{"id":18433,"date":"2021-04-17T12:26:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T19:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=18433"},"modified":"2021-04-17T12:26:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T19:26:57","slug":"stewart-brand-portrayed-as-tech-futurist-and-publisher-in-we-are-as-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/17\/stewart-brand-portrayed-as-tech-futurist-and-publisher-in-we-are-as-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"STEWART BRAND PORTRAYED AS TECH FUTURIST AND PUBLISHER IN \u2018WE ARE AS GODS\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jessica Zack April 15, 2021 Updated: April 17, 2021 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stewart Brand, writer and founder of Whole Earth Catalog, portrait inside the Mirene, a converted 1912 tugboat where he and his wife Ryan Phelan call home in Sausalito.Photo: Stephen Lam, The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a devoted futurist like Stewart Brand, who is famous for his projections about technology and the environment, looking at his own past doesn\u2019t necessarily come naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given his fame as creator of the iconic 1960s DIY handbook Whole Earth Catalog (described by Steve Jobs as \u201cGoogle in paperback form\u201d), and later as an influential technologist at the forefront of the personal computing revolution, numerous filmmakers have asked the Marin cyberculture legend to make a movie about his life. But Brand never wanted to waste precious time or energy on nostalgia. He said no to the idea of a biopic \u2014 until filmmakers Jason Sussberg and David Alvarado approached Brand in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now their fascinating docu-portrait \u201cWe Are as Gods\u201d is screening at this year\u2019s San Francisco International Film Festival, available to stream through Sunday, April 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe pitched Stewart the idea that instead of just looking backward, we\u2019d create a portrait of the futurist as already living in a future\u201d others can\u2019t yet quite see, said Sussberg in a video interview from his San Francisco home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u201cWe Are as Gods\u201d directors David Alvarado (left) and Jason Sussberg.Photo: Brendan Hall \/ Structure Films<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sussberg and Alvarado, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., had already made a short film in 2014 for Time magazine about \u201cde-extinction,\u201d Brand\u2019s late-in-life passion project promoting the use of biotech to bring back extinct species \u2014 like the passenger pigeon, the American chestnut tree, even the woolly mammoth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They planned to make Brand\u2019s zeal for genetic engineering central to their proposed feature-length documentary. To their surprise, over an extended conversation with Brand at Skywalker Ranch following a screening of their last film, \u201cBill Nye: Science Guy,\u201d Brand said yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cWe Are as Gods,\u201d the two filmmakers travel with Brand, now 82, to Siberia, where he\u2019s attempting, with geneticist George Church, to \u201cre-wild\u201d the ecosystem, and to west Texas, where his Long Now Foundation is building a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain to foster long-term thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stewart Brand tours a seed bank in Siberia in a scene from \u201cWe Are as Gods.\u201dPhoto: Brendan Hall \/ Structure Films<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking forward and looking back are pretty connected, actually,\u201d Brand said during a recent afternoon on Sausalito\u2019s waterfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and his wife, Ryan Phelan, welcomed The Chronicle onto the Mirene, a 64-foot 1912 tugboat they\u2019ve called home at Waldo Point Harbor, Sausalito, for almost 40 years. There Brand explained that when he launched his 1980s think tank, Global Business Network, he started to consider himself a \u201cprofessional futurist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog founder, walks on a ramp from the Mirene.Photo: Stephen Lam, The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got really interested in what the French call the longue dur\u00e9e<\/em>, the long view of things,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can only feel even remotely comfortable thinking about the future if you have a lot of knowledge of the deep past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a very Brand-ian answer, both surprising and philosophical, to the question of what it felt like to watch his life\u2019s high and low points unfurl onscreen in the new film. (Brand is candid in \u201cWe Are as Gods\u201d about battling depression in the \u201970s.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ryan Phelan, wife of Stewart Brand, speaks in an interview aboard the Mirene in Sausalito.Photo: Stephen Lam, The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of life to pack into the 94-minute film that gives audiences a whirlwind tour through his irreverent mind and numerous incarnations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brand was a self-described \u201cfree-range kid\u201d from Illinois who studied biology at Stanford with notorious doomsayer Paul Ehrlich. He pioneered LSD use with Ken Kesey and co-produced the 1966 Trips Festival. In 1968 Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog with an iconic cover photo of Earth from space, and a slogan: \u201cWe are as gods and might as well get good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brand pivoted to technology after seeing promise and the cool factor in early Stanford gamers\u2019 excitement. (\u201cReady or not, computers are coming to the people,\u201d he wrote in Rolling Stone in 1972.) He put on the first Hackers Conference, and founded the proto-Facebook online community the Well during the dial-up modem days of the mid-\u201980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stewart Brand communes with people at the Whole Earth Truck Store in Palo Alto.Photo: Courtsey of Stewart Brand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think Stewart is naturally pulled toward things on the fringe of what could be a possible future, and then he rushes toward it, obsesses about it and feeds off the excitement for about five years, and then gets bored and moves on to the next thing,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cThat pattern was so interesting to us, and a through line in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brand has never shied away from controversy, especially when it comes to his belief in using technology to save our planet. The film includes footage of him taking heat from Peter Coyote and others for following his techno-optimism to dangerous lengths. It\u2019s a criticism he and Phelan counter persuasively and with heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been a conservationist since the 1950s, and I saw the environmental movement go down some primrose paths that blinded them to some important capabilities,\u201d says Brand, referring to the knee-jerk environmental backlash against any kind of technological intervention in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut only by trying new stuff can you maybe find a better solution. Think of the alternative \u2013 trying nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brand is all too aware where complacency leads on a planet that\u2019s growing hotter, more flammable and less habitable by the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stewart Brand on the Furthur bus with the Merry PrankstersPhoto: Ted Streshinsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While still a true futurist, Brand admits to feeling more reflective in his 80s. He\u2019s been working closely with his biographer, John Markoff, and spent hundreds of hours with Alvarado and Sussberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The filmmakers were so overwhelmed with material they said they easily could have made \u201can entire film about each part of Stewart\u2019s life,\u201d and revealed they\u2019re planning on launching a podcast \u201cso we can go into even more detail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of the most captivating sections in \u201cWe Are as Gods,\u201d 28-year-old Brand became so fixated on the need for humankind to see a photo of the whole Earth from space that he hitchhiked across the country selling buttons for a quarter each that said, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was confident that if NASA released the image, people would appreciate the Earth\u2019s fragility and do more to protect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe image of the mushroom cloud from 1945 on dominated everybody\u2019s thinking about the world,\u201d Brand says. \u201cIt\u2019s a really simple image, and as a symbol it was a powerful framing device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is there is so far not one iconic image of climate change. If I could devise one, I would gladly do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe Are as Gods\u201d<\/strong> is available to stream for $12 as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival through Sunday, April 18. sffilm.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9Copyright 2021 Hearst Communications, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessica Zack April 15, 2021 Updated: April 17, 2021 (SFChronicle.com) For a devoted futurist like Stewart Brand, who is famous for his projections about technology and the environment, looking at his own past doesn\u2019t necessarily come naturally. Given his fame as creator of the iconic 1960s DIY handbook Whole Earth Catalog… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18433"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18434,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18433\/revisions\/18434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}