Richard Raymond (publisher)

Richard Raymond (Nov 30, 1923 – Sep 16, 2015), publisher, entrepreneur, and organizer, was a key figure in Northern California environmental and cultural developments. His company, the Portola Institute, published the Whole Earth Catalog. Raymond co-founded the POINT Foundation to financially support the organization of environment- and community-related projects, and its many undertakings included the publication of the CoEvolution Quarterly. The Briarpatch Network — a mentoring and mutual-aid system to support small-scale entrepreneurs — was a brainchild of Raymond's, launched in collaboration with a few friends.

Raymond was born in Newark, Ohio, in 1923. His father worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Growing up, he moved with his parents through the Midwest. He graduated from Miami University and served in the U.S. Navy Air Corps during World War Two. Following the war, he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.^[1]

Raymond moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and gained experience in a few start-up companies, including co-founding Rayturn Machine which developed the Irrigage soil-testing instrument.^[1] Generally known as Dick Raymond, he worked in urban planning at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), in Menlo Park, California where his specialties included land use, recreational economics, and community development. At SRI, one of his clients was the Century 21 Exposition (the 1962 Seattle World's Fair); Raymond convinced the organizers to plan buildings that would remain on the site as part of the city's heritage.^[2]

During his stretch with SRI, he worked as a consultant to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. At Stanford, he met the aspiring photographer and journalist Stewart Brand and was able to offer Brand a photography job on the reservation.^[2]

Raymond was enthusiastic about emerging possibilities in alternative education.^[3] He left SRI in 1966 and, using his own funds, he founded the Portola Institute to explore and support education projects. By 1967 he believed that computers could contribute a valuable ingredient to education, even though personal-computing equipment was at that time known to few people. Looking back a half-century, a 2018 article in The New Yorker described the Institute as "a gathering place and incubator of sorts for computer researchers, academics, career engineers, hobbyists, and members of the counterculture."^[4]

University of Nevada history professor Andrew Kirk wrote that "The Portola Institute was one of the best examples of how creative communities were coalescing around a loose set of shared social and cultural goals in an effort to create new means for achieving personal and community success."^[5]: 43 Computer-application pioneer and author Robert Albrecht worked for a time with Portola, starting a “computer education division.”^[6]

Not long after, Stewart Brand conceived of something he thought of as an "access catalogue" to help people locate useful information and tools to facilitate translation of their ideas into reality. Raymond provided mentoring and connected Brand with other local advisors. With Brand investing some of his own money, supplemented by backing from Portola, a trial issue of the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was produced in 1968.^[7] PBS's "American Masters" series called the publication of the WEC a milestone in the history of environmentalism.^[8]

A Cornell University online publication, in 2025, declared the ”Whole Earth Catalog captured the spirit of America's first Earth Day celebration”^[9] — while preceding the inauguration of that globally recognized observance by nearly two years.

Dick Raymond thought of "wealth" as having two aspects: the physical (the credit system, measured in money) and the non-physical (consisting of people, information, and ideas). He viewed the non-physical as having to do with problem solving. He felt this interpretation accorded with some writings recently published by economist Robert Theobald. Raymond was more concerned with the private sector than with political policies and programs; he espoused the idea that modern times called for American individuals to consider putting a little more weight on giving (in terms of the non-physical aspect of wealth) as compared with getting (or, as Raymond termed it, money-mindedness).^[10]

Among other projects Raymond supported via the Portola Institute were the Homebrew Computer Club,^[2] the Ortega Park Teachers Laboratory,^[11] and the Integral Urban House.^[12] An article in the New York Times, opined that Raymond's Portola Institute "was Silicon Valley’s first true incubator."^[2]

Portola also published Richard Merrill and Thomas Gage's technical Energy Primer: Solar, Water, Wind, and Biofuels, considered, for its time (1974), a fairly comprehensive introduction.^[13]

The WECs, published through nearly three decades, spawned a number of descendants and permutations, often involving editors who'd had first-hand experience with the Catalogs; these publications included the Whole Earth Ecolog (1990) and the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog (1989, a CD Rom version, utilizing hypertext).

With the first large (448-page) edition of the Whole Earth Catalog being published and widely circulated in 1971, the WEC's financial success enabled Raymond and Stewart Brand to found the POINT Foundation.^{[5]: 122 [14]} purposed with providing grants for promising ventures. They invited a group of board members with varied viewpoints but united by concern for the natural environment.^[5]: 127 Michael Phillips served as the first president, and early board members included Bill English and Huey Johnson.

In 1972, one of POINT's first large grants enabled a group of environmental scientists, activists, and Native Americans to attend the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.^[15]: 57 Huey Johnson was influenced by POINT to found a new park-creation and land-conservation advocacy organization, the Trust for Public Land, for which he was funded subsequent to serving on the board for two years; the Trust's projects took root nationwide.^{[5]: 134 [16]}

Portola Institute transferred the publishing of WECs to POINT in 1974.^[17] Among varied other projects, POINT published the eclectic CoEvolution Quarterly starting in 1974,^[5]: 165 and in 1985, launched The WELL, an early online discussion community.^[5]: 107

Michael Phillips, a friend of Raymond's, was a Bank of California vice-president, and had been the organizer of Mastercard. When Raymond came up with the "Briarpatch" concept in 1973,^[18] Phillips worked with him to assist small business; together they co-founded the Briarpatch Network, which opened a Bay Area office in 1974. The network functioned as a consulting and mutual-support organization providing free or low-cost services to small-scale entrepreneurs.^[5] Warren Johnson, Chair of the Geography Department at San Diego State University, deemed the network an exemplary means of aiding people who expect their work to accord with their interests and passion, and referred to the Bay Area's Briarpatch as “group of small, independent entrepreneurs doing what they want.”^[19]: 191 For some owner-operators, this could afford the option for flextime work. According to Phillips and co-author Greta Alexander, "The outwardly visible characteristic of the people who run Briarpatch businesses is that most are under 45 years old, [and] there is a high proportion of women owners."^[20] A 1978 study of innovative workplaces in the Bay Area found the Briaratch Network to be exceptional in numerous respects, one of which was that it enabled members to avail themselves of a health plan, if they so wished.^[21] Tallied in 1983, the Network's records listed over a thousand people who had been members.^[22] Prior to people typically owning digital devices, access for members-to-member information sharing, as well as advisor-to-member counselling, was generally face-to-face. In recent years, contact and information transfer within the Network has relied considerably on internet options.^[23]

Raymond relocated to Portland, Oregon and became involved in solar energy development. He also pursued projects related to unmanned flight and cold fusion.^[1] Raymond died at age 91, on September 16, 2015 at Lake Oswego, Oregon.^[1]