Build and repair
Workshops, fabrication, food, electronics, robotics and the pleasure of making something work.
A living guide to the next world
New Earth
Catalog
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?
Five possible lives / wallpaper studies
Use the arrows or dots · motion pauses on hover
Not a book about the future. A map of what becomes possible.
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.
Future happy.
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.
The activity galaxy
A wide field of possible lives
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.
Know the world
Science, nature, history, oceans, astronomy, medicine and the search for what is true.
Love and community
Family, friendship, intimacy, culture, local life and the systems that help people care for one another.
Play and travel
Sport, challenge, risk, mastery, games, exploration and experiences worth leaving home for.
Care for living systems
Children, elders, animals, land, water, communities and the infrastructure that sustains them.
Rest and freedom
Privacy, pleasure, solitude, idleness, inner life and the right not to turn every moment into work.
The editorial promise
Curious, practical and honest about uncertainty.
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.
Evidence before enthusiasmSeparate what is verified, reported, proposed and speculative.
Complete systemsInclude energy, maintenance, repair, cost, law, risk and hidden infrastructure.
Independent recommendationsNo paid inclusion or disguised advertising. Readers should be able to judge for themselves.
Capability over consumptionLook for tools that give people agency, not just more things to buy.
Project 01FREE
EARTHThe Free Earth Manual
EARTHThe Free Earth Manual
The Kickstarter campaign is closed — the project is going full steam ahead
The Free Earth Manual
A practical field guide to living freely after compulsory work—in a world of abundant energy, intelligent machines and personal agents. It goes to the heart of the New Earth Catalog: how we get here, and how we begin to live differently.
AU$28,000Original funding goal
Campaign closedTarget not reached
This particular Kickstarter campaign has closed without reaching its target. That was a first campaign and a learning experience—not the end of the Free Earth Manual. We received substantial interest and appreciate everyone who showed it. The manual remains a central project of the New Earth Catalog and is continuing full steam ahead; we will follow up on that interest and return to the campaign in due course.
Objects that still make people curious.
We traced the old Science Hobbyist toy list into the present: transparent canoes, working radiometers, chemistry sets, used electronic curiosities and the tools that replaced them. Browse the science-toy catalogue ↗