I thought this chapter was interesting in general, my earlier frustration with this book wasn't that I didn't like it, just that it was difficult to get into. What put me off at the beginning was that the introduction seemed a bit dated so I approached it from a more critical perspective. I was able to follow chapter 2 much easier.
Artist-scientist section was interesting especially in the way that they opened eras and were then exploited by power structures: geometry - da Vinci -- Catholic Church
Fuller puts forth the idea that cosmic energy and the way the mind starts to understand cosmic law have helped humans develop computers. [Alan] Turing was more interested in binary systems and chess, not so much cosmic energy. Mathematics is the most powerful way of processing cosmic energy, but the development of the computer was much more linear and controlled than the way Bucky presents it. Binary system is more flat-world oriented than 6 positional cosmic engineering. I wonder if this 6 positional system was engineered from the start if computers would have developed differently.
Navigators lived alone off of the islands and the kings and rulers came to them to produce miracles, it sounds like a video game, the navigators brought treasures back to the mainland which were viewed as gifts from the gods. The power structure seems to have been there from the start, it makes you wonder whether it's a fundamental "human-herd' type thing. He criticizes the power structure a lot but I wonder if it is how society is engineered from start. We have to get rid of it somehow, but not everybody is like Fuller and I think this is a problem with some of his ideas.
Fuller claims that the Greeks oversimplified geometry, you can't have spheres of nothingness, it doesn't exist. Roman maps of everything outside the empire as "wilderness' reflects political realities rather than on the ground reality.
The danger of oversimplification is mirrored in this chapter, people are "fooled by randomness' and don't take into account alternate histories or futures. Oversimplification made it very easy for the powers that be to exert total control because reality was funneled into a very particular worldview and alternates were deemed heretical and impossible.
I like the 0 as totality, but I see a big period or dot as spherical, while 0 is a whole hole, waiting to be filled ie. emptied of it's zeroness. DD
The Yahoo! Group Synergeo and the SUNY Buffallo Geodesic Listserv are active lists just waiting to discuss The-problem-of-to-day. Lots of smart people there. SNEC is another resource I hope you know about and use.
Dick Fischebck
Maine
Hi Andrew
As far as I understand, BFI and Bucky's family have released ------for free!------ not just _Synergetics_ but several other Bucky books in their entierty. The board knows that money, royalties and the such are NOTHING compared to the global crisis we all face. If Bucky's explorations can help save the world, BFI is all for it. Ask Allegra or Jaime or any board member if you don't believe me.
"One other major problem, as far as I know, is that the Buckminster Fuller Estate is not interested in releasing Bucky's books for free. Has this issue been addressed? I'd like to know."
Richard Fischbeck
Randome, LLC
http://www.freewebtown.com/randome
Jochen,
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Yes, I think that a Wiki format would be good for an Internet based system. I've seen other websites use the Wiki technology for their own projects.
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One other major problem, as far as I know, is that the Buckminster Fuller Estate is not interested in releasing Bucky's books for free. Has this issue been addressed? I'd like to know.
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As you may not know, the US government has complete control over the entire Internet. All traffic goes through NSA servers. They also have published plans for locking down the Internet in the case of a national emergency, for reasons of so-called National Security. One more provably fake 9/11 like staged terrorist attack, and we might not be using the net much longer. (Ol' Nazi George don't want people thinking freely in his police state. No! I'm not paranoid, I'm a Design Scientist, and I have done my homework... unlike Joshua, who cringes at the very thought of the BFI promoting anything about Bucky's provably true political and economic writings, even though Bucky himself strongly promotes such thinking ones highest intellectual recourse, as stated on the last page of GRUNCH of Giants.)
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In this case an Internet based system would be useless. A stand-alone application would be nice. It could use the Internet for updates. It would be able to be customized to the users specific needs. It could be the basis for a Bucky Club, assuming the members had PC's.
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Another Idea would be to publish a new book with most of Bucky's books and footnotes included. It could also have other reference materials. This would be a large format book, like a telephone book, something inexpensive to print.
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Sincerely,
Andrew Owens
Thanks Elizabeth,
I didn't see Zero or Nothingness as Wholeness, but what you've shared does make sense to me. I remember that in my fleeting moments of "enlightenment" I have joked with my "Bucky" friends that "when I have nothing I have everything". Living in Singapore, a very small island country, about 224 square miles (if my data and memory is still correct) it is very expensive to own and operate, i.e. drive an automobile. But I get to be chaffeured around in many different cars owned by some of my Bucky Group members.
Does it sound zen?
Joohock
Andrew,
those are some good ideas. We are actually trying to accomplish some of that with the next version of this website and perhaps an interactive version of 'Everything I Know' which is something that we also have planned for the future. I think a completely annotated and hyperlinked version of all of Bucky's books would be a great resource I just think that it is going to require not only manpower (in terms of typing up all of the books that are not already in digital form) but also some serious consideration in terms of how things should be interlinked. With such dense material as his books, there are bound to be a tremendous amount of different interpreations of how his work fits together. (In our discussion of critical path elizabeth actually made the point that perhaps the way his books are intended to be read is that the connections between all of Bucky's thoughts form only in the mind of the reader...). But anyway I just think that this fact might present a little bit of difficulty in making this on-line resource useful as most people concerned with Bucky's work are probably going to have different ideas about how it should be linked together.
But perhaps this is something that is just going to have to emerge organically with a robust and annotatable wiki-framework like wiki-pedia...
Do you think that might be a good format ? to make a wikiPedia like buckyPedia which contains all of his work annotated by the community ?
Might be something worth thinking about!
- jochen
Hi Tasha,
I suggest the following books by RBF as additional reading:
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1968)
Utopia or Oblivion (1969)
Grunch Of Giants (1983)
And this book by Jay Baldwin:
Buckyworks - Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today by J. Baldwin
An exciting and provocative book by J. Baldwin, 30 year associate of Buckminster Fuller and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review for 25 years. This book presents Fuller's ideas from a very new, highly accessible and completely "now" perspective Contains over 200 photographs and drawings. Paperback.
Best,
Joshua Arnow
I think the reason they began to change things, as he said, was largely to support and reinforce political and religious ideas of the time. His section about the flat-earth theory and the unwillingness of many religious and political leaders to let go of it is really telling. The flat-earth idea allows us to envision a heaven, earth, and hell all parallel to one another, so ascending to heaven is really possible, as is descending to hell. In a spherical world this really doesn't hold up. I think the power structures realized this and it scared them.
"Either war is obsolete, or men are" - R. Buckminster Fuller
Jochen,
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I totally agree with your post, and with emphasis on the first and last paragraphs, I respond. In general, Bucky's writing is understandably difficult, and I appreciate your interpretation and analysis of his work. I wish more people would do so, especially those who have done extensive study across many of his books. Most people have a hard time cutting through his writing style. More often than not, when encountering such a writing style, many people get turned off and decide not to finish the book, or lose interest. This is the first and biggest barrier for anyone trying to promote and/or understand Bucky's work, and it should be of prime concern to the BFI.
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This is one of the many reasons I am so critical of the BFI (Other than the main reason that 'I do care about the BFI.'). Bucky's writings are very 'dense', and this should be obvious after 23 years. I do know that his ideas can be made widely accessible just by presenting them in a straightforward prose, and this can be done without losing what he was trying to get across. There are many reasons for his choice of writing styles, an important one being that in his day-and-age a straightforward stating of what he was saying, politically and economically, would land you in prison or the loony-bin on some trumped-up political charge. As for making Bucky's books more accessible, this is what I recommend:
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(1) Put all of Bucky's books online, and/or incorporate them into a standalone PC application with Internet connectivity. They should all be together in the same place clearly marked with the date they were published for historical context.
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(2) Design a system (user interface) that would allow people who have already read the books to clarify and expand on his ideas, i.e., add their own footnotes that others can comparatively read, and in particular, with purpose of making Bucky's writings more accessible to the general public. These footnotes would be organized on a word, sentence, paragraph, chapter section, chapter, and book basis, allowing detailed analysis and indexing of his writings. Just as important, the footnotes could be used to flesh out the 'inter-relationships' between specific ideas. This system would be the basis for what I believe should already exist, but doesn't; a Buckminster Fuller Scholarly network. (At one time in BFI's history, the plan was to scan Bucky's Archives into computers and put them on CD's or DVD's. Which could have been completed already if it had been allowed to continue. After all, Bucky created and maintained the archive, not only for his own purposes, but also as a 'gift' to humanity, as were his books.)
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(3) Make the books and footnotes searchable by keywords and conceptual ideas. These ideas and keywords could be any word, index entries, user defined ideas that Bucky may have overlooked in making the indexes, and by other individuals' analysis and interpretations of the texts as described in (2).
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(4) All the keywords and key-concepts could be hyperlinked together, to other books in the collection, and to external Internet sources, and/or local-hard-disk-saved versions of the aforementioned. For example, certain concepts could link to-and-from Wikipedia articles and other Internet sources. These Internet sources should also link back to the BFI online forums, and to a central database for collecting and distributing the hyperlinks and footnotes. Additionally, references to relevant non-Fuller texts would be included.
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(5) Having such a system in place would generate interest in Bucky's ideas in general, and would allow individuals or groups to quickly and efficiently research and understand his ideas. It would also facilitate the creation of multi-media presentations about Bucky's work, which could be used for BFI content. For example, if the BFI wanted to create a video series about Bucky's ideas for free distribution over Bittorrent or WebCast, this would be the state-of-the-art research tool to do so.
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Sincerely,
Andrew Owens
I'm new to all of this. I have not read "Critcal Path" yet but I intend to do so. I'm fascinated by the dialogue that is going on here within the bfi website.
When you think about it, 0 really is a totality. When your'e mapping the surface of the planet and when your'e thinking about our planet 0 becomes one of the most imporatnt aspects of understanding phenomenon.
I have to learn about what Mr. Fuller said about the history and development of math and how the Babylonians, Greeks and Egyptians recorded it.
I have not read "Critical Path" and will be getting it from the library tommorrow. Does anyone have other readings to suggest that might help me better understand the design science concept? I'm not a physics student nor even a very scientific person but am very interested in the cultural, historical and education processes that bfi is involved in!
Tasha
pg. 32 last paragraph, I was with him until he said this but not sure what he means here in the conclusion. I agree that it's interesting to read from his perspective the history of the development of math and numbering. His claims that the Babylonians had it right and the Greeks and Egyptians began to change things.
He does talk about zero as nothing, but I find it interesting how in computers there is no real zero either, zero is a base or a starting point. Zero itself is counted as a position in indexing. Ex. 0 to 9 is 10 points. Zero always has to be included. There is a hacking technique regarding fence post errors, if you have 10 fence posts you really have 0 through 9. Sometimes programmers make mistakes and have it count to 10 instead of 9. When hacking you have to figure out where these mistakes are made and take advantage of them.
His idea that 'zero saves the day' is interesting because it allows us to go up one dimension and start thinking about fractions, but im not sure what he means by saves the day.
Similar to how white is a combination of all colors.
The perspective that computers are objective is flawed, the hardware and software developers bring their sujectivities to the development process, thereby creating a completely subjective experience.
The axial age - Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Pythagoras all existed with a 500 year period.
Cultural historian Rich Tarnas has mapped the evolution of human achievements since the beginning of
recorded time in relation to the movements of the outer planets' , and particular periods in time where revolutionary, and i;d say, epoch-making individuals and ideas came emreged - within 300-500 years of each other. A short period when mapped against the entire existence of humans. He posits a loose causal or relational connection between the celestial bodies' movements and human evolution.
There is a difference between simplification and something that is simple. A simple concept, if rendered in its full potential invites you to understand vast complexity - Fuller's elegantly simple geometric concepts invite you to comprehend the unfathomably complex structure of nature. It is interesting to read Critical Path in conjunction with the Nature's Design course we are offering right now at BFI.
From the beginning the power structures have shaped how we experience reality. The structures in which we exist - politics, economy, religion, built environment - are based on a form of math which
simplifies and leaves out major ideas and much of reality. The actual system or natural order is obscured. By extension you could claim that due to our total sublimnation by the prevailing sytstems, our own experience is a greatly reduced experience of what is possible as a human being - as a natural form.
Some number theory talks about the meaning of 0 and how there is an equivalence between the cipher, which Fuller wirties, is a symbol for 'nothing'. In some number theory the idea that is posited is that 0 represents wholeness rather than a negation of something. The 0 is a sphere, a whole, you
don't start from nothing when you calculate, you start with an undifferentiated whole. Zero is actually a totality, undifferentiated. Every number that follows represents a separation or differentiation from that whole.