Global Business Network (GBN) is a consulting firm that grew out of Shell‘s Planning Group, Stanford Research Institute, and Stewart Brand and the community based around his “Whole Earth” businesses. In other words, it’s an unlikely alliance of oil industry insiders, mad scientists, and hippie visionaries. They specialize in “scenario planning.”

Schwartz has also studied Tibetan Buddhism and worked closely with Willis Harman, a key figure in the transpersonal psychology movement in San Francisco. Before accepting a post at Shell’s Planning Group, he worked at SRI International, the famed Menlo Park, California, research outfit that came up with the widely used psychographic measuring system known as VALS (for “values and life styles”). SRI also developed the computer mouse. Schwartz’s is a tame résumé by the standards of GBN.

That quote’s from a long Wired article on GBN. It was written by GBN member Joel Garreau, who notes:

This article on GBN was commissioned by a magazine whose executive editor is a member of GBN. It is running in a magazine which mentions a GBN member in almost every issue. Four GBNers have already been on its cover. And, as I mentioned at the beginning, it was written by a journalist who is a member of GBN.

Douglas Rushkoff has described Wired as a newsletter for GBN:

It’s the promotional arm of the Global Business Network. They’re a group of advisors who are pretty much the same as the masthead of Wired. They hire themselves out at $10-$15,000 an hour and when someone gets to join the GBN, their face appears on the front of the magazine and they’re touted as the new great media theorist. When a company hires the GBN and follows their advice, their director magically appears on the front cover.

(This was in 1997, before Conde Nast acquired Wired in 1998, and The Monitor Group acquired GBN in 2000)