Portola Institute
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The Portola Institute was a "nonprofit educational foundation" founded in Menlo Park, California in 1966 by Dick Raymond.[1][2] Through the Portola Institute, Raymond financially supported efforts like the Homebrew Computer Club, whose members included Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and helped to develop other organizations such as The Briarpatch Society[3] and Bob Albrecht's People's Computer Company.[4] Portola was also the publisher of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog beginning with the first issue in 1968.[5] The first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog noted that the Catalog was one division of the Portola Institute"[2][6] and that other activities of the Institute include: "computer education for all grade levels, simulation games for classroom use, new approaches to music education, and the Ortega Park Teachers Laboratory.[7]
Company type | Nonprofit |
|---|---|
| Founded | Menlo Park, California (1966) |
| Headquarters | 1115 Merrill St. Menlo Park, California U.S. |
Key people | Dick Raymond |
The Institute embodied a fresh vision and community-sensitive practicality. Writer Maggie Engler proposed that Portola's 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, it actually furthered “the Portola Institute goal of computer literacy for every age” — adults as well as younger people.[8]
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.”[9]
What set the Portola Institute’s mission apart from conventional educational institutions was the way in which the practicality principle played out. The Institute was never intended to be involved with academic credits and did not confer diplomas or degrees. Rather, it provided diverse opportunities for individuals to learn in some area of personal fascination, through exploring and doing. One significant aspect of Portola was the issuing of publications, and these were intended to inform people about how to do something or make something — that is, to actually apply technical principles.[10]
Stewart Brand's project, the Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was directly in line with Portola's objective. As an offshoot of the Portola Institute, and the success of the WEC, Raymond and Stewart Brand collaborated to form the Point Foundation."[2]
