Portola Institute

Portola Institute

Company type	Nonprofit
Founded	Menlo Park, California (1966)
Headquarters	1115 Merrill St. Menlo Park, California U.S.
Key people	Dick Raymond [1] [2] [3] [4]

The Portola Institute was a "nonprofit educational foundation" founded ^[5] in Menlo Park, California in 1966 ^[6] by Dick Raymond. ^[7] The Portola institute helped to develop other organizations such as The Briarpatch Society ^[8] and Bob Albrecht's People's Computer Company . ^[9] It was also the publisher of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog beginning with the first issue in 1968. ^{[10] [7]} The first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog notes that the catalog is one division of The Portola Institute ^[11] and that other activities of the Institute include: "computer education for all grade levels, simulation games for classroom use, new approaches to music education, Ortega Park Teachers Laboratory." ^[6]

Writer Maggie Engler proposed that the computer-related intention and hopes went beyond the experiments and pilot projects. She offered the view that once other Bay Area efforts were made to broaden personal-computer familiarity, this furthered “the Portola Institute goal of computer literacy for every age” — adults as well as younger people. ^[12]

The aim was always practical. Carol Goodell, PhD was co-founder of a partnership called Real World Learning, Inc. Goodell was an educator and education theorist whose husband worked for IBM. Raymond learned of Goodell's work and invited her into Portola’s late-1960s collaborations. Some thirty years later, writer June Morrall drew out some of Goodell's memories of those years, and she related that many of the eager idea people attracted to the Institute were young. Goodell said that Dick Raymond embodied “a nice mix of compassion, enthusiasm and realism. Raymond’s role was to ferret out the most doable ideas.” ^[13]

As an offshoot of Portola Insitute and the success of the Whole Earth Catalog, Raymond and Brand collaborated to form the Point Foundation. ^[7]

Notes

1. "Access to Success". 22 November 2018.
2. "From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner, an excerpt".
3. "Metroactive Books | 'What the Dormouse Said'".
4. "The WELL: John Markoff, WHAT THE DORMOUSE SAID".
5. "Comments on the Whole Earth (Part 1)".
6. Stewart Brand (Fall 1968). Whole Earth Catalog. Menlo Park: Portola Institute. p. Inside back cover.
7. Kirk, Andrew G. (2007). Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press. p. 70. ISBN   978-0700615452.
8. "History of The Briarpatch Network - 1983". Archived from the original on 2018-03-11.
9. "Interview with Bob Albrecht by Jon Cappetta". 9 July 2015.
10. June Morrall (1999). "1968: Whole Earth Catalog is Born". Half Moon Bay Memories. Retrieved 2020-12-01.
11. Collier, Peter (7 March 1971). "Drop‐out's How‐to". The New York Times.
12. Engler, Maggie. "Birthplace of Personal Computing". FoundSF. shapingsf.org. Retrieved 21 August 2025.
13. Morrall, June. "1968: Whole Earth Catalog is Born". Half Moon Bay Memories. June Morrall. Retrieved 30 July 2025. a twinkle in his eye, with a nice mix of compassion, enthusiasm and realism. Raymond's role was to ferret out the most doable ideas.

References

• Brand, Stewart. Whole Earth Catalog. Fall 1968.
• Turner, Fred From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press. 2006. ISBN   0-226-81741-5.