This Is Not a Death House

Stewart Brand is an icon of Silicon Valley’s counterculture. One of technology’s most influential freethinkers, he was wired before WIRED. He’s confronting—or embracing—his final years in a home that embodies the self-sufficient, DIY ethos of his famous Whole Earth Catalog. WIRED’s Steven Levy visited Brand and his wife Ryan Phelan at their home in Petaluma, 30 miles north of San Francisco.