THE GOODS : JOINING THE SPACE AGE : The Whole Earth Catalog, Long the Quintessential Giude for the Eco-Minded, is Now the Source for Cyberland Explorers

Want to know how to set up a computer bulletin board?

Would you appreciate a short, clear summary on what the Internet really is?

Could you use some pointers on how to make digital videos using your home camcorder?

You can find the answers to these and a raft of other technology-based lifestyle questions in a surprising new source--the latest edition of the “Whole Earth Catalog.”

In an agile display of keeping current, the publication, which first appeared in 1968 to establish itself as the quintessential handbook for commune dwellers, has expanded its territory and now stretches far into cyberspace.

Although longtime fans will find such familiar areas as sustainability, health, community and biodiversity among its 14 major categories, there has been a shift in emphasis in “The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas for the 21st Century.”

While the 1980 version devoted 37 pages to alternative energy, the new catalogue has only four. But it has 18 pages on tools for “Taming Technology.” And a 39-page section on “Communications” ranges from a mini-library on self publishing such everyday items as a newsletter to the high-tech esoterica of desktop audio and video publishing, with lists of plug-in hardware and software.

“This version definitely has a high-tech edge” says Mike Stone, managing editor of the mammoth project. “If you are talking about tools for the 21st Century, it’s a necessity.”

Stone is general manager of the Point Foundation in Sausalito, the umbrella organization that has published all the Whole Earth catalogues since 1968, as well as the Whole Earth Review and other publications. Editions of the catalogue have sold millions of copies over the years, winning one National Book Award.

The sixth edition, Stone says, maintains the original goal of founder-futurist Stuart Brand: to give people access to resources for managing their own lives. However, the kinds of information people need for such grass-roots empowerment has changed since the 1960s, when the emphasis was on dropping out. Then, says Stone, “We had pages on raising goats, on bee-keeping, on composting, on solar energy.”

Like its predecessors, the new coffee-table-sized paperback ($30 from Harper San Francisco) remains an eclectic mix. Its 384 pages offer more than 3,000 bite-sized bits of knowledge, in an array of maps, sketches, photographs, charts, designs, essays, reviews, prose and poetry. With an efficient index and chatty, two-page masthead introducing its dozens of contributors, the “Whole Earth Catalog” combines a shopping guide with a visit to a bustling, upbeat community.

The opening chapter on “Whole Systems,” encompassing subjects from the Tao Te Ching to the study of fractals, is typical of the catalogue’s scope. There are chapters (called “domains”) on biodiversity, health, sex, family, livelihood and political tools.

“Whether it’s sustainable agriculture or political action, we hope people will pick it up and find areas they hadn’t expected,” says Stone. “We have everything from intentional communities and how the communes are a growing movement, to a section on urban gardens.”

Back in the technology mode, a four-page segment offers ways to protect personal privacy in a time that brings us credit cards, bar codes, databases, patter-recognition, voiceprints, satellite sensors and e-mail. “It’s really a book for generalists,” says Stone. “If the early books worked for you, this one will, too.”

Editor Howard Rheingold, who has just completed a 15-city tour promoting the book, believes the new catalogue will enlarge the devoted “Whole Earth” audience.

“We were very concerned about our core constituents from all these years--they don’t hesitate to be critical,” he said. “But they showed up in bookstores in large numbers.”

Rheingold, author of the 1993 book “The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier” (Addison-Wesley), likes to describe the Whole Earth Catalogs as, “aimed at people who aren’t afraid to think for themselves and want to know what kind of tools they need to build meaningful lives.”

When the first catalogue appeared, people who fit that description were mostly hippies, he says. “Today they are college students, in corporations and entrepreneurs of small businesses. The frontier is not what it used to be. “Computers have come into their own very fast,” he says. “When we did the last catalogue eight years ago, desktop video and audio were not possible, only an elite group knew about the Internet and there were very few computer bulletin boards.

“Today there are millions of people on the Internet, more than 60,000 bulletin boards and with a desktop you can create what it formerly took a whole sound studio or video studio to do.”

All this is available at prices that everyday households can afford, he adds. “That’s where we come in. We are showing people where they can go and what they can do.”

And while the catalogue looks at serious problems such as population growth and computer privacy, he emphasizes, it doesn’t wallow in them, but points readers to people working on the solutions. “This is basically a hopeful book,” he says. “Here are possibilities, people and ideas to celebrate--things to make the millennium a better time and make the world a better place.”