I was one of those kids who was deeply affected by my parents' copy of "The Whole Earth Catalog" (in my case the "Next" WEC.) I learned about people like Buck

I was one of those kids who was deeply affected by my parents' copy of "The Whole Earth Catalog" (in my case the "Next" WEC.) I learned about people like Bucky Fuller, Christopher Alexander, Gregory Bateson, Bill Mollison... I saw a vision of the world where we subordinated our extraordinary power ("We are as gods...") to our wisdom ("...and might as well get good at it.") I carried that thing around in my backpack in lieu of textbooks. (It's a tome, like two feet high (more than half a meter)!) Probably the single most important thing I learned from it is that we have all the tools and technology we need to live well together on the Earth without destroying the environment nor compromising on quality-of-life, we just have to learn to be nice to each other.