X-Message-Number: 29220
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Failed futures was Re: CryoNet #29209 - #29213 [Harold Lockwo...
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:23:53 -0800

Harold Lockworth writes,

>Fuller is definitely not forgotten in the fields of design, architecture, 
>and  social sciences.  It is repeatedly being referenced and the World Game 
>is up and running.  But what we have today is actually far more exciting 
>and visionary than the architectural/planetary conceptualizations of 
>Fuller, the space designs of O'Neill, and the general futuristic scenarios 
>proposed by the known futurists of the 70s.

I see no evidence of that. American contractors still build houses like 
their grandfathers did in the 1950's, only bigger. You see them popping up 
all over Arizona, with no consideration towards making them resource and 
energy-efficient, much less aesthetically pleasing.

As for Fuller's legacy, who builds geodesic domes these days, apart from the 
occasional geodesic house somebody puts up in a rural area? (You can see one 
along Highway 138 near Wrightwood, California, where I lived for several 
years) The older geodesic domes face demolition, liike the one at the South 
Pole station. They look really neat, but they don't work that well as 
practical shelters.

Regarding Fuller's earlier ideas for a Dymaxion House, a model of which he 
built near Wichita, the History Channel has a video on this page about it as 
a "failed invention":

http://www.history.com/media.do?action=clip&id=mm_buckminster_broadband

As for Fuller's social science ideas, nobody taken seriously these days 
talks about providing for "100 percent of humanity" through some conjectural 
"design science revolution." Fuller anticipated the need to eliminate our 
civilization's dependence on petroleum, but the programming in our brains 
that leads to collapse and dieoff has set the policy regarding the use of 
decliining fossil fuels to perpetuate human genes. (I'll have more to say 
about this if/when the General Accounting Office releases its report on Peak 
Oil in a few weeks.)

>Today a leisure society is available to anyone who has the skills and 
>know-how to develop such a lifestyle.

Really? Do you a plentiful income from sources that can't fire you? Maybe 
you can let us in on our secret.

Mark Plus

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