongst his friends and seating him with inventors, activists, and politicians on the desk of males to be remembered. However remembered for what, precisely?
Complete Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Model is the primary full biographical consideration of a person who has already offered helpful fodder for writers looking for to characterize the assorted social and mental actions that got here out of California within the ultimate third of the twentieth century. The creator, the longtime tech journalist John Markoff, has coated Model at size earlier than, in What the Dormouse Mentioned: How the Sixties Counterculture Formed the Private Pc Trade. However his new e book places Model, the person—reasonably than his function as an exemplary connector of others—on the heart of its story. A licensed challenge, Markoff’s biography attracts primarily from Model’s personal phrases in up to date interviews and in his detailed journals, to which the creator had entry. If, within the historic gentle of 2022, it had been doable to make Stewart Model look good, I’m certain Markoff would have managed it, which makes it all of the extra outstanding that he doesn’t.
In works starting from Tom Wolfe’s The Electrical Kool-Support Acid Check—the e book opens with Model driving the well-known Merry Prankster bus—to Fred Turner’s 2004 examine From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Model discovered a option to put himself behind the wheel, most frequently by shopping for the automotive. He pops up repeatedly in what has develop into the usual prehistory of Silicon Valley: organizing the San Francisco Journeys Festivals, which kick-started the hippie motion, serving to showcase the primary private laptop prototype, supplying these newly minted hippies with “again to the land” fantasies, advising the Zen governor of California Jerry Brown, telling America about early laptop video games, cofounding one of many first profitable experiments in Web group, and coining the phrase “Info needs to be free.” As an overlapping member of so many related milieus, Model is sort of a transitional fossil, revealing adjustments and continuities. In him, lecturers and reporters have discovered a useful gizmo for narrating the interval, serving to readers journey easily from the Nineteen Sixties to the Eighties and linking collectively the ostensibly disparate cultures in Turner’s title.
In contrast to Forrest Gump, who jogged by means of the identical interval blissfully ignorant and unseduced by any explicit line, Model fervently believed in virtually all the pieces—a minimum of for a short time. Born into an ownership-class household in Rockford, In poor health., he was the youngest of 4 youngsters. His father was a companion at an promoting company, however the household cash traced to the Midwestern timber increase. Stewart attended prep colleges, boarding at Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, the place regardless of his mental disposition, he was an unexceptional pupil, particularly in contrast with a standout older brother. It was right here, Markoff writes, that Model developed a “coping mechanism” that turned an “working handbook” for him all through his life: “Model found out that one of the simplest ways to compete was to not comply with the gang however to as an alternative chart his personal iconoclastic path.” For an underachieving elitist, higher to be incomparably unusual than second-rate.
As a younger man, Model struggled to discover a steadiness between his standard pondering and his want for open fields the place he might succeed. schools within the West, the place the extent of competitors was decrease, he thought of Reed however was disturbed to listen to that the college was left-wing. The possible pupil despatched a letter inquiring about Reed’s “pink” status and its college students, who appeared “a shade odd.” He ended up at Stanford.
Stanford was, on the time, a small, rural, middling personal faculty finest generally known as the alma mater of Herbert Hoover. It was additionally a conservative place; the very first thing Model did when he obtained to city was hit the Brooks Brothers outlet in San Francisco. However because of the maneuverings of its provost, Fred Terman, Stanford was within the early levels of an thrilling new trajectory. Palo Alto was the launchpad for the West Coast postwar electronics trade, and although Model was not notably technologically inclined, his MIT-trained father and his brother Mike—a Stanford alum and an early worker on the Oregon electronics firm Tektronix—had been, they usually launched him to the scene, connecting Stewart with household mates.
Model felt at house in Palo Alto, and he assumed that together with his Exeter coaching he’d cruise to the highest of his class; however regardless of his enthusiasm for the coursework, he made the identical, lackluster grades that he did in boarding college. And although on paper he was the proper Stanford Man—athletic and sporting however no jock, enthusiastic about concepts however no egghead, outdoorsy however no loner, and wealthy—he had hassle making mates and becoming right into a crowd. Markoff writes that classmates keep in mind him as a straitlaced “sq.” who wore his ROTC uniform round campus. Rejected by his brother Mike’s fraternity, Stewart frolicked with the college’s overseas college students, fretted about overpopulation, and dove into the hyper-individualist writings of Ayn Rand.
Right here the reader begins to sense the contours of a black gap on the heart of Markoff’s narrative. All through the e book, individuals who meet Stewart Model usually disappear from his life so quick that it’s as in the event that they had been repelled by an unseen pressure. He had his personal automotive and off-campus spot, however other than a pay-to-play journey on a summer season journey to Paris, Model remained sexually annoyed into his 20s, sending his sole feminine buddy of word a letter calling her a “bitch” when she declined a romantic relationship. His male friendships pale about as quick. In a spot the place equally bright-eyed younger males of all kinds fashioned formidable lifelong partnerships with their pals, Stewart—who had entry to loads of assets and will have used the disciplined focus of a contrasting companion—didn’t. I couldn’t assist however marvel: Was this man an asshole?
The reply to this query solely peeks by means of Markoff’s licensed prose, however towards Model’s grey account of himself, the occasional glimpse of different individuals’s perceptions reveals rather a lot. What else do you might want to find out about a person who habitually induced his Complete Earth Catalog coworkers to play a recreation with padded swords simply so he, together with his expertise and dimension, might beat the crap out of them? Conceited, lazy, pretentious, and imply: Between the strains, it certain feels like this man sucks. This admittedly uncharitable lens brings Complete Earth into sharper focus.
Brand spent his early 20s transferring in two instructions directly. For a category project on the “anomic persona,” he checked out the burgeoning Beat scene in San Francisco’s North Seaside and was relieved to search out the entire thing a lot straighter than it was depicted within the media. Model chilled with ex-surrealists and future hippies, house-sitting an opulent three-bedroom rent-free. However then, with seeming incongruity, he shipped off to Fort Benning in Georgia to begin Military Ranger coaching. ROTC was one among Model’s favourite components of Stanford—an unusual sentiment—and the thought of becoming a member of an elite corps appealed to him, so after deciding that three years was too lengthy to develop into a Marine, he signed up for 2 years within the Military. He accomplished his fundamental officer coaching however lasted solely two weeks in Ranger College.
Markoff’s stenographic model makes for straightforward studying, however should you ask a proud man why he dropped out of Ranger College, you’re not prone to get the authoritative reply. Complete Earth, the creator notes, is meant not as a scholarly work however as a licensed biography, which leaves it to Model to make himself look dangerous, and he does so always. “With no conflict, it wouldn’t do for a e book,” he wrote, reevaluating his option to enlist on egomaniacal grounds. “I’m a personality searching for an creator, state of affairs, plot, and different characters.” As an alternative of changing into a lowly grunt, he haggled with bureaucrats and used his connections—together with his sister’s husband, a fast-rising commandant educated at West Level—to get higher assignments, together with a sinecure at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, the place he spent the weekends as an artwork scenester in Greenwich Village and obtained into hassle for falling asleep on responsibility. Nonetheless, Stewart’s goals of navy glory weren’t lastly over till he was advised that he couldn’t apply to develop into a Inexperienced Beret till he had 18 months of coaching. As an alternative, lower than a yr into his two-year dedication, Model obtained permission (“magically,” Markoff writes) to depart early and examine artwork in San Francisco, the place he rented a houseboat.
If changing into a flea-bitten trust-funder tooling across the Bay on his new sailboat, driving to the woods in his new purple VW bus (imported from Germany), and trailing Jack Kerouac sounds just like the worst highway Model might have taken, it’s price maintaining the choice in thoughts. Had he possessed the endurance or persistence to affix an elite navy unit, he seemingly would have been among the many first boots on the bottom in Vietnam, the place the US Particular Forces started the conflict with a murderous counterinsurgency marketing campaign. Say what you’ll about rich-kid beatniks, however a minimum of they weren’t conflict criminals.
The catalyst that turned beatniks into hippies was LSD, and Model was there virtually from the beginning. Like a brand new boat or automotive, an LSD journey was accessible as a luxurious buy, and he paid $500 to the Worldwide Basis for Superior Research for a supervised set of experimental journeys, which sound nightmarish even to a reader who enjoys the drug. Although he’d perpetually be related to acid tradition, Model most popular the inhalant that the experimenters gave him as a warm-up, and he huffed his manner by means of the ’60s, ultimately growing a tank-a-week nitrous behavior.
Model styled himself a photographer—he’d used a digicam to face out throughout his brief navy profession—and envisioned a profession as a contract reporter and creator who would illustrate his personal work. However his pitches to nationwide shops yielded no assignments, and a collection of tasks on American Indians went unfinished as Model jumped from one factor to the subsequent. He made experimental sound works that had been devoid of musicality, and never in a great way. “What he had,” Markoff writes, “simply as he had had as a toddler, was an never-ending stream of notions.” It’s not a flattering factor to say a few man.
Model did have the luck, nevertheless, to be fishing in a well-stocked pond with the luxuries of time and good tools. The Journeys Competition wasn’t Model’s thought—he obtained it from the Merry Pranksters, who needed to do a concert-size Acid Check—however he had $300 for a venue deposit in addition to connections to live performance professionals in San Francisco, together with the younger promoter Invoice Graham. As a car for Model’s experimental artwork, the competition was a complete bust, however as a Grateful Lifeless live performance it was successful, and Model reassured his father not solely that he had little interest in changing into a socialist however that there was good cash to be made as a beatnik.
Model’s subsequent huge thought mixed his receding curiosity in images together with his rising curiosity in “techniques pondering,” a shift from his Randianism to the faddish work of architectural theorist Buckminster Fuller. On one 1966 acid journey, Model was struck by an thought: Why hadn’t NASA launched a satellite tv for pc image of all the planet but? It was a puzzling query, and with its conspiratorial overtones and hippie implications, Model acknowledged what we would name a “good meme.” Missing social media, he shared his meme by hand, crafting buttons that learn “Why haven’t we seen {a photograph} of the entire Earth but?” and mailing them to vital individuals in science and politics. Then he donned a fancy dress—a brand new trademark high hat made him almost six and a half ft tall—strapped on a plywood sandwich board, and distributed the buttons at a number of the nation’s high schools: Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. Just like the acid advocate Timothy Leary, Model had a top-down method to social enlightenment, an elitism that, greater than any ideology, place, or curiosity, has guided his entire life.
NASA did launch such a photograph the subsequent yr, and Model recycled it for an additional notion, because the identify of his catalog. Why a catalog? One strand that runs by means of Markoff’s e book unremarked is the truth that Model beloved buying. He was the prototypical early adopter, ready to pay sticker worth for the most recent devices, a behavior linked to his father’s love for mail-order catalogs and even additional again to a household {hardware} provide enterprise. He took the identical buying method to concepts and identities, at all times looking out for one thing new. A lot of his friends had been the identical manner, and for them he dreamed up the Complete Earth Catalog, a thick brochure for the reverse-engineered retailer of Stewart.
The shape was sensible, in its manner: With no important or artistic agenda to talk of, the Complete Earth Catalog might play quick and unfastened with copyright, raiding the most recent books for his or her coolest photos and diagrams. In it, the reader discovered all kinds of stuff, from walkie-talkies to tepees, calculators to kerosene lamps, in addition to an entire lot of what we would now name ’60s books. Model took the big format from Steve Baer’s newsprint tutorial zine Dome Cookbook, the typeface from L.L. Bean, and his well-known intro (“We’re as gods and may as nicely get good at it”) from a British anthropologist. Reviewers obtained $10 apiece, and Model paid for the most recent in bespoke publishing know-how. His $25,000 funding ($200,000 or so at the moment) didn’t break his financial institution. The 64-page Catalog had a canopy worth of $5, roughly 10 occasions the worth of a paperback. The toughest-working member of Model’s employees was his new spouse, Lois, who toiled alongside him all day after which did the cooking, cleansing, and laundry at night time whereas her husband watched TV for inspiration. The connection didn’t final lengthy. One wonders when Stewart did all of the studying his bibliophile picture required.
As for politics, Markoff notes that leftists who met Model assumed he was working with the CIA, an accusation that could possibly be rated as not directly to actually true, relying on the circumstances (later in life Model would work alongside the CIA doing state of affairs planning). When he did take an uncommon shine to somebody political, as he did later in life with the environmentalist Wendell Berry and the cartoonist R. Crumb, Model rapidly turned them off. At a time when revolution gripped the nation, the Complete Earth Catalog mirrored his right-wing thought by omission. After one younger staffer recommended methods to make the catalog extra political, Stewart vetoed the notion with a shocking algorithm: “No politics, no faith, and no artwork.” What was left? Computer systems and buying. As a futurist, he had that a lot proper.
The Complete Earth Catalog was an underground hit, and with the assistance of John Brockman—Markoff describes him because the East Coast Jewish equal of Model’s West Coast WASP, one other individualist huckster hovering round collectivist artwork scenes—the catalog went mainstream. Although it didn’t really promote lots of the featured objects, and although Model (together with virtually everybody else) later denounced the entire back-to-the-land hippie commune motion that served as its ostensible buyer base, the Complete Earth Catalog made his status. It allowed him to place greater than $1 million in earnings right into a short-lived basis that awarded small, arbitrary grants to the sorts of tasks he preferred—Model, nonetheless getting household checks, didn’t want the cash. When Stewart and Lois divorced, she obtained solely $10,000 and the TV. He saved the catalog’s Nationwide E book Award and the credit score, which meant he obtained the seven-figure advance that Brockman negotiated for a Complete Earth–branded information to software program within the early ’80s, which flopped.
Though, not like almost everybody else in his milieu, Model by no means programmed a pc, he did discover a area of interest close to California’s tech ecosystem. As a transitional determine between the ’70s and the ’80s, he’s unparalleled; for Model, the leap from hippie to yuppie was not more than a step. After the catalog’s success, he dedicated himself to realizing a brand new ideally suited: the “Zen playboy.” In 1986, whereas he vacationed on a colonial ranch in Kenya and dreamed of a e book referred to as Sleeping With Lions, the rest of the Complete Earth workforce despatched him a letter saying the challenge was broke they usually must lower him off. Properly into his 40s, Model might nonetheless rely on a test from Mother. However how you can spend his time? What function might historical past supply him?
Earlier than he knew it, Model was on a Shell oil platform, serving to the corporate’s managers discover an progressive option to restructure the workforce, regardless of the labor union’s objections. Within the second half of his life, Model betrayed all the pieces he’d ever embraced within the first half, with the notable exception of capitalism, of which he’s remained in favor. Quickly he and a number of other others who labored for Shell started their very own consultancy agency. From the thoughts that created the Complete Earth Catalog got here the World Enterprise Community. Model charged greater than $100,000 a yr to indicate up on the occasional assembly, the place he was identified for falling asleep. As a advisor, he took to shilling the trendy theories of the day, from cybernetics to area colonization to Y2K to geo-engineering and resurrecting the woolly mammoth. Model not wears his high hat, however he’s nonetheless doing the identical factor he’s been doing his entire life: discovering wealthy, highly effective males and promoting them on his notions. His newest now’s a partnership with one of many world’s wealthiest males, Jeff Bezos, to spend tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} constructing “a ten,000-year clock” right into a mountain owned by the Amazon founder. Good work if you will get it.
At one cut-off date, it was doable to see Model because the goofy grandfather of a gentler, extra considerate capitalism headquartered within the San Francisco Bay Space: decentralized however nonetheless formidable; environmentally acutely aware and techno-optimist; philosophical and even non secular reasonably than materialistic and stultified. If Model had died earlier than the 2008 crash, earlier than Edward Snowden and Uber and Fb as a device of genocide and Jeffrey Epstein and coal-fired Bitcoin-mining vegetation, he may need secured an uncomplicated legacy. Now everyone knows higher, and Model’s biographer can’t get round that.
On the age of 83, Model has survived lengthy sufficient to see himself because the protagonist in an actual e book, a big accomplishment for a person of meager abilities and what seems to be an exceptionally dangerous persona. Model is fortunate the e book isn’t a greater one, for the sympathetic Markoff—a member of the identical milieu as his topic, a fellow shopper of John Brockman who undertook the challenge on the suggestion of a former Model deputy, Kevin Kelly—strains to depict him in a good gentle, at important price to the work’s high quality. The reader is left with an image that’s suspiciously overexposed, a portrait that illuminates flaws within the try and cowl them up. Typically that’s essentially the most flattering factor anybody can do.
