Farm Fresh March 2022: New Farm Stories and Video, The Roots of Social Media,

Farm Fresh News - March 2022

In this issue:

New Farm Archive Video
Farm Stories - from back in the day
The Origin of Online Community

The Farm is now open for visitors!

The Farm is known for amazing sunsets! - photo by Steve Brady

Dear Friends,

For many of us spring is in the air. On The Farm, flowers are coming up, gardens are going in, and there is hope that we are all turning a corner with a return to normal life.

The Farm's dedication to peace and nonviolence stands in sharp contrast to the invasion of Ukraine. Several of our community members have told stories of their family's escape to the west from the Russian czars, or during the revolution of 1922, and from brutal regime of Stalin. Unfortunately, the posturing of the U.S. only goes so far when you consider that this country's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq resulted the loss of in tens of thousands of civilian lives. It is important that we all continue to condemn war and violence whatever its source.

If Al Gore can claim he invented the internet, then in many ways the whole idea for social media was brought into being by 3 guys from The Farm. After The Changeover in 1983, Mathew McClure, John Coate and Clifford Figallo found themselves working together at The Well, widely recognized as the first "online community," to translate their up close and personal experience in community into this new virtual realm. John recalls, "I coined the term "online community" in 1986."

In 1988, John and Clifford collaborated in an essay about their life called Farm Stories, with an excerpt shared below.

For those of you interested in our history back in the day, I recently came across some great archival video of The Farm shot in 1978, with a link below.

Thank you as always for your interest, your time and attention.

Namaste,
Douglas

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The Roots of Social Media

A Handbook for a cultural revolution

The story goes like this: Before MySpace, Facebook, and Instagram, there was The Well, an acronym for The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, the first and now one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation.

Going back to the beginning, in 1968 Stewart Brand had produced the Whole Earth Catalog, the oversized, black paperback that was a true smorgasbord of ideas and practical tools for creating an alternative counterculture.

Mathew McClure

He was assisted in this effort by Mathew McClure, who then became a founding member of The Farm. After The Changeover in 1983 (the end of the communal period), Mathew returned to California and was once again hired by Brand at the offices of Whole Earth Review.

Dr. Larry Brilliant was a contemporary of Ram Dass (author of Be Here Now) and a student of Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba, who had instructed Brilliant to join the United Nations team to eradicate small pox in the world, a goal he achieved working with the U.N. in just a few years through an intense effort to vaccinate the entire country of India.

After returning to the States, Brilliant was also an early visionary in the world of digital conferencing and at the forefront of tech software and the wave of investment capital. In 1984, he approached Brand with the idea of using a new technology that would allow people to communicate with each other directly from their desk top computers through a private online forum.

Brand put Mathew in charge of the project, and he hired Farm buddies John Coate and Clifford Figallo to translate their up close and personal experience in community into this new virtual realm. John recalls, "I coined the term "online community" in 1986 for a poster at a computer fair booth for a poster at a computer fair booth." An article in this month's issue of The Economist call's John "The Godfather of Social Media."

The Well became the template for all online communities to follow, setting the standard for engaging conversation with good conduct and personal accountability, something that in many ways seems lost in today's world of "fake profiles and fake news."

In 1988, somewhat fresh from their communal days, John and Clifford wrote about some of their shared history on The Farm in an essay for The Whole Earth Review called Farm Stories. It is an interesting glimpse into some of The Farm's backstory and some of the idiosyncrasies that became both the community's strengths and its weaknesses.

Check out this excerpt, and then click on the link below to read the entire article.

John: "I first met him (Stephen Gaskin) when I was 18.

He was conducting Monday Night Class at the Straight Theater on Haight Street. Steve was a guy who could trip (on LSD ed) at an extremely high level and later talk about it in such a way that an entire group could understand simultaneously his descriptions of energy and karma and what he knew about how to trip, which basically came down to how to make good decisions so as to not lose your energy. For a lot of young trippers these could be good reassuring words.

It was also like a big study group where we would read and learn and talk about Eastern and Western religion, mysticism, and magic. At first it was called "Einstein, Magic, and God." Along the way Steve went from being just the teacher of a class to a Teacher as in "your guru." He once said, "I started out teaching people how to trip. Then I found out life was a trip..."

Click here to read the entire article and here for the essay by Farm member Albert Bates called "Who invented Social Media?"

John Coate (left) and Clifford Figallo (right)
I lived with Clifford and his family for two years when we were volunteers with Plenty international in Guatemala.

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A Blast from the Past, The Farm in 1978 as seen by a German film crew

I only recently learned about this video from 1978 produced by a German documentary crew about alternative communities. It begins with Twin Oaks in Virginia, followed by a beautiful piece about The Farm. The video tells the story, in that the narration is in German and I have not found anyone to translate yet. It does show The Farm at its peak, both in terms of population and in many other ways, from the food on our tables to the joy in people's faces.

Here is what the producers say about the video on YouTube, translated from German:

"Living Differently is a film is about communities in the USA and Europe. From the USA "The Farm" and "Twin Oaks" will be shown. Two communes founded shortly after the Summer of Love. From Europe comes the example of Longo Maï.

It is impressive to see the history of these communities. At that time (and today too) everything was still very hippie-like and partly spiritual. In fact, at The Farm it is a spiritual community. Many of the people interviewed there address exactly the problems that we are increasingly feeling today. Greed, environmental degradation, abundance and violence. Then as now, people try to leave behind all this and much more in these communities. Organic farming, use of manageable technology, non-profit and minimalism; these are the clearly visible commonalities of these communities. Some of the people interviewed there will probably still live exactly where they lived then, because in the article some people were shown who have made a lifetime commitment to the respective community."

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Peace,

Douglas

Douglas@thefarmcommunity.com