… automation replaces the automatons.” (pg. “… computer … made man obsolete as a physical production and control specializing - and just in time. 28)įuller exemplifies different species that have gone extinct due to over-specialization, and uses that to bridge the gap to a solution, which had already presented itself in 1969 and is evermore evident today: computers. 27) And thus was ushered in our tendency to specialize as “only the king’s son received the kingdom-wide scope of training.” (pg. I’m the only one who minds everybody’s business.” (pg. 22), saying then, “But each of you must mind your own business or off go your heads. With this power and wealth, Fuller posits, these Pirates found preeminent local leaders who they enlisted as their followers (“There was great safety in the mental dullness of these henchmen.” pg. These Great Pirates had the first “comprehensive perspective” of human settlement and existence, traveling to faraway lands and meeting different peoples and cultures, using that experience to better universalize their own skills and knowledge, giving them an edge at sea and thus more power when on land. He then in one chapter, origins of specialization, speaks of Earth’s first “world men”, in boat masters, seafarers, and, he calls them, Great Pirates. He correctly points out our trend toward becoming a “World Man” (Man used humanistically), and with that connectivity bringing about our dire need to cooperate, for the sake of survival for all.Īnd yet, he says, “Despite our recently developed communications intimacy and popular awareness of total Earth we, too, in 1969 are as yet politically organized entirely in the terms of exclusive and utterly obsolete sovereign separateness.” (pg. Quickly he transitions to defining our tendency toward specialization, which in a society would manifest as acute compartmentalization. He begins as any of my favorite thinkers would, “I am enthusiastic”. Seeming lofty and out of my league scientifically and technically, I waited at least to try reading one of his books, until finding Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth for $4 in a used book store. I had heard the name “Buckminster Fuller”, “RBF”, or “Bucky Fuller” before, and it was always associated closely with the geodesic dome, a structure whose complete meaning is still clouded to me, save for that it has something to do with synergy and tetrahedrons. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R.
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