Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation.


 * "I was just a loafing artist in North Beach, and I went up on the roof, took a few mikes of LSD and watched the day go by, shivering in a blanket. I noticed that the buildings of downtown San Francisco were not parallel. They diverged slightly - it's a standard psychedelic illusion. But at the same time, I was thinking that given that the surface of the earth is curved, they do diverge slightly, especially on the fault line. And I can see that from my altitude of 200 micrograms and three storeys. But I would see it a great deal more if I were up higher. At a certain distance, the curved horizon closes and you get the image of the Earth as a whole. That's why I conjured up the badges, and I started selling them the following week. A bunch of them got to Nasa and various other places in Washington, and, some say, may have been influential in the photos we got back from Apollo 8."
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/aug/04/artsandhumanities.highereducation