Principal
Proponent of a "Post Scarcity Economic Ontology"
following the
year 1970.
-\Seen By
Many as THE Major Premise
of
Fuller's
Many Contributions to Improving the Human Condition
Within the
Larger Ecological Order.
Link
(Immediately below) to Google search: "Post Scarcity
Economics" {About
90,000
results (0.26
seconds)} A good beginning - to address the most fundamental
Practical issue confronting the Evolution of Consciousness
in our Universe Newly Now
Possessed of Weapons Systems Capable of Eliminating the Homo
Sapiens Species.
(To access
link below please copy and paste to address bar)
Once the new reality is taken into account (even ever
mentioned as possible of consideration within our evolving
"Synergetic Universe} by the so called established
authorities (G-20 / G8 - G1?) defending the modern day
"Ancien Regime" and its outdated intellectual.
political, geopolitical, and economic assumptions and
institutions reifying their Zero Sum Imperialistic
Visionless Plutocratic gripe on Power and Influence, could
begin to recognize Humanity's need - now available to us
collectively after our 200.000 year long evolutionary
sojourn on Earth - the basic assumption and modeling for
what might be termed "An Operating Manual for Spaceship
Earth." A couple of Links (there are hundreds of thousands
found with an internet search - another good sign of hope)
to the idea are immediately below:
If there is
any doubt concerning the Plutocratic Concentration of Wealth
& income) in the World and the United States of America you
might want to contemplate the graph below:
This is a blog about human rights – including political
and economic human rights such as the right to
participate in government (democracy being a subset of
human rights) and the right not to suffer poverty – seen
from the perspective of politics, art, philosophy (hence
p.a.p.), law, economics and statistic
“The most astonishing
thing about Spaceship Earth: it didn't come with an
operating manual."
"What
usually happens in the educational process is that the
faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so
that by the time most people are mature they have lost their
innate capabilities."
"Now, if you were world
master, you would not be at all worried about being
displaced by a dull one. You would only be apprehensive of
and on guard against the bright ones. There is the old
strategy of "divide and conquer." Anticipatory "divide and
conquer" is more powerful than tardy "divide and conquer."
The old masters, then, in order to prevent themselves from
being displaced from their great ocean mastery deliberately
went to work taking the young, bright ones as they came
along, and divided them up anticipatorily into
non-self-integratable specializations, which made them
completely innocuous as challengers to comprehensive
grand-strategy thinking and practical-affairs integration.
The bright ones thus became subject to integration of their
high potential only at the masters' command......"
“For the first time in history
it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher
standard of living than any have ever known.
Only ten years ago (1970) the ‘more with less’
technology reached the point where this could be done.
All humanity now has the option to become enduringly
successful.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980
"To
make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest
possible time through spontaneous cooperation without
ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone."
BUCKMINSTER
FULLER GRAPH FROM HIS "WORLD GAME" FINDINGS OF THE
PERCENTAGE OF THE WORLD POPULATION WHO COULD BE SEEN TO BE
“HAVES” IN THE MODERNEXPERIENCE IN TERMS OF OUR ABSTRACT TECHNOLOGICALLY
AUGMENTED “CAPABILITY” TO PROVIDE “LIFE SUPPORT."
FURTHERMORE BOTH “GROWTH AND EQUITY” COULD BE REALIZED
WITHIN AN ECOLOGICALLY APPROPRIATE MANNER THROUGH THE
INCREASING ELEGANCE OF “GOOD DESIGN TEMPLATES – “DOING MORE
WITH LESS”. THINK MOORE’S LAW WRIT LARGE. HE PROJECTED
FROM THE YEAR 1952 “A TWENTY YEAR PERIOD OF IMMINENT CRISIS
TO ALL HUMAN INSTITUTIONS AS WE APPROACHED AND CROSSED THE
50% MARK." HE LIVED OUT HIS LIFE IN THE BELIEF THE PROCESS
HAD ACCELERATED AND THAT WE CROSSED THE 50% MARK IN 1970.
THAT IS THE
SAME YEAR MOST RELIABLE MODELING'S SUGGEST HUMANITY'S
WEAPONS SYSTEMS BECAME - AS THEY REMAIN - "SPECIES LETHAL".
BOTH SIGNAL A NEW MOMENT OF EXISTENTIAL CHALLENGE AND CALL
FOR A COMPREHENSIVELY CONCEIVED AND INTELLECTUALLY AND
ACTIVELY ADVANCED PARADIGM OF PARADIGM SHIFTS. IF WE HAVE
ACTUALLY BEEN EXISTING WITHIN A POST SCARCITY ONTOLOGICAL
CONTEXT FOR 40 YEARS "WANDERING IN THE WILDNESS" AS IT WERE
- THAT SHOULD BE MADE KNOWN TO ONE AND ALL INCLUDING OUR
POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP ELEMENTS. OUT OF THE
200,000 YEAR TENURE OF OUR HOMO SAPIEN SPECIES ON EARTH IT
MAY WELL BE WE HAVE HAD TO (AND CONTINUE TO ACCEPTAS
A PRIORI)THE
IDEA THAT MATERIAL REALITY IS "SCARCE". CERTAINLY THE VERY
PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC THEORIZING THAT
HAVE INFORMED AND CHARACTERIZED VIRTUALLY ALL OF OUR
INHERITED ASSUMPTIONS AND INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN PREDICATED
ON THE ALL BUT UNQUESTIONED ASSUMPTION OF ZERO SUM SCARCITY.
FOR ONE TO WIN ANOTHER MUST LOSE. IT WOULD SEEM THAT BASIC
ASSUMPTION OUGHT AND MUST BE CHALLENGED IF WE ARE TO
SURVIVE AND NECESSARILY ONE AND ALL BE LIBERATED FROM THE
SLINGS AND ARROWS OF AN (ONLY IN OUR LIFETIME BUT NOW)
NECESSARILY OUTDATED - EVEN AS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED
- ASSUMPTION. ALL THIS WITHIN AN APPROPRIATE ECOLOGICAL
CONTEXT IF WE ARE TO AVOID THE SIREN CALLS OF RETROGRADE AND
RISK THE ANNIHILATION OF OUR ENTIRE SPECIES. WHILE OTHERS
HAVE ADDRESSED THE ISSUE IT WOULD STRONGLY BE SUGGESTED THAT
BUCKMINSTER FULLER HAS PROVIDED AN INTELLECTUAL BASIS FOR
ACHIEVING THAT TRANSFORMED ALTERATION IN CONSCIOUSNESS MORE
AUTHORITATIVELY AND IN PRACTICAL COMPREHENSIVE TERM THAN
ANY OTHER SOURCE AVAILABLE TO USREMEMBER THIS
IS “DESIGN CAPABILITY” NOT THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND
ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONAL ASSUMPTIONS AND NOTIONS OF HUMAN
NATURE (WHICH WILL HAVE TO BE SUBSUMED) INHERITED FROM
HISTORY IF HUMANITY IS TO CREATE A "POST MATERIAL SCARCITY"
WORLD WHICH THE FUTURE REQUIRES AND COLLECTIVELY NOW
POSSESSES THE MEANS TO ACHIEVE. TO BRIDGE THE TWO - TO
LIBERATE RATHER THAN ANNIHILATE - IS MANKIND’S MOST PRESSING
CHALLENGE. HE PROVIDED THIS MAJOR PREMISE "PATTERN" TO HELP
US
ENGAGE IN THE BRIDGEBUILDING WORK.
BFI hosted a series of events around the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, including the conferring ceremony for the 2010 Winner at the National Press Club and "Architecting the Future" at AU's School of International Service. Read more
June 3rd - Ryan Chin and Michael Lin from Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand Systems provide some exciting progress the project has had in the year since winning the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Read more
The Buckminster Fuller Institute is dedicated to accelerating the development and deployment of solutions which radically advance human well being and the health of our planet's ecosystems.Read more
A biography of Buckminster Fuller's "thought development," Ideas and Integrities presents an intimate self-portrait of the experiences and discoveries behind his groundbreaking ideas and inventions. Buy now
Born in Milton, Massachusetts on July 12, 1895, Buckminster Fuller was a renowned 20th century inventor and visionary, who dedicated his life to making the world work for all of humanity.Read more
Fuller published more than 30 books,
inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship
Earth",
ephemeralization, and
synergetics. He also developed numerous
inventions, mainly architectural designs,
the best known of which is the
geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as
fullerenes were later named by
scientists for their resemblance to geodesic
spheres.
Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in
Milton, Massachusetts, the son of
Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline
Wolcott Andrews, and also the grandnephew of
the
American Transcendentalist
Margaret Fuller. He attended
Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending much
of his youth on Bear Island, in
Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine, he
had trouble with
geometry, being unable to understand the
abstraction necessary to imagine that a
chalk dot on the blackboard represented a
mathematical
point, or that an imperfectly drawn line
with an arrow on the end was meant to
stretch off to
infinity. He often made items from
materials he brought home from the woods,
and sometimes made his own tools. He
experimented with designing a new apparatus
for human propulsion of small boats.
Years later, he decided that this sort of
experience had provided him with not only an
interest in design, but also a habit of
being familiar with and knowledgeable about
the materials that his later projects would
require. Fuller earned a
machinist's certification, and knew how
to use the
press brake,
stretch press, and other tools and
equipment used in the
sheet metal trade.[3]
Fuller attended
Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and
after that began studying at
Harvard. He was expelled from Harvard
twice: first for spending all his money
partying with a vaudeville troupe, and then,
after having been readmitted, for his
"irresponsibility and lack of interest." By
his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming
misfit in the fraternity environment.[3]
It was to be many years before he received a
Sc.D. from
Bates College in
Lewiston, Maine.
Between his sessions at
Harvard, Fuller worked in
Canada as a mechanic in a
textile
mill, and later as a laborer for the
meat-packing industry. He also served in
the
U.S. Navy in
World War I, as a shipboard
radio operator, as an editor of a
publication, and as a crash-boat commander.
After discharge, he worked again for the
meat packing industry, thereby acquiring
management experience. In 1917, he married
Anne Hewlett. During the early 1920s, he and
his father-in-law developed the
Stockade Building System for producing
light-weight, weatherproof, and fireproof
housing — although the company would
ultimately fail.[3]
By age 32, Fuller was
bankrupt and jobless, living in public,
low-income housing in
Chicago, Illinois. In 1922,[4]
Fuller's young daughter Alexandra died from
complications from
polio and
spinal meningitis. Allegedly, he felt
responsible and this caused him to drink
frequently and to contemplate
suicide for a while. He finally chose to
embark on "an experiment, to find what a
single individual [could] contribute to
changing the world and benefiting all
humanity."[5]
In 1927 Fuller resolved to think
independently which included a commitment to
"the search for the principles governing the
universe and help advance the evolution of
humanity in accordance with them... finding
ways of doing more with less to the end that
all people everywhere can have more and
more." By 1928, Fuller was living in
Greenwich Village and spending much of
his time at the popular café
Romany Marie's,[6]
where he had spent an evening in
conversation with Marie and
Eugene O'Neill several years earlier.[7]
Fuller accepted a job decorating the
interior of the
café in exchange for meals,[6]
giving informal lectures several times a
week,[7][8]
and models of the
Dymaxion house were exhibited at the
café.
Isamu Noguchi arrived during 1929 —
Constantin Brâncuşi, an old friend of
Marie's,[9]
had directed him there[6] —
and Noguchi and Fuller were soon
collaborating on several projects,[8][10]
including the modeling of the
Dymaxion car.[11]
It was the beginning of their lifelong
friendship.
Fuller taught at
Black Mountain College in
North Carolina during the summers of
1948 and 1949,[12]
serving as its Summer Institute director in
1949. There, with the support of a group of
professors and students, he began
reinventing a project that would make him
famous: the
geodesic dome. Although the geodesic
dome had been created some 30 years earlier
by Dr.
Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was awarded
United States patents. He is credited for
popularizing this type of structure.
One of his early models was first
constructed in 1945 at
Bennington College in Vermont, where he
frequently lectured. During 1949, he erected
his first geodesic dome building that could
sustain its own weight with no practical
limits. It was 4.3 meters (14 ft) in
diameter and constructed of aluminum
aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in
the form of an
icosahedron. To prove his design, and to
awe non-believers, Fuller suspended from the
structure's framework several students who
had helped him build it. The U.S. government
recognized the importance of his work, and
employed his firm Geodesics, Inc. in
Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes
for the army. Within a few years there were
thousands of these domes around the world.
For the next half-century, Fuller
developed many ideas, designs and
inventions, particularly regarding
practical, inexpensive shelter and
transportation. He documented his life,
philosophy and ideas scrupulously by a daily
diary (later called the
Dymaxion Chronofile), and by
twenty-eight publications. Fuller financed
some of his experiments with inherited
funds, sometimes augmented by funds invested
by his collaborators, one example being the
Dymaxion car project.
International recognition began with the
success of his huge
geodesic domes during the 1950s. Fuller
taught at
Washington University in St. Louis in
1955, where he met James Fitzgibbon, who
would become a close friend and colleague.
From 1959 to 1970, Fuller taught at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Beginning as an
assistant professor, he gained full
professorship during 1968, in the School of
Art and Design. Working as a designer,
scientist, developer, and writer, he
lectured for many years around the world. He
collaborated at SIU with the designer
John McHale. During 1965, Fuller
inaugurated the
World Design Science Decade (1965 to
1975) at the meeting of the
International Union of Architects in
Paris, which was, in his own words, devoted
to "applying the principles of science to
solving the problems of humanity."
Fuller believed human societies would
soon rely mainly on renewable sources of
energy, such as solar- and wind-derived
electricity. He hoped for an age of
"omni-successful education and sustenance of
all humanity." For his lifetime of work, the
American Humanist Association named him
the 1969 Humanist of the Year.
Fuller's last filmed interview took place
on April 3, 1983, in which he presented his
analysis of
Simon Rodia's
Watts Towers as a unique embodiment of
the structural principles found in nature.
Portions of this interview appear in
I Build the Tower, a
documentary film on Rodia's
architectural masterpiece.
Buckminster Fuller, lecture tour
1972-3, University of California
at Santa Barbara.
Fuller died on July 1, 1983, 11 days
before his 88th birthday. During the period
leading up to his death, his wife had been
lying
comatose in a Los Angeles hospital,
dying of
cancer. It was while visiting her there
that he exclaimed, at a certain point: "She
is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up,
suffered a
heart attack, and died an hour later, at
age 87. His wife of 66 years died 36 hours
later. They are buried in
Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
The grandson of a
Unitarian minister (Arthur Buckminster
Fuller),[15]
R. Buckminster Fuller was also Unitarian.[16]
Buckminster Fuller was an early
environmental activist. He was very aware of
the finite resources the planet has to
offer, and promoted a principle that he
termed "ephemeralization",
which, in essence — according to futurist
and Fuller disciple
Stewart Brand — Fuller coined to mean
"doing more with less".[17]
Resources and waste material from cruder
products could be recycled into making more
valuable products, increasing the efficiency
of the entire process. Fuller also
introduced
synergetics, an encompassing term which
he used broadly as a metaphoric language for
communicating experiences using geometric
concepts and, more specifically, to
reference the empirical study of systems in
transformation, with an emphasis on total
system behavior unpredicted by the behavior
of any isolated components. Fuller coined
this term long before the term
synergy became popular.
Fuller was a pioneer in thinking
globally, and he explored principles of
energy and
material efficiency in the fields of
architecture,
engineering and
design.[18][19]
He cited François de Chardenedes' opinion
that
petroleum, from the standpoint of its
replacement cost out of our current energy
"budget" (essentially, the net incoming
solar flux), had cost nature "over a
million dollars" per U.S. gallon (US$300,000
per litre) to produce. From this point of
view, its use as a transportation fuel by
people commuting to work represents a huge
net loss compared to their earnings.[20]
An encapsulation quotation of his views
might be, "There is no energy crisis, only a
crisis of ignorance."[21][22][23]
Fuller was concerned about
sustainability and about human survival
under the existing socio-economic system,
yet remained optimistic about humanity's
future. Defining wealth in terms of
knowledge, as the "technological ability to
protect, nurture, support, and accommodate
all growth needs of life," his analysis of
the condition of "Spaceship Earth" caused
him to conclude that at a certain time
during the 1970s, humanity had attained an
unprecedented state. He was convinced that
the accumulation of relevant knowledge,
combined with the quantities of major
recyclable resources that had already been
extracted from the earth, had attained a
critical level, such that competition for
necessities was not necessary anymore.
Cooperation had become the optimum survival
strategy. "Selfishness," he declared, "is
unnecessary and hence-forth
unrationalizable.... War is obsolete."[24]
He criticized previous utopian schemes as
too exclusive, and thought this was a major
source of their failure. To work, he thought
that a utopia needed to include everyone.[25]
Fuller also claimed that the natural
analytic geometry of the universe was
based on arrays of tetrahedra. He developed
this in several ways, from the close-packing
of spheres and the number of compressive or
tensile members required to stabilize an
object in space. One confirming result was
that the strongest possible homogeneous
truss is cyclically tetrahedral.[26]
In his 1970 book
I Seem To Be a Verb, he wrote: "I
live on Earth at present, and I don't know
what I am. I know that I am not a category.
I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a
verb, an evolutionary process — an integral
function of the universe."
He had become a
guru of the design, architecture, and
'alternative' communities, such as
Drop City, the community of experimental
artists to whom he awarded the 1966
"Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic"
domed living structures.
Fuller was most famous for his
lattice shell structures -
geodesic domes, which have been used as
parts of military radar stations, civic
buildings, environmental protest camps and
exhibition attractions. An examination of
the geodesic design by Bauersfeld for the
Zeiss
Planetarium, built some 20 years prior
to Fuller's work, reveals that Fuller's
Geodesic Dome patent (U.S. 2,682,235)
follows the same methodology as Bauersfeld's
design.[27]
Their construction is based on extending
some basic principles to build simple "tensegrity"
structures (tetrahedron,
octahedron, and the closest packing of
spheres), making them lightweight and
stable. The patent for geodesic domes was
awarded during 1954, part of Fuller's
exploration of nature's constructing
principles to find design solutions. The
Fuller Dome is referenced in the
Hugo Award-winning novel
Stand on Zanzibar by
John Brunner, in which a geodesic dome
is said to cover the entire island of
Manhattan, and it floats on air due to
the hot-air balloon effect of the large
air-mass under the dome (and perhaps its
construction of lightweight materials).[28]
In the 1930s, Fuller designed and built
prototypes of what he hoped would be a
safer, aerodynamic car, which he called the
Dymaxion. ("Dymaxion" is said to be a
syllabic abbreviation of dynamic
maximum tension, or possibly of
dynamic maximum ion.)[29]
Fuller worked with professional colleagues
for three years beginning in 1932 on a
design idea Fuller had derived from aircraft
technologies. The three prototype cars were
different from anything being sold at the
time. They had three wheels: two front drive
wheels and one rear, steered wheel. The
engine was in the rear, and the chassis and
body were original designs. The
aerodynamic, somewhat tear-shaped body
was large enough to seat eleven people and
was about 18 feet (5.5 m) long, resembling a
blend of a light aircraft (without wings)
and a
Volkswagen van of 1950s vintage. All
three prototypes were essentially a
mini-bus, and its concept long predated the
Volkswagen Type 2 mini-bus conceived in
1947 by
Ben Pon.
Despite its length, and due to its
three-wheel design, the Dymaxion turned on a
small
radius and could easily be parked in a
tight space. The prototypes were efficient
in fuel consumption for their day, traveling
about 30 miles per gallon. Fuller
contributed a great deal of his own money to
the project, in addition to funds from one
of his professional collaborators. An
industrial investor was also very interested
in the concept. Fuller anticipated the cars
could travel on an open highway safely at up
to about 160 km/h (100 miles per hour), but,
in practise, they were difficult to control
and steer above 80 km/h (50 mph). Investors
backed out and research ended after one of
the prototypes was involved in a
high-profile collision that resulted in a
fatality. In 2007,
Time Magazine reported on the
Dymaxion as one of the "50 worst
cars of all time".[30]
In 1943, industrialist
Henry J. Kaiser asked Fuller to develop
a prototype for a smaller car, but Fuller's
five-seater design was never developed
further.
Fuller's energy-efficient and inexpensive
Dymaxion House garnered much interest,
but has never been produced. Here the term
"Dymaxion" is used in effect to signify a
"radically strong and light tensegrity
structure". One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses
is on display as a permanent exhibit at The
Henry Ford in
Dearborn, Michigan. Designed and
developed during the mid-1940s, this
prototype is a round structure (not a dome),
shaped something like the flattened "bell"
of certain jellyfish. It has several
innovative features, including revolving
dresser drawers, and a fine-mist shower that
reduces water consumption. According to
Fuller biographer Steve Crooks, the house
was designed to be delivered in two
cylindrical packages, with interior color
panels available at local dealers. A
circular structure at the top of the house
was designed to rotate around a central mast
to use natural winds for cooling and air
circulation.
Conceived nearly two decades before, and
developed in
Wichita, Kansas, the house was designed
to be lightweight and adapted to windy
climates. It was to be inexpensive to
produce and purchase, and assembled easily.
It was to be produced using factories,
workers and technologies that had produced
World War II aircraft. It was
ultramodern-looking at the time, built of
metal, and sheathed in polished
aluminum. The basic model enclosed 90 m²
(1000 square feet) of floor area. Due to
publicity, there were many orders during the
early Post-War years, but the company that
Fuller and others had formed to produce the
houses failed due to management problems.
During 1969, Fuller began the Otisco
Project, named after its location in
Otisco, New York. The project developed
and demonstrated
concrete spray technology used in
conjunction with mesh covered wireforms as a
viable means of producing large scale, load
bearing spanning structures built on site
without the use of pouring molds, other
adjacent surfaces or hoisting.
The initial construction method used a
circular concrete footing in which anchor
posts were set. Tubes cut to length and with
ends flattened were then bolted together to
form a duodeca-rhombicahedron (22 sided
hemisphere) geodesic structure with spans
ranging to 60 feet (18 m). The form was then
draped with layers of ¼-inch wire mesh
attached by twist ties. Concrete was then
sprayed onto the structure, building up a
solid layer which, when cured, would support
additional concrete to be added by a variety
of traditional means. Fuller referred to
these buildings as monolithic ferroconcrete
geodesic domes. The tubular frame form
proved too problematic when it came to
setting windows and doors, and was
abandoned. The second method used iron
rebar set vertically in the concrete
footing and then bent inward and welded in
place to create the dome's wireform
structure and performed satisfactorily.
Domes up to three stories tall built with
this method proved to be remarkably strong.
Other shapes such as cones, pyramids and
arches proved equally adaptable.
The project was enabled by a grant
underwritten by
Syracuse University and sponsored by
US Steel (rebar), the Johnson Wire Corp,
(mesh) and Portland Cement Company
(concrete). The ability to build large
complex load bearing concrete spanning
structures in free space would open many
possibilities in architecture, and is
considered as one of Fuller's greatest
contributions.
Fuller also designed an alternative
projection map, called the
Dymaxion map. This was designed to show
Earth's continents with minimum distortion
when projected or printed on a flat surface.
Fuller was a frequent flier, often
crossing time zones. He famously wore three
watches; one for the current zone, one for
the zone he had departed, and one for the
zone he was going to.[31][32]
In this respect he follows the jazz drummer
Buddy Rich, who in the
Pete Atkin /
Clive James song “The Wristwatch for a
Drummer”, also “wears three, one on the
right wrist, one on the left, and the third
one around his knee”. The wristwatch in
question is the imagined “Omega Incabloc
Oyster Accutron 72” for which “Buckminster
Fuller designed the case”[33]
Fuller also noted that a single sheet of
newsprint, inserted over a shirt and under a
suit jacket, provided completely effective
heat insulation during long flights.
He experimented with
polyphasic sleep, which he called
Dymaxion sleep. In 1943, he told Time
Magazine that he had slept only two
hours a day for two years. He quit the
schedule because it conflicted with his
business associates' sleep habits, but
stated that Dymaxion sleep could help the
United States win World War II.[34]
Fuller documented his life copiously from
1915 to 1983, approximately 270 feet (82 m)
of papers in a collection called the
Dymaxion Chronofile. He also kept copies of
all ingoing and outgoing correspondence. The
enormous Fuller Collection is currently
housed at
Stanford University.
If somebody kept a very accurate
record of a human being, going through
the era from the Gay 90s, from a very
different kind of world through the turn
of the century — as far into the
twentieth century as you might live. I
decided to make myself a good case
history of such a human being and it
meant that I could not be judge of what
was valid to put in or not. I must put
everything in, so I started a very
rigorous record.[35][36]
Fuller introduced a number of concepts,
and helped develop others. Certainly, a
number of his projects were not successful
in terms of commitment from industry or
acceptance by most of the public. However,
more than 500,000 geodesic domes have been
built around the world and many are in use.
According to the Buckminster Fuller
Institute,[37]
the largest geodesic-dome structures are:
Spaceship Earth at Disney World's
Epcot Center in Florida, 80.8-meters
(265 ft) wide (Spaceship Earth is
actually a self supporting geodesic
sphere, the only one currently in
existence.)
The
Gold Dome in Oklahoma City, formerly
a bank and now a multicultural society
and business center.
Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, is
a geodesic sphere hosting the
Telus World of Science, a science
centre (formerly called Science World),
that was originally the Expo Centre
built for
Expo 86.
The dome over a shopping center in
downtown Ankara, Turkey, 109.7-meter
(360 ft) tall
The dome enclosing a civic center in
Stockholm, Sweden, 85.3-meter (280 ft)
high.
However, contrary to Fuller's hopes,
domes are not an everyday sight in most
places. In practice, most of the smaller
owner-built geodesic structures had
disadvantages (see
geodesic domes), including their
unconventional appearance.
An interesting spin-off of Fuller's
dome-design conceptualization was the
Buckminster Ball, which was the official
FIFA approved design for footballs (association
football), from their introduction at
the 1970 World Cup until recently. The
design was a
truncated icosahedron -- essentially a
"Geodesic Sphere", consisting of 12
pentagonal and 20 hexagonal panels. This was
used continuously for 34 years until
replaced by the 14-panel
Teamgeist for the 2006 World Cup.
Fuller was followed (historically) by
other designers and architects, such as
Sir Norman Foster and
Steve Baer, willing to explore the
possibilities of new geometries in the
design of buildings, not based on
conventional rectangles.
Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a
unique style and said it was important to
describe the world as accurately as
possible.[43]
Fuller often created long run-on sentences
and used unusual compound words
(omniwell-informed, intertransformative,
omni-interaccommodative,
omniself-regenerative) as well as terms he
himself invented.[44]
Fuller used the word Universe
without the
definite or
indefinite articles (the or a)
and always capitalized the word. Fuller
wrote that "by Universe I mean: the
aggregate of all humanity's consciously
apprehended and communicated (to self or
others) Experiences."[45]
The words "down" and "up", according to
Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a
planar concept of direction inconsistent
with human experience. The words "in" and
"out" should be used instead, he argued,
because they better describe an object's
relation to a gravitational center, the
Earth. "I suggest to audiences that they
say, 'I'm going "outstairs" and "instairs."'
At first that sounds strange to them; They
all laugh about it. But if they try saying
in and out for a few days in fun, they find
themselves beginning to realize that they
are indeed going inward and outward in
respect to the center of Earth, which is our
Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they
begin to feel real 'reality.'"[46]
"World-around" is a term coined by Fuller
to replace "worldwide". The general belief
in a
flat Earth died out in
Classical antiquity, so using "wide" is
an anachronism when referring to the surface
of the Earth—a spheroidal surface has area
and encloses a volume but has no width.
Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete
scientific ideas detracts from and misleads
intuition. Other neologisms collectively
invented by the Fuller family, according to
Allegra Fuller Snyder, are the terms
"sunsight" and "sunclipse", replacing
"sunrise" and "sunset" to overturn the
geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican
celestial mechanics.
Fuller also invented the word "livingry,"
as opposed to weaponry (or "killingry"), to
mean that which is in support of all human,
plant, and Earth life. "The architectural
profession — civil, naval, aeronautical, and
astronautical — has always been the place
where the most competent thinking is
conducted regarding livingry, as opposed to
weaponry."[47]
As well as contributing significantly to
the development of tensegrity technology,
Fuller invented the term "tensegrity"
from tensional integrity. "Tensegrity
describes a structural-relationship
principle in which structural shape is
guaranteed by the finitely closed,
comprehensively continuous, tensional
behaviors of the system and not by the
discontinuous and exclusively local
compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity
provides the ability to yield increasingly
without ultimately breaking or coming
asunder."[48]
"Dymaxion" is a portmanteau of "dynamic
maximum tension". It was invented by an
adman about 1929 at Marshall Field's
department store in Chicago to describe
Fuller's concept house, which was shown as
part of a house of the future store display.
These were three words that Fuller used
repeatedly to describe his design.
Fuller also helped to popularise the
concept of
Spaceship Earth: "The most important
fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction
manual didn't come with it."[49]
An
allotrope of
carbon - fullerene, and a particular
molecule of that allotrope C60 (buckminsterfullerene
or buckyball) has been named after him. The
Buckminsterfullerene molecule, which
consists of 60 carbon atoms, very closely
resembles a spherical version of Fuller's
geodesic dome. The 1996
Nobel prize in chemistry was given to
Kroto, Curl, and Smalley for their discovery
of the fullerene.[65]
On July 12, 2004, the
United States Post Office released a new
commemorative stamp honoring R. Buckminster
Fuller on the 50th anniversary of his patent
for the geodesic dome and by the occasion of
his 109th birthday.
During June 2008, the
Whitney Museum of American Art presented
"Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the
Universe", the most comprehensive
retrospective to date of his work and ideas.[66]
The exhibition traveled to the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in
2009. It presented a combination of models,
sketches, and other artifacts, representing
six decades of the artist's integrated
approach to housing, transportation,
communication, and cartography. It also
featured the extensive connections with
Chicago from his years spent living,
teaching, and working in the city.[67]
On February 25, 2011, Chicago-based indie
band
Driftless Pony Club released their album
"Buckminster," whose songs used the names of
some of Fuller's essays and were dedicated
to his life and ideas.[68]
^ ab Lloyd
Steven Sieden. Buckminster
Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work
(pp. 74, 119-142). New York:
Perseus Books Group, 2000.
ISBN 0-73820-379-3. p. 74:
"Although O'Neill soon became well
known as a major American
playwright, it was Romany Marie who
would significantly influence Bucky,
becoming his close friend and
confidante during the most difficult
years of his life."
^Fuller,
R. Buckminster (1981).
"Introduction". Critical Path
(First ed.). New York, N.Y.:
St.Martin's Press. xxv.
ISBN0-312-17488-8.
""It no longer has to be you or me.
Selfishness is unnecessary and
hence-forth unrationalizable as
mandated by survival. War is
obsolete."
^Fuller,
R. Buckminster (2008). Jaime Snyder.
ed. Utopia or oblivion: the
prospects for humanity. Baden,
Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers.
ISBN9783037781272.
^
"What is important in this
connection is the way in which
humans reflex spontaneously for that
is the way in which they usually
behave in critical moments, and it
is often "common sense" to reflex in
perversely ignorant ways that
produce social disasters by denying
knowledge and ignorantly yielding to
common sense." Intuition, 1972
Doubleday, New York. p.103
^
He wrote a single unpunctuated
sentence approximately 3000 words
long titled "What I Am Trying to
Do." And It Came to Pass - Not to
Stay Macmillan Publishing, New York,
1976.
^
"How Little I Know" from And It Came
to Pass - Not to Stay Macmillan,
1976
Applewhite, E. J. Cosmic Fishing: An
account of writing Synergetics with
Buckminster Fuller. 1977 (ISBN
0-02-502710-7)
Applewhite, E. J., ed. Synergetics
Dictionary, The Mind Of Buckminster
Fuller; in four volumes. Garland
Publishing, Inc. New York and London.
1986 (ISBN
0-8240-8729-1)
Kenner, Hugh, Bucky: A guided tour of
Buckminster Fuller. 1973 (ISBN
0-688-00141-6)
Krausse, Joachim and Lichtenstein,
Claude. ed. Your Private Sky, R.
Buckminster Fuller: The Art Of Design
Science. Lars Mueller Publishers.
1999 (ISBN
3-907044-88-6)
McHale, John. R. Buckminster Fuller.
George Brazillier, Inc., New York.
hardback. 1962.
Potter, R. Robert. Buckminster Fuller
(Pioneers in Change Series). Silver
Burdett Publishers. 1990 (ISBN
0-382-09972-9)
Robertson, Donald. Mind's Eye Of
Buckminster Fuller. 1974 (ISBN
0-533-01017-9) Vantage Press, Inc.,
New York.
Sieden, Lloyd. Buckminster Fuller's
Universe, His Life and Work. 1989 (ISBN
0-7382-0379-3), explores Fuller's
personal life, his beliefs and drives.
Snyder, Robert. Buckminster Fuller:
An Autobiographical Monologue/Scenario.
St. Martin's Press, New York. hardback.
1980 (ISBN
0-312-24547-5)
Sterngold, James. "The Love Song of R.
Buckminster Fuller." The New York
Times [Arts Section], June 15, 2008.
Ward, James, ed., The Artifacts Of R.
Buckminster Fuller, A Comprehensive
Collection of His Designs and Drawings
in Four Volumes: Volume One. The
Dymaxion Experiment, 1926–1943; Volume
Two. Dymaxion Deployment, 1927–1946;
Volume Three. The Geodesic Revolution,
Part 1, 1947–1959; Volume Four. The
Geodesic Revolution, Part 2, 1960-1983:
Edited with descriptions by James Ward.
Garland Publishing, New York. 1984 (ISBN
0-8240-5082-7 vol. 1,
ISBN 0-8240-5083-5 vol. 2,
ISBN 0-8240-5084-3 vol. 3,
ISBN 0-8240-5085-1 vol. 4)
Individual programs can be
viewed each week dayHosthmH
(11:00
AM - NOON / (NYC Time)
Channel 34 of the Time/Warner, Channel
83 of the RCN, & Channel 33 of the VerizonFiOS
Cable Television Systems in Manhattan, New
York.
The Program can now also be viewed on the
internet at time of cable casting at:
WWW.MNN.ORGw.
NOTE: You must adjust viewing to reflect NYC time
& click on channel 34 at site
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