Buckminster Fuller: The 50-Year Experiment; No. 2; At Home in the Universe

<v Dan Drayson>From San Francisco, New Dimensions Radio PRESENTS Buckminster Fuller, <v Dan Drayson>The 50 Year Experiment, a look at the life and work of a 20th <v Dan Drayson>century genius. [music] <v Claude Stoller>I think that in very general terms, the real lesson is <v Claude Stoller>that we have a very great responsibility <v Claude Stoller>as as keepers of the technology to humanity. <v Claude Stoller>It sounds corny, but that's really what what Bucky is saying. <v Claude Stoller>[music] <v Speaker>I think he may be remembered in another 20 years, almost as a religious figure, <v Speaker>because ultimately he is the purest expression of a belief in benign technology <v Speaker>and in a benign technology that we largely haven't realized, which makes him, I think, <v Speaker>more spiritual figure than anything else.

<v Speaker>[music] <v Brendan O'Regan>What under lies? All of that really is a <v Brendan O'Regan>sense that nature operates by virtue of the existence of certain geometrical <v Brendan O'Regan>principles which, if they could be discovered, would provoke- <v Announcer>Funding for this program was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts <v Announcer>and by the members of Friends of New Dimensions. <v Announcer>[music] <v Dan Drayson>From San Francisco, New Dimensions Radio PRESENTS Buckminster Fuller, <v Dan Drayson>The 50 Year Experiment, a look at the life and work of a 20th <v Dan Drayson>century genius. [music]

<v Claude Stoller>I think that in very general terms, the real lesson is <v Claude Stoller>that we have a very great responsibility <v Claude Stoller>as as keepers of the technology to humanity. <v Claude Stoller>It sounds corny, but that's really what what Bucky is saying. <v Claude Stoller>[music] <v Speaker>I think he may be remembered in another 20 years, almost as a religious figure, because <v Speaker>ultimately he is the purest expression of belief in benign technology <v Speaker>and in a benign technology that we largely haven't realized, which makes him think more <v Speaker>spiritual figure than anything else. <v Speaker>[music] <v Brendan O'Regan>What under lies all of that really is a

<v Brendan O'Regan>sense that nature operates by virtue of the existence of certain geometrical <v Brendan O'Regan>principles, which, if they could be discovered, would provide us a cornerstone <v Brendan O'Regan>for understanding all sorts of other things. [music] <v Phil Catalfo>Hello again, everyone. I'm Phil Catalfo we're continuing with our <v Phil Catalfo>look at the career of Buckminster Fuller and the significance of his work <v Phil Catalfo>in this segment. We'll follow the growth of his ideas into the creation of the geodesic <v Phil Catalfo>dome, the dymaxion map, synergetic geometry, the concept of <v Phil Catalfo>ephemoralization and more. <v Phil Catalfo>For nearly 10 years until 1936, Bucky had no steady job. <v Phil Catalfo>He still managed in the late 30s to write his first book, Nine Chains to

<v Phil Catalfo>the Moon. The book was the first comprehensive expression of his philosophy <v Phil Catalfo>and the value of doing more with less and creating a design science revolution <v Phil Catalfo>that would improve humanity's lot. <v Phil Catalfo>In 1938, the year 9 Chains to the Moon was published. <v Phil Catalfo>Fortune magazine hired Bucky as a technology consultant. <v Phil Catalfo>The job at Fortune was perfect for him. <v Phil Catalfo>A sizable salary, the chance to prognosticate and influence the business and government <v Phil Catalfo>sectors and most of all, the opportunity to refine his ideas. <v Phil Catalfo>During this time, he developed his theories of synergetic geometry, which led to the <v Phil Catalfo>geodesic dome in the late 1940s. <v Phil Catalfo>San Francisco architect Albert Lanier and his wife, artist Ruth Asawa, <v Phil Catalfo>first met Bucky in the summer of 1948. <v Phil Catalfo>While he was teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, it was there. <v Phil Catalfo>And then that Bucky attempted to build the first big geodesic dome. <v Albert Lanier>He was essentially working with the material that makes

<v Albert Lanier>the slat for Venetian blinds, aluminum <v Albert Lanier>stripe, strips. We spent the whole summer calculating <v Albert Lanier>the dimensions for a dome or the framework for a dome that would have been <v Albert Lanier>approximately 50 feet. I'm not sure of the size. <v Albert Lanier>And then once we'd made the calculations, we rolled out the stripping and <v Albert Lanier>pre punched the holes where the bolts were going to go and <v Albert Lanier>rolled it up and labeled it. And at the end of the term, into the <v Albert Lanier>summer in a meadow there, we went out with this <v Albert Lanier>great pile of aluminum slab material <v Albert Lanier>and we were going to roll it out, bolt it together, and at some point it was going to <v Albert Lanier>stand bolt upright. <v Albert Lanier>The rest of the college gathered on a embankment <v Albert Lanier>overlooking this because it was supposed to be quite a show.

<v Albert Lanier>Well, we got it all unrolled and it began to rain and we bolted <v Albert Lanier>it all together. It never rose. <v Phil Catalfo>That first dome didn't stand, but the following summer, a smaller one did. <v Phil Catalfo>And since that time, some 300,000 geodesic domes have been built <v Phil Catalfo>in over half the countries of the world. <v Phil Catalfo>If you've been in hiding for the past 30 years and haven't seen one, let me describe <v Phil Catalfo>a geodesic dome as a way of dividing the surface of a sphere into equilateral <v Phil Catalfo>triangles. You might say it's nature's way of constructing a spherical <v Phil Catalfo>structure. Modern chemistry is proof that molecular structures are gedesic. <v Phil Catalfo>The geodesic dome stems from Bucky's discovery that it is the triangle and tetrahedron, <v Phil Catalfo>not the square and cube that are the basic building blocks of nature. <v Phil Catalfo>A triangle is the minimum structure that will hold its shape. <v Phil Catalfo>If you lean on a corner of a square, it won't look like a square anymore. <v Phil Catalfo>But a triangle is a stable structure.

<v Phil Catalfo>In fact, Bucky refers to it as the only structure. <v Phil Catalfo>When you work with a triangle, a tetrahedron or a geodesic dome, <v Phil Catalfo>you're working with unequaled mathematical economy. <v Phil Catalfo>That is why the geodesic dome has such properties as its ability to distribute weight <v Phil Catalfo>evenly throughout its entire framework. <v Phil Catalfo>Its ability to enclose a maximum amount of space with a minimum amount of surface <v Phil Catalfo>and its uncanny characteristic of growing stronger as it gets larger. <v Phil Catalfo>No other structure known to humankind does that. <v Phil Catalfo>To express these principles, Buckey had to invent or discover <v Phil Catalfo>a whole new kind of geometry. <v Phil Catalfo>This, of course, is synergetic geometry. <v Phil Catalfo>Buckey was convinced that the ancient Greeks had been erroneous in establishing the <v Phil Catalfo>supremacy of the square and the right angle. <v Phil Catalfo>That's contrary, he says, to nature's geometry. <v Phil Catalfo>Understanding nature's geometry required a new way of thinking. <v Phil Catalfo>One that matched the principles being understood.

<v Phil Catalfo>This philosophical inquiry culminated in 1975 with the publication of <v Phil Catalfo>Bucky's book Synergetics Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking. <v Brendan O'Regan>What under lies all of that really is <v Brendan O'Regan>a sense that nature operates by virtue of the existence of certain <v Brendan O'Regan>geometrical principles which, if they could be discovered, would provide us <v Brendan O'Regan>a cornerstone for understanding all sorts of other things. <v Brendan O'Regan>But that is really where Bucky's perception originates and operates from. <v Phil Catalfo>Brendan O'Regan is Vice President of the Institute for Noetic Sciences <v Phil Catalfo>in San Francisco. In the early 1970s he was Bucky's research assistant <v Phil Catalfo>while Bucky was a professor at Southern Illinois University. <v Phil Catalfo>He sees Bucky's synergetics as being tremendously broad. <v Brendan O'Regan>It is an attempt to describe what Bucky <v Brendan O'Regan>believes is the fundamental principles <v Brendan O'Regan>by which natural systems

<v Brendan O'Regan>grow, take form, take shape, function <v Brendan O'Regan>and die. And it is an attempt to elucidate <v Brendan O'Regan>the mathematical and physical principles in which things like that occur. <v Brendan O'Regan>So it is, in a sense, an attempt to provide <v Brendan O'Regan>an ultimate language for the definition description of systems. <v Brendan O'Regan>Now, that word must be seen in its broadest sense. <v Brendan O'Regan>I mean, any anything and everything is a system and he is really aiming at nothing less <v Brendan O'Regan>than an attempt to do that. So it is at once geometry, it's mathematics, it's <v Brendan O'Regan>morphology, its form. <v Brendan O'Regan>And he's really trying to go from subatomic to the <v Brendan O'Regan>macro galactic picture, which is really what physics tries to do. <v Phil Catalfo>It would be impossible for us to explain here in scientific terms the mathematical <v Phil Catalfo>principles of synergetic geometry. <v Phil Catalfo>What we can do is describe the implications. <v Phil Catalfo>For one can see here a dovetailing of Bucky's commitment to improving the lot of humanity <v Phil Catalfo>with his pursuit of nature's operating principles.

<v Phil Catalfo>If he could discover fundamental structural relationships, he felt all humanity would be <v Phil Catalfo>the beneficiary. <v Claude Stoller>A dome or a bubble is clearly the minimum weight of <v Claude Stoller>material that you get getting close to maximum volume of space. <v Phil Catalfo>Architect Claude Stoller first met Bucky in 1955 at Washington <v Phil Catalfo>University in St. Louis. He recognizes the relationship in Bucky's work <v Phil Catalfo>between design innovations and human needs. <v Claude Stoller>And so that's very, very clear and logical, and I think therein lies a lot of his <v Claude Stoller>fascination. He has always, always been interested in what he calls per pound performance <v Claude Stoller>of materials. You know, he wants to maximize the <v Claude Stoller>maximize our efficiency so that we can devote our energies to feeding <v Claude Stoller>people and to curing them and so-. <v Phil Catalfo>Of course, Bucky is not the first to want his inventions to serve humanity. <v Phil Catalfo>But he takes this interest to its logical and perhaps moral extreme. <v Phil Catalfo>Claude Stoller:

<v Claude Stoller>I think that in very general terms, the real lesson <v Claude Stoller>is that we have a very <v Claude Stoller>great responsibility as as keepers of the technology <v Claude Stoller>to humanity. It sounds corny, but that's really what it Bucky is saying. <v Claude Stoller>And he always has been concerned with world <v Claude Stoller>problems such as hunger and disease. <v Phil Catalfo>In his own way Buckminster Fuller, has all these years been fomenting <v Phil Catalfo>revolution, not a political revolution, but what he calls a design science <v Phil Catalfo>revolution, as he's often said, reform the environment, not man. <v Sim Van der Ryn>He was always thinking about these are the most <v Sim Van der Ryn>efficient, most resource conserving way of meeting, meeting <v Sim Van der Ryn>human needs. <v Phil Catalfo>Former California state architect Sim Van der Ryn. <v Sim Van der Ryn>What appeals to me the most about Bucky is this is the thinking <v Sim Van der Ryn>that's involved in what he calls

<v Sim Van der Ryn>- I have a hard time duplicating his language, but comprehensive <v Sim Van der Ryn>anticipatory design, and that's the part that that excites me. <v Sim Van der Ryn>And he's definitely the <v Sim Van der Ryn>pioneer in terms of looking at the design <v Sim Van der Ryn>of systems in a holistic way and the way in which you're trying to <v Sim Van der Ryn>use the minimum amount of resources and energy to do a certain job. <v Phil Catalfo>You've often heard it said that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. <v Phil Catalfo>In a word, that's called synergy. <v Phil Catalfo>But Bucky was able to perceive synergy not as an aphorism, but as a physical law. <v Phil Catalfo>And time and again, he was able to employ it as a kind of co-efficient of the processes <v Phil Catalfo>of design and construction. <v Phil Catalfo>And so the byproducts of these processes were synergistic. <v Phil Catalfo>Brendan O'Regan: <v Brendan O'Regan>One of the things about that characterizes I think synergetics in general is <v Brendan O'Regan>the focus and the concentration on the word synergy itself, which

<v Brendan O'Regan>asserted something that seems simple or now than than it did <v Brendan O'Regan>then. And that is that it's really <v Brendan O'Regan>the first organized statement that is against reductionism, if you like. <v Brendan O'Regan>The whole point of view of synergetics would argue that systems <v Brendan O'Regan>cannot be adequately or completely described in terms of descriptions <v Brendan O'Regan>of their parts and that when they are together functioning as <v Brendan O'Regan>a whole, that there will be properties and characteristics that are a function <v Brendan O'Regan>of their interaction as part of a whole system that will simply not <v Brendan O'Regan>be even present. When you take the system apart and examine it in that way. <v Brendan O'Regan>Now, that's a bit like saying that a hydrogen molecule <v Brendan O'Regan>on its own and an oxygen molecule on its own if you try to describe <v Brendan O'Regan>them and add them up mathematically doesn't mean you'll find out

<v Brendan O'Regan>everything you would discover about water in which hydrogen and oxygen <v Brendan O'Regan>combine. And and he uses many examples in cases where <v Brendan O'Regan>the structure of alloys, for example, where the combination of trace <v Brendan O'Regan>amounts of one element and with another product provides massive increases <v Brendan O'Regan>in strength, tensile strength or other kinds of strength of alloys. <v Phil Catalfo>And of course, massive increases in tensile strength would allow you to do massively <v Phil Catalfo>more with massively less. [music] <v Phil Catalfo>The philosophical word Bucky Fuller uses to describe the phenomenon of doing more <v Phil Catalfo>with less is ephemeralization. <v Phil Catalfo>The idea being that if you keep doing more and more and more

<v Phil Catalfo>with less and less, you approach the point where you're doing everything, practically <v Phil Catalfo>anything with next to nothing. <v Phil Catalfo>If that seems abstract, consider this anytime you find you're able to use a better <v Phil Catalfo>pot or stove or fuel and feed more people, your ephemeralizing. <v Phil Catalfo>If two people working together can get a job done in less than half the time, it takes <v Phil Catalfo>one to do it. They're ephemeralizing. <v Phil Catalfo>If you have a solar panel on your roof or if you recycle your household gray <v Phil Catalfo>water to irrigate your garden, you are ephermalizing. <v Phil Catalfo>Of course, none of these examples is truly synergistic in the way that Bucky's inventions <v Phil Catalfo>are. But it's plain to see that the concept of ephemeralization applies <v Phil Catalfo>to daily life in myriad ways and has had a profound effect on modern living. <v Phil Catalfo>The growing interest in alternative energy systems and in recycling common household <v Phil Catalfo>materials are just two examples. <v Phil Catalfo>Sim Van der Ryn remembers an unusual feature of an early household design of Bucky's.

<v Sim Van der Ryn>I remember in he worked with a group of graduate students at the University <v Sim Van der Ryn>of Michigan in '52 and they designed <v Sim Van der Ryn>an autonomous living unit and he had things like <v Sim Van der Ryn>showers that used an air compressor so that you get <v Sim Van der Ryn>this fine mist shower, you could take a shower with a pint of water and then all the <v Sim Van der Ryn>water was recycled. <v Sim Van der Ryn>He really anticipated a lot of work that <v Sim Van der Ryn>that has been repeated in the last 10 or 15 years. <v Phil Catalfo>And speaking of recycling, Bucky says that the recycling of metals has reached the <v Phil Catalfo>stage where it is as productive as mining or more so. <v Buckminster Fuller>Every time the piece of machinery becomes obsolete, you melt it up as much more <v Buckminster Fuller>concentrated than it is as all. <v Buckminster Fuller>So that now 18 percent of all of copper is <v Buckminster Fuller>coming out of scrap and not out of the mines, 70 percent of all the steel is coming

<v Buckminster Fuller>out of scrap. Every time something becomes obsolete, the average of <v Buckminster Fuller>all the things becoming obsolete is 22 years. <v Buckminster Fuller>Some totally all the metals get melted out every 22 years. <v Buckminster Fuller>Every 22 years we've learned so much more how to do much more with much less. <v Buckminster Fuller>Whether you just think about great big early computers into smaller computers right <v Buckminster Fuller>down to watch size computers. So every time comes around we can take <v Buckminster Fuller>out more people at high standards with the same amount of metal. <v Buckminster Fuller>We're now at a point where I don't even have to do any more mining. <v Phil Catalfo>One can well imagine what the landscape would look like if there were in fact no more <v Phil Catalfo>mining. Imagining or seeing what the world <v Phil Catalfo>really looks like is naturally a fundamental aspect of Bucky's work. <v Phil Catalfo>Clearly, these discoveries involve seeing the world in a wholly new and different way. <v Phil Catalfo>Buckey felt that one way to enable people to do that would be to devise a new, <v Phil Catalfo>conceptually different and more accurate map. <v Phil Catalfo>He was greatly dissatisfied with conventional maps which were and are mostly based on the

<v Phil Catalfo>Mercator projection first made in the late 16th century. <v Phil Catalfo>This projection shows the meridians of longitude as straight and equidistant <v Phil Catalfo>north-south lines. <v Phil Catalfo>The problem is that on the Earth, or to be more accurate on a globe, <v Phil Catalfo>these meridians are nearly 70 miles apart along the equator while they actually converge <v Phil Catalfo>at the north and south poles. <v Phil Catalfo>The Mercator map, of course, greatly distorts geographical features at any distance from <v Phil Catalfo>the equator. This gets Bucky's dander up. <v Buckminster Fuller>We're not in a perpendicular parallel situation which all sides are using all <v Buckminster Fuller>our world map, so-called classical world map of the Mercator map, <v Buckminster Fuller>which says that Greenland is bigger than South America is an absolute lie, even <v Buckminster Fuller>refused to have something to tell them all of the walls. <v Phil Catalfo>What he felt was needed was a map that would not produce unequally distributed <v Phil Catalfo>distortion. The Encyclopedia Britannica had said this could not be done. <v Phil Catalfo>Bucky did it. By drawing on a globe, a series of great

<v Phil Catalfo>circles now great circle is a line formed by a plane going through <v Phil Catalfo>the center of a sphere. <v Phil Catalfo>By doing that, he was able to plot a series of spherical triangles on the surface <v Phil Catalfo>of the globe. The result was an icosahedronal vector equilibrium, <v Phil Catalfo>a globe of 20 equilateral triangles drawn and cut out of paper <v Phil Catalfo>and laid flat. The map could be fitted together from any perspective, <v Phil Catalfo>showing all the landmasses unbroken for example. <v Phil Catalfo>The Dymaxion map was born to use its proper name, the Dymaxion <v Phil Catalfo>Air Ocean World Map. <v Phil Catalfo>Although we've presented them in reverse order, the Dymaxion map was actually the <v Phil Catalfo>forerunner of the geodesic dome. [music] <v Phil Catalfo>One of the byproducts of Buckminster Fuller's remarkable career has been his own unique

<v Phil Catalfo>language. Fulleres, as some call it. <v Phil Catalfo>Some find it astonishingly inventive and lucid. <v Phil Catalfo>Others find it opaque. <v Phil Catalfo>To some, it's lyrical. To others, it's dense and mechanistic, especially in written <v Phil Catalfo>form. Consider Bucky's definition of design science, <v Phil Catalfo>the scheduling of the complex interaction of the general systems, events <v Phil Catalfo>of industrialization. <v Phil Catalfo>He elaborates by saying that a breakthrough in any given field must be comprehensively <v Phil Catalfo>integrated with all other vastly accelerating environment relationship transformations. <v Phil Catalfo>In the introduction to his book, Critical Path, Bucky writes that <v Phil Catalfo>humanity is moving ever deeper into a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution, <v Phil Catalfo>irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity <v Phil Catalfo>from a complex or around the world, remotely deployed from one another, <v Phil Catalfo>differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating

<v Phil Catalfo>and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively <v Phil Catalfo>interconsiderate, harmonious whole. <v Phil Catalfo>It's not everyday language, at least not for most of us, but it makes stunning <v Phil Catalfo>sense when you ponder it, and it has that one quality Bucky most <v Phil Catalfo>requires of it, precision. <v Phil Catalfo>While some may find his language impenetrable, Bucky is all the while choosing his <v Phil Catalfo>words with utmost care, striving for language that would not only communicate new <v Phil Catalfo>ideas, but also embody the perspective that could perceive those new ideas <v Phil Catalfo>in the first place. Brendan O'Regan: <v Brendan O'Regan>There's an immediate language problem, which he partly fosters <v Brendan O'Regan>because he is often I remember said I would rather be not understood than misunderstood. <v Brendan O'Regan>And that's a nice position but it is unfortunate, if you're <v Brendan O'Regan>really hoping to be understood because people he has erected a jargon <v Brendan O'Regan>between himself and the world, but he didn't do it to be obstructionist.

<v Brendan O'Regan>He did it to try and describe to start a whole conceptual language that he feels <v Brendan O'Regan>operates from a correct perception. So he's very concerned with semantics and language. <v Brendan O'Regan>And many people think that's not as important. <v Brendan O'Regan>But but for him, it's it's crucial. <v Sim Van der Ryn>I mean, Fuller has developed the whole language, but I don't find it a very beautiful <v Sim Van der Ryn>language. It's a technocratic language. <v Phil Catalfo>As much as he admires Bucky's ideas Sim Van der Ryn is one of those who take exception <v Phil Catalfo>with Bucky's language. <v Phil Catalfo>Still, he puts the problem into perspective by seeing it in the context of a <v Phil Catalfo>philosophical dilemma that he and his colleagues grapple with. <v Sim Van der Ryn>See, in terms of the metaphor some of it has to do with how we see ourselves. <v Sim Van der Ryn>Are we like machines? <v Sim Van der Ryn>Are we trying to create two tools and technology which are more human? <v Sim Van der Ryn>And there again, I see kind of a difficulty. <v Sim Van der Ryn>It's a difficulty and of the metaphor

<v Sim Van der Ryn>and those all of us as designers and so on, we <v Sim Van der Ryn>are still living with a kind of Newtonian mechanistic metaphors. <v Sim Van der Ryn>We either have that or we become poets. <v Sim Van der Ryn>And then as poets, we're not effective as designers and we don't seem to be able to <v Sim Van der Ryn>communicate. <v Phil Catalfo>It's likely that Buckey would say that he was neither trying to be lyrical nor <v Phil Catalfo>metaphorical, that he wasn't trying to speak or be any particular way. <v Phil Catalfo>He's always tried to do only what he set out to do when he began his 50 year experiment, <v Phil Catalfo>discover nature's basic operating principles and express them as precisely <v Phil Catalfo>and as pervasively as he possibly could. <v Phil Catalfo>And using a noun as a transitive verb, he might say he was doing this <v Phil Catalfo>to advantage others. <v Phil Catalfo>[music] The lifetime commitment to advantaging others or to use a phrase that has gained

<v Phil Catalfo>popularity in recent years, making the world work, has been the overarching concern <v Phil Catalfo>of Bucky's career. In a way, his Dymaxion designs the geodesic <v Phil Catalfo>dome, synergetic geometry and even Fullerese have been benchmark's <v Phil Catalfo>in his pursuit of that grail. <v Phil Catalfo>But one Fuller creation is perhaps the ultimate expression of that concern. <v Phil Catalfo>We've all heard of war games, not the kind of hobbyists play, but the kind <v Phil Catalfo>played by military leaders in which they project various military contingencies <v Phil Catalfo>and try to perfect their strategies. <v Phil Catalfo>Well, Bucky devised his own game. Only in his game everybody wins. <v Phil Catalfo>He called it world game. <v Phil Catalfo>The object of the game is to inventory all the world's resources and needs and devise <v Phil Catalfo>schemes to utilize the resources to meet the needs. <v Phil Catalfo>Ruth Asawa: <v Ruth Asawa>He feels that there is really enough to go around. <v Ruth Asawa>I think that's the important thing that he's trying to convey to make the world <v Ruth Asawa>work. And that was what he was interested in, making the world work.

<v Phil Catalfo>World game workshops are held every summer and people come from all over the world to <v Phil Catalfo>take part. Meanwhile, the ongoing world game project continues to amass a wide <v Phil Catalfo>range of data. It was the world game, for example, that determined that the <v Phil Catalfo>amount of sulfur being lost in the smokestacks of industry was almost exactly <v Phil Catalfo>equal to the amount being mined. <v Phil Catalfo>And the world game has produced some bold plans for meeting global needs. <v Phil Catalfo>A worldwide energy grid, for example. <v Phil Catalfo>But World Game has not yet reached the scale on which it was conceived in the late 1960s. <v Phil Catalfo>Bucky estimated it would cost some $30 million. <v Phil Catalfo>Cheap at twice the price, considering the benefits to be gained. <v Phil Catalfo>But major funding was not forthcoming. <v Phil Catalfo>Albert Lanier: <v Albert Lanier>I think it's really, really tragic that he never got the government of this country to <v Albert Lanier>take on the project of inventorying the world's resources. <v Albert Lanier>I think that would have been an enormous contribution for this country <v Albert Lanier>to have made to the whole world because he says there's enough to go around.

<v Albert Lanier>It's just improperly distributed. <v Albert Lanier>This information is is not cataloged anywhere. <v Phil Catalfo>Well, with or without secure funding, world game continues, just <v Phil Catalfo>as all of Bucky's projects have continued, if you saw that they needed doing. <v Phil Catalfo>And for Bucky, World Game is an integral chapter in his ever expanding operating <v Phil Catalfo>manual for Spaceship Earth. <v Phil Catalfo>There are many of Bucky Fuller's ideas, books and projects which we haven't mentioned. <v Phil Catalfo>To tell it all could well take a month of Sundays. <v Phil Catalfo>All the information is available to anyone interested. <v Phil Catalfo>We'll give the address of Bucky's office in a few moments. <v Phil Catalfo>Rather than try to provide every last detail. <v Phil Catalfo>Perhaps these synergetic building blocks have been a better way to provide an overview. <v Phil Catalfo>What remains is to analyze the broader implications of Bucky's thought, <v Phil Catalfo>to assess the impact of his contribution to our time. <v Phil Catalfo>Why does he insist that there is enough to go around?

<v Phil Catalfo>How can he claim that we now have the option to make it? <v Phil Catalfo>And what can the little individual do? <v Phil Catalfo>We'll find out when we return with Buckminster Fuller, the 50 year <v Phil Catalfo>experiment. <v Phil Catalfo>I'm Phil Catalfo. [music] <v Dan Drayson>Buckminster Fuller, the 50 year experiment is a new Dimensions <v Dan Drayson>radio production written and produced by Phil Catalfo and <v Dan Drayson>engineered by Lou Judson with technical assistance by Robert Welch. <v Dan Drayson>Administrative and research assistance were Justine Thoms, Ruth Wrenn <v Dan Drayson>and Michael Thoms. <v Dan Drayson>If you'd like to know more about Dr. Fuller's work. <v Dan Drayson>You can write the Buckminster Fuller Institute 350 One Market <v Dan Drayson>Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1 9 1 0 4 <v Dan Drayson>or call 2 1 5 3 8 7 5 400. <v Dan Drayson>If you'd like a cassette tape of this program, if you'd like a tape catalog listing other

<v Dan Drayson>New Dimensions radio programs or have any other questions or comments, please <v Dan Drayson>write New Dimensions radio Department F. <v Dan Drayson>267. State Street. <v Dan Drayson>San Francisco. California. 9 4 1 1 4. <v Dan Drayson>Or Call 4 1 5 6 2 1 1 1 2 <v Dan Drayson>6. <v Dan Drayson>On behalf of the entire New Dimensions Radio family, this is Dan Drayson <v Dan Drayson>wishing you well. [music] <v Announcer>Funding for this program was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.