{"id":561,"date":"2009-06-05T10:42:06","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T15:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gracefulspoon.com\/blog\/?page_id=561"},"modified":"2009-06-05T10:42:06","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T15:42:06","slug":"buckminster-fuller-critical-path","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/gracefulspoon.com\/blog\/buckminster-fuller-critical-path\/","title":{"rendered":"Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fuller\"<\/a>
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\nFor a brief moment during the 1970s, America faced the shock of an energy crisis spawned by the Middle East oil embargo. Long lines formed at the gas pumps, and heating our homes against the winter cold was no longer a given. American culture seemed on the verge of a tectonic shift. We would, at last, change what and how we drove and how we built and lived in our homes as we re-examined our relationship to the world\u2019s dwindling resources. Enter Buckminster Fuller. In Fuller\u2019s mind, he had been preparing for this his whole life. His writings, teaching and myriad patents and models were waiting for this – his moment in history. He had the solution all along, and this time he would not be denied. But with the country sinking into recession and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, talk of a comprehensive, sustainable future was overwhelmed by invocations to patriotically support American business \u2013 including, of course, Detroit automakers whose cars would do almost everything but reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Fuller was passed by again.
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\nIt was in this environment that Fuller wrote Critical Path<\/strong> in 1981, a denouement of his life\u2019s work and career. It serves as his closing argument, a final call to arms for a world that had, he felt, taken the wrong path one too many times. He begins simply enough: \u201cHumanity is moving ever deeper into crisis \u2013 a crisis without precedent.\u201d
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\nWith this ominous introduction, he grabs our attention and challenges our skepticism through no small amount of fear, alerting us to the magnitude of what is at stake. This is not simply a formal design challenge, an idea about material possibilities, or the structural possibilities of the geodesic dome; this is humanity at the precipice of an unseen and possibly ultimate crisis. Immediately, Fuller has placed us in the realm of literally questioning the future of all Humanity. And, since nothing can be more important than pulling mankind back from the very edge of the abyss, it follows that nothing can be more important than the ideas Fuller will espouse in the following pages to explain just how humanity can reverse its disastrous course.
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\nAn underlying naivet\u00e9, coupled with a healthy dose of hubris, runs through much of Critical Path<\/strong>, and it begins with that first line. The assumption that humanity is \u201cmoving into a crisis\u201d can be seen as presumptuous at a time when much of the country was feeling pretty good about itself. Reagan had won the presidency on the idea of creating a \u201cnew morning\u201d in America. Americans were overwhelmingly pleased with America and its place in the world. So Fuller is 1) telling us that in fact things are not looking up, but rather quite the opposite, as we move ever deeper into a crisis without precedent; and 2) that Fuller himself, in a weighty tome of over 438 pages, can tell us how to solve this as-yet-undefined \u201ccrisis.\u201d Thus far, this theory is being addressed to a complacent populace that simply does not realize its dire situation.
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\nIn two main points, Fuller outlines what caused the crisis. The first point states that the situation was brought about by:
\n\u201ccosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around the world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n

The constant threat of nuclear warfare, the prospect of a never-ending Cold War, and increasingly bellicose leaders on both sides of the Atlantic had firmly created a sense of us versus them in American culture. Here, in Fuller\u2019s own idiosyncratic prose (some variation on \u201comni-directional\u201d is used more than 17 times in the introduction), he begins making the case for a global cooperation of Man that can put aside competing agendas and use the Earth\u2019s resources toward a common goal. His repetition of the word \u201cdifferent\u201d is used as a device to accentuate the divisions and increasingly irrelevant competitions created by an emphasis on differences. There is no question that being \u201cinterconsiderate\u201d and \u201charmonious\u201d is preferable to being divided into categories of color and creed.
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\nIn the second chapter of Fuller\u2019s text, he defines the historical role of what he terms the \u201cscientist-artist,\u201d epitomized by the ancients who built the great pyramids and the modern engineers who built the great bridges. He places himself firmly within that lineage. As his 28 patents testify, it is easy to imagine that he strove to associate himself more with the \u201cscientist\u201d moniker than with the artist. His unique prose style can be seen as a way to elevate his own thinking, at least in the reader\u2019s estimation, to a realm above that of the mere artist, to approach the level of legitimacy that comes with the creation not only of a new vocabulary, but also of new means of defining a scientific principle and method of approach.
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\nIn section three, Fuller proposes the advancement of the concept of \u201cephemeralization,\u201d which after a lengthy discussion he defines as \u201cdoing more with less.\u201d He deftly merges this hypothesis with a historical summary of the New Deal and a series of charts designed to graphically document his proposition that an increase in the national debt and the price of consumer goods throughout the 1970s and 1980s were making Americans materially rich \u2013 but also debt poor. By coining the principle of \u201cephemeralization\u201d and then setting up the rules to define the concept, Fuller intends to prove himself a scientist by the use of testing and the scientific method, while also legitimizing his initial proposal. As the book progresses, his theories increasingly verge into the realm of the fantastical, but he seems to stay true to the scientific method and the reader\u2019s initial skepticism is held in check. Yet, while Fuller was quite well received within artistic circles, engineers often viewed him dubiously. (Miller, 22) It was perhaps this dichotomy that led to his efforts to transcend the bounds of art and gain legitimacy within the engineering world. Throughout his experiments, Fuller was also cognizant of the aesthetics of his structures, declaring that if something wasn\u2019t beautiful when he finished it, he knew it wasn\u2019t the correct solution.
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\nFuller continues defining the terms of the overriding crisis in the following chapter, \u201cSpeculative Prehistory of Humanity,\u201d where he traces the origins of man and hypothesizes how we arrived at this point of divisions. The second crisis point examines our \u201ccosmic evolution\u201d in relation to the possibility of a sustainable future:
\n\u201ccosmic evolution is also irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful, able to live sustainably at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living for all Earthians than has ever been experienced by any; able to live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic-energy savings account\u2026\u201d
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\nAgain he defines the problem in ways that are anything but universal, and the language is steeped in Fuller\u2019s own words and eccentric style. He uses unorthodox punctuation, overuses the prefix \u201comni,\u201d and refers to humans as \u201cEarthians.\u201d His arguments are embedded in the language he uses to discuss them. And in a rhetorical slight, he leads the reader to question the thrust of his argument: how is the crisis being brought about by the possibility to living \u201csustainably at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living\u201d? This sounds like an ideal situation that would lead humanity to the edge of Utopia \u2013 not to an unprecedented crisis.
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\n\tIn the next paragraph, he ups the ante and truly defines the problem: \u201cTax-hungry government and profit-hungry business, for the moment, find it insurmountably difficult to arrange to put meters between humanity and its cosmic-energy income.\u201d The crisis has now been defined. Cosmic evolution has afforded humanity unprecedented opportunities for a universal, cooperative era where everyone shares in the higher standards of living, if only governments and businesses were not standing in the way. In many ways, this is a cynical argument, yet Fuller is thoroughly optimistic that at this juncture in human history we can make the right choice \u2013 Fuller\u2019s choice \u2013 to create nothing less than the conversion of all humanity into \u201can integrated, omniharmonious, economically successful, one-world family.\u201d The language here is simple to understand and markedly positive.
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\n\tFuller himself held a number of political views that would be considered anathema to the Republican-dominated political climate of the 1980s. However, his views on the role of national governments were not motivated by personal philosophy. They can instead be seen as a natural extension of the theories he espoused in Critical Path<\/strong>. Fuller believed that with the increasing ease of travel and communication, our \u201cspaceship earth\u201d was shrinking in perceptual size. Therefore, we were on a path of becoming world citizens, and the dissolution of national boundaries was inevitable. Nonetheless, he held the basic assumption that megacorporations were seeking to exploit resources and populations in an effort to exert an increasingly manipulative hold over world governments. Still, his basic concept of \u201cephemeralization\u201d \u2013 doing more with less \u2013 has practical applications in world diplomacy by showing that international cooperation and the sharing of limited resources would benefit the greatest number of people and create a harmonious environment in which war would be rendered obsolete. This theory was played out in Fuller\u2019s idea of the World Game Institute, a game of strategic moves conceived as a counterpoint to the war games of the Cold War planners. Played on Fuller\u2019s Dymaxion Map (where all nations had equal representation), the game simulated the global distribution of surplus food, outbreaks of disease, and polluting industry. It goes without saying that the only winning strategy involves a system of international cooperation. Ultimately, Fuller believed his game would be facilitated by computers and played officially by United Nations delegates. He later makes the options explicit when he states that the choice is between \u201ceverything for everyone or oblivion.\u201d
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\n\tThroughout Critical Path<\/strong>, there are references to the nearly boundless potential that Fuller saw in computers, and he was clearly fascinated by its system of logic. But while humans built and programmed the machines, they showed little of the precise rationalization that Fuller hoped to attribute to them. The notion of World Peace is certainly appealing, but Fuller did not approach it as a moral solution or through any simple Utopian notion of \u201cgood.\u201d Rather, he saw the dissolution of world governments, the end of starvation, social ills, etc., as the byproducts of the scientific theory coined by Fuller himself and outlined in Critical Path<\/strong>. By showing the semi-scientifically, quantifiably annotated potential tradeoffs and opportunities inherent in his measure of collectivism, Fuller took the role of scientist to its limit, to the detriment of the irrational artist who could have better understood why humanity was approaching collapse. By not acknowledging that scientific progress had brought the world to a point where global nuclear destruction was well within the realm of possibility, Fuller misses a humanistic touch that would have given the theory greater legitimacy without scientific pretensions. This emphasis on science and natural evolution at the expense of emotion led to his typical Fuller statement: \u201cThe Cosmic Question has been asked \u2013 Are Humans a worthwhile to universe invention?\u201d
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\nFuller treated his own body and life as an experiment, thinking himself a program that could be upgraded or reprogrammed. Ultimately, he believed himself to be his greatest invention, the living embodiment of his theories. Throughout his life, he kept volumes of records detailing the minutiae of his daily existence, referring to himself as \u201cGuinea Pig B.\u201d For instance, he repeatedly tried to fight against his own body and train himself to maintain productivity with two or three hours of sleep a day, struggling against the physical necessity of sleep and his scientific tests on the proper ratio of rest to activity in hopes of maximizing his productivity. He became interested in diet and the spacing of meals, going so far as to develop his own system of meals, consisting only of steak, prunes, Jell-O and strong tea, that were synchronized with his naps. (Baldwin, 66)
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\n\tWhile defining the crisis and attendant causes, Fuller is trafficking in decidedly negative terms. He has managed to get our attention through a strong opening remark that induces a certain level of fear, yet is vague enough to warrant further explanation. He takes his perceived causes for the crisis as givens. The reader is meant to accept that the evolution of humanity is the constant struggle toward an interdependent, sustainable whole to the detriment of government and business. While the goals are universal, the book is targeted toward an American audience. Fuller traces recent U.S. history and assumes the reader shares a common knowledge of the Kennedy presidency and the Apollo space program. He frames his own argument in the same terms of unbridled optimism and heroic spirit that defined America\u2019s space program of the 1960s. Fuller\u2019s theory and work is certainly a product of the space race of the 1950\u2019s and 1960\u2019s when Sputnik and the Apollo space missions nation\u2019s attention and science fiction stories were influencing a new generation of architects. In this context, it is only natural that Fuller would seek to merge science with architecture. There was a spirit of endless possibility prevalent in the work of the time. It is here, when he lays out a solution to the crisis, that he begins to lift the reader\u2019s sprits with the realm of the imaginable:
\n\t\u201cNinety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to \u201cmake it\u201d economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do. It can be only be accomplished, however, through a design science initiative and technological revolution.\u201d
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\nFuller is part of this 99th percentile, and the implicit suggestion is that we too can become a part by reading this book and agreeing with its arguments and judgments. Exclusivity through knowledge is prized and the opportunity arises for the reader to be part of a select group that will form the vanguard of a global revolution. A revolution achieved through \u201ca design science initiative and technological revolution.\u201d
\nThe assumption here is that design and science need to create a new initiative, a new cooperation. Design and science are compatible, but not in their current inchoate stages, while technology has progressed to a point that it simply lacks a proper direction. Hence the need for a revolution, a shift in priorities. Design is relegated to a level of partnership with science; unlike technology, it does not warrant its own category. Fuller\u2019s solution for Utopia lays out a fairly comprehensive vision of technology and science upending the current political structure of the world with scant mention of design, or with design used as a scientific question to be answered by technology.
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\n\u201cNeither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the population in general realize that sum-totally, the omni-engineering-integratable, invisible revolution in the metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time, that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have every known. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nFuller\u2019s hope for Utopia rests completely on efficiencies of advanced technologies. And again he makes the case that the vast majority of the world\u2019s people are ignorant of the facts hiding just under their noses. Technology, as it stood right then, could revolutionize the world if only we could fathom these new, heretofore-unimaginable directions. Fuller is forcefully making the case that to gain the knowledge contained in his work is to gain the foresight to see the world in a new light, and this will lead to revolutionary world change.
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\nNot coincidentally, most of Fuller\u2019s works since the 1930s had also been advocating some measure of a \u201cdesign science initiative and technological revolution.\u201d This theory serves as the culmination of his nearly 60-year quest to convince humanity of the possibility, within our grasp, of creating a perfect world for all people, with a high \u2013 and ecologically sustainable \u2013 standard of living. And he goes all in, in the spirit of Howard Zinn, tracing the evolution of humanity\u2019s political, cultural, and economic development throughout history, and drawing parallels between the inequalities of the great empires and those of the multi-national corporations and globally connected governments of his time. While a knack for infectious optimism infuses his writings, there remains an undercurrent of regret and pessimism. In Fuller\u2019s view, after all, if people had listened to him 50 years earlier, humanity\u2019s \u201cunprecedented crisis\u201d could have been averted. He shows perhaps a too-honest description of the human race as it existed in his time when he refers to mankind as \u201cfailure-prone, competitively greedy, selfishly wasteful, fearful, and inferiority-conditioned.\u201d It is a given that this judgment would not apply to Fuller or, for that matter, to anyone with the wisdom to embrace his theory.
\nThis is Fuller\u2019s last written work, and it certainly gives a sense that he is battling an undercurrent of disappointment. From a rational, logical, and even scientific position, he defines his work as a solution to problems of magnificent scale. Therefore, it goes without saying, if only humanity was more logical and scientific, the value of his insight would be realized. This frustration informs the method and style of his theory. His career was a series of grand visions for remaking the way we live and our relation to the natural world. Critical Path<\/strong> can be seen as the closing argument of that career as the boundless optimism for science and technology of the 1960s gave way to the business and profit-first mentality of the 1980\u2019s, when Critical Path<\/strong> was first published in 1984.
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\nHis concept of Ephemeralization led directly to the creation of the 4D House. He had shown how this theory could be used to reassess global diplomacy, but here he shows how it can be applied to the built environment. His performance criteria included doing more with less, so he sought to use materials in their most efficient form while using the smallest amount of materials in a minimum surface-to-volume ratio. Fuller saw ephemeralization as being closely aligned with dematerialization and referred to this idea as more of \u201can attitude rather than a strategy.\u201d His theory of efficiency led him to derive a round house, as the geometrical form of the cylinder minimized the wall area per unit of floor area, and he stacked the rooms on vertical floors to minimize the amount of ground area used. In Critical Path<\/strong>, Fuller charts the efficiency of steel in tension and makes a case for this being the most efficient configuration. His experience with sailboats and his military experience with aircraft taught him to appreciate the possibilities inherent in a cable system. He also aligns this methodology with nature, stating that nature always evolves to the most efficient and economical means. He proceeds to claim that his narrow steel and glass homes are more \u201cnatural\u201d than the conventional homes being built at the time. But again, the 4D house failed to take hold. A few prototypes were built, but they were never occupied.
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\nWhile not explicitly advocating a design style, Fuller narrows the realm of possibility of what the future will look like by noting that technology \u201cnow makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material.\u201d This is coming from Fuller at the outset of a nationwide recession in 1980, when both materials and credit were in short supply. And he is implicitly arguing for an architecture that derives its form from the economical and efficient use of material. The systems and diagrams of architecture cannot be detached from the cosmic-evolutionary principles. He has tied the future narrative of architecture inextricably to the future path of man. And the choice couldn\u2019t be clearer: either humanity continues on the path of waste and excess, leading to empty forms, which will literally destroy the planet and ourselves, or we embrace Utopia. Fuller frames the argument to allow little in the way of subtlety or nuance. Humanity is at a fork in the path of evolution and Fuller argues that the path of least resistance will lead to ruin. We must our \u201ccritical path\u201d of the title.
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\nFuller proceeds to offer concrete examples of how science and technology will be harnessed to solve humanity\u2019s ills. But he creates a certain tension as the book progresses from practical proposals, such as geodesic domed dwellings, to notions that could generously be described as well beyond the realm of current viability \u2013 such as a proposal for doming midtown Manhattan. These ideas are attractive and exciting, but they require a significant leap of faith.
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\nFuller\u2019s Dome Over Manhattan project from 1960 certainly approaches the fantastical. But within the confines of his theory, it evolves in a natural progression to the realm of plausibility while combining two of the key elements from Critical Path<\/strong> \u2013 collective living and an engineer\u2019s idea of environmental and material efficiency. On the one side, the dome connects its inhabitants under one unifying geometrical form that would theoretically connect them with the cosmos in a grand utopian scheme that Fuller describes as: \u201cFrom the inside there will be uninterrupted contact with the exterior world. \u2026 The unpleasant effects of climate, heat, dust, bugs, glare, etc., will be modulated by the skin to provide Garden of Eden interior.\u201d From an energy-efficiency standpoint, the existing series of individual buildings with decorative flourishes are maximizing exterior surface area at the expense of floor ratio while releasing heat back into the environment. A dome over the city would function as an environmental control, and use 1\/64th the surface area of the buildings within, all while cooling the city and minimizing individual energy use. (Baldwin, 120) It\u2019s easy to initially see the proposal as a megalomaniacal exertion of excessive control, but filtered through Fuller\u2019s unique hypothesis, the project becomes a manifestation of his myriad charts that seeks to emphasize the inefficiencies of the buildings within.
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\nFuller also lays out certain moral guidelines that an architect should follow. In much the same way as Fuller himself dedicated his life to the betterment of mankind; he believed that architects should devote their efforts to the concept of \u201clivingry.\u201d Another created word that refers to the conversion of advanced technology from:
\n \u201cweaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human life advantaging and environmental controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful.\u201d
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\nFuller juxtaposes livingry with weaponry, proposing a move away from killing and toward the support of all human, plant, and Earth life. “The architectural profession \u2013 civil, naval, aeronautical, and astronautical \u2013 has always been the place where the most competent thinking is conducted regarding livingry, as opposed to weaponry.” Architects certainly enjoy flattery, and this is the first Fuller in which specifically mentions architecture.
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\n\tFuller saw himself as a scientist, first and foremost. And with a keen sense of what comprises scientific rigor, he goes about documenting his experiments. Critical Path<\/strong> is full of charts, figures, and diagrams that help to legitimize his proposals and wrap them in a sheen of possibility. Fuller understands the extent to which his proposals are radical departures from the norm, and that it is necessary to ease the reader into them through carefully constructed arguments based on research and closely observed documentation. For all of Fuller\u2019s super-scale mega-projects, he demands to be taken seriously and considers the proposals not merely some sort of utopian paper futurism, but rather as constructible solutions rooted in pragmatism. The process of experimentation becomes an end unto itself. However, Fuller seems to not have lacked the patience required for serious scientific testing. He sacrificed the notion of exploring a single idea deeply to his preference for a prolific amalgamation of varied proposals and designs. His numerous patents are a testament to his inventiveness, yet by constantly moving from idea to idea, he missed the chance to champion any single initiative to the point of widespread acceptance. His notions of scientific experimentation would not have met the accepted standards of research in his time. By frequently using himself as a test subject and neglecting to seek peer review of his findings, he opened himself to accusations that subjectivity played a much larger part in his results than he cared to admit, the artist helped invalidate the scientific mantle he sought.
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\n\tFuller closes the introductory chapter with a letter dated February 16, 1970, in which he wrote to 10-year-old Michael in response to Michael\u2019s query as to whether Fuller was a \u201cdoer or a thinker.\u201d Apocryphal or not, the letter serves as a convenient summation of Fuller\u2019s approach to testing: \u201cTry making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely interested in. Don\u2019t be disappointed if something doesn\u2019t work. That is what you want to know \u2013 the truth about everything.\u201d As a surrogate for the reader, Michael proves a fittingly na\u00efve symbol of the individual seeking knowledge from the learned Fuller. And in another sentence that could be referencing Fuller\u2019s own work and his predilection toward custom vocabulary, he states that whenever Michael comes to a word with which he is not familiar, \u201cfind it in the dictionary and write a sentence which uses that new word. Words are tools \u2013 and once you have learned how to use a tool you will never forget it.\u201d Here the words are of Fuller\u2019s own making and the dictionary is Critical Path<\/strong>. In many ways, Critical Path<\/strong> functions as a translation guide for understanding the complexities of the increasingly unknown world around us; we need an entirely new vocabulary, a new set of definitions to describe what we see around us. This is what Fuller sets out to do: arm us with the new words to describe and then to visualize and ultimately create a new future.
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\nHis blueprint for change is, in effect, too broad and all encompassing. This is a theory of everything, an effort literally to solve all the world\u2019s problems. Fuller advocates changing the education system and adjusting the five-day workweek, the nation\u2019s transportation network, democratically elected government, architecture, cities, and homes, while also proving the existence of God and blending history, evolution, and autobiography. He remains infectiously hopeful throughout, and perhaps the degenerated state of the world needed such wildly innovative thinkers as Fuller. He obviously wants to reach as wide an audience as possible \u2013 this is, after all, the defining volume of his life\u2019s work. But by being so bold in his predictions, the passage of time calls into question some of his central tenets, throwing the whole concept into doubt. Among his farfetched predictions, he believed, for instance, that a worldwide network of energy grids would come online by 1989, and that the scarcity of resources would force the ubiquitous use of geodesic dome cities and homes by 2000 and the dissolution of world governments shortly thereafter. Yet he was also prescient in other respects, including the ubiquity of the computer and the increasingly prevalent role of technology in our everyday lives.
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\nHowever; today, as the world sinks into another global recession and the prospect of humanity facing another \u201cunprecedented crisis\u201d seems ever more likely, it is certainly possible that this is a time in which Fuller\u2019s theory will not be ignored, but discovered anew. While the profession of architecture has expanded into associated realms of design, the breadth of radical thinking has contracted. This dearth of bold ideas for opening up new possibilities for the way we could live, in a more harmonious relationship to our environment, serves as a detriment to the profession and fails to capture the public imagination and engage culture in the upfront manner of Fuller\u2019s fantastical proposals. The possibility for a new evolution of the scientist-artist to fill the vacuum and assert their role in society is the lasting influence of Critical Path.<\/strong>
\n
\nBIBLIOGRAPHY<\/small>
\n
\n1.\tBaldwin, J. BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller\u2019s Ideas Today. John Wiley: New York, 1996.<\/p>\n

2.\tFuller, Buckminster. Critical Path. St. Martins Press: New York, 1982.<\/p>\n

3.\tMiller, Dana. \u201cThought Patterns: Buckminster Fuller The Scientist Artist\u201d. Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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