Bucky was wrong in a fundamental way: It's not about inventing things. Inventions have nothing to do with whether or not the world will 'work for everyone.' It's about ethics for one thing, but there is a more serious dilemma at the very heart of the question of making the world work for everyone, which is the question of 'sameness' particularly in the realm of thought. If every homeless person is to be housed, a lot of people will need to consider this a priority. First its and ethical problem: Should we house the homeless? Next its a rhetorical problem: convincing people that it ought to be done, which is precisely a question of creating the same thoughts in a great number of people. But this is precisely the practice of politics in a very fundamental way. Just designing a building does nothing to solve the problem. Fuller fail precisely in 'question framing.' He presumed that all the problems of he world were predicated on his axiom: "there's not enough to go around," and that by inventing things there eventually would be. He kept repeating his mantra that there really is enough to go around, but this is a contingent phrase for whether or not there is enough to go around is contingent on inventing things when it is clearly not so. I don't think history shows that people have become homeless for a lack of a new housing design, or the lack of any invention at all. Indeed the more 'hi-tech' the world becomes the more homeless people there are.

I was very deepy involved in studying Fuller's though many years ago, but it seems to me a kind of dubiouos activity for those involved with the BFI to talk about housing people when the BFI does nothing to house anyone. Its also a little ironic too that Bucky and the BFI have had so many homeless followers.

At any rate, the question of 'sameness' is what was being sought after by Bucky, but moreover is central to the question of what we see happening in the world today, i.e., the contest between substantive ethical doctrines in the war between the Islam and the West. America's mission in the world is precisely to create political sameness, or identity, with western values, but so is the otherside of this war.

But is it ethical to create sameness? There's very little question to the fact that Fuller, though he may have said otherwise, was seeking sameness. Omni this and omni that. The world needs to be ruled by an omni-government? Or maybe just omni-thought?

I've mentioed Fuller a couple of times in a draft of a history book I'm writing, for what its worth.
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