In 1985 Brilliant teamed with counterculture icon Stewart Brand to form the Well, or Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, a kind of online salon of artists and thinkers that is still in business.
Like a broad-forces historian, he sets out to explain how a relative latecomer, starting out after Matsushita in the rubble of post-war Tokyo, should become a 20th-century icon with a brand name as well known around the world as Coca-Cola.