[1] Having many connections with a group of noted creative individuals in Northern California, Callenbach's influence beyond the region began with the publication of his utopian novel Ecotopia in 1975.

Born into a farming family in Williamsport, Pennsylvania,[1] Callenbach attended the University of Chicago, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form.

After six months in Paris at the Sorbonne, watching four films a day, he returned to Chicago and earned a master's degree in English and Communications.

[4] As an example, with its emphasis on personal rather than impersonal interaction, Callenbach's Ecotopian society anticipates the development and liberal usage of videoconferencing.

Callenbach was a part of the circle of West Coast technologists, architects, social thinkers, and scientists which included Ursula K. Le Guin, Sim Van der Ryn, Peter Calthorpe, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, J. Baldwin, and John Todd.

In 2006 Callenbach introduced the story of a real-world community movement in Japan that is reminiscent, in its aims and practices, of his Ecotopian society.

He found that it encompassed some three dozen intentional communities founded on the same underlying principles: living an ecologically based integration of people with agriculture (pig, cattle, and chicken livestock raising, and organic-vegetable and fruit farming), and living a social life based on principles of democracy, mutual understanding, support, and health.