The Whole Earth Catalog is hard to describe except that it was an attempt to make the world wide web, long before the web, in print, back in the 1970s. From the masthead:

>FUNCTION

>The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting…

>PURPOSE

>We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far remotely done power and glory--as via government, big business, formal education, church--has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing--power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.

>Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.

Whole Earth and its offshoots were leaders of the techno-optimism movement in the 1970s and 80s — that technology, devolved to the individual, was a powerful force for good. It was highly influential in the rise of the PC, including with both Apple founders, and their entire circle of Bay Area hippie-nerds.