In 1984 Stewart Brand issued The Whole Earth Software Catalog, to do for computing what the Whole Earth Catalog had done for the counterculture: identify and recommend the best tools as they emerged. Notably, at this early stage in the history of personal computing all available software could be well described in a single volume. A large glossy book published in Sausalito, California, the Catalog was written in a glib, conversational style that took "most of the bugs out of microprocessing."
