Build and repair
Workshops, fabrication, food, electronics, robotics and the pleasure of making something work.
A practical, independent guide to the tools, systems and possible lives opened by intelligent machines, abundant energy and human freedom.
The original Whole Earth Catalog helped people find the tools for lives outside the standard pattern. The New Earth Catalog carries that question forward: when people have more capability, more time and better tools, what might they actually do with their lives?
The Catalog is being built as a living body of research, recommendations and field notes. A book may be one way to share it, but the deeper project is an evolving interface between evidence, capability and human choice.
The point is not to prescribe one perfect lifestyle. It is to help people see enough possibilities clearly to choose a life that is calm, capable and genuinely their own.
People will combine these regions in their own ways. The Catalog includes ordinary automated homes, makers, scholars, artists, carers, explorers, technologists, recluses and people who simply want a quiet life.
Workshops, fabrication, food, electronics, robotics and the pleasure of making something work.
Science, nature, history, oceans, astronomy, medicine and the search for what is true.
Family, friendship, intimacy, culture, local life and the systems that help people care for one another.
Sport, challenge, risk, mastery, games, exploration and experiences worth leaving home for.
Children, elders, animals, land, water, communities and the infrastructure that sustains them.
Privacy, pleasure, solitude, idleness, inner life and the right not to turn every moment into work.
A beautiful object is not enough. Each entry should help a reader understand what a thing does, what it needs, who it suits and what it might change.
A practical field guide to living freely after compulsory work—in a world of abundant energy, intelligent machines and personal agents.
The campaign ends Tuesday, 15 September 2026 at 7:26 PM ACST. Further projects and catalogue entries will grow from the research.