Prime Time Replay:

J. Baldwin
author of BuckyWorks:
Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today


MsgId: *infinities(108)
Date: Fri Nov 7 20:58:03 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

Good evening and welcome to OMNI's Infinities Chat. Tonight our featured guest is J. Baldwin, inventor, teacher, and author of "BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today" (Wiley, 1997). Thank you for being here tonight, Mr. Baldwin. As soon as you're ready, J.B., we'll begin.
MsgId: *infinities(110)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:01:46 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Hi Peggy here I am.
MsgId: *infinities(111)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:02:50 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

Thanks for coming! Please tell our guests how you came to write this wonderful book, which has been described as an inspiring celebration of R. Buckminster Fuller - - the man, his ideas, his inventions and his legacy for our future.
MsgId: *infinities(112)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:13:04 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

I wrote the book after asking about 300 young people at a lecture if they had ever heard of Bucky Fuller. Only one hand was raised. Its owner asked, "Wasn t he the dome guy?" With none of his many books in a typical bookstore, and his ideas generally ignored in architecture and engineering schools, his ideas are effectively censored. Yet they hold many of the answers to some of the worst problems we have today.

I decided to write a book that would serve as an intro to his work. I'd aim it at 19-year-olds, but would also include enough stuff to interest folks who already knew of his work. It would have lots of pictures (more than 200, it turned out). Because talk is cheap, and despite lots of hype about the digital world, the fact is that even the most extreme hacker lives in an analog world.

I wrote the captions in a way that will give most of the story to readers who just skim the illustrations without attending the main text. I kept the whole thing tight and made no attempt to include everything. It's an intro, and I hope readers will read Bucky s writing and gander his stuff on their own. Some of Bucky s writing may be hard to understand, particularly by the sound-bite crowd. I tried to give enough of a background in simple lingo so that general readers could more easily tangle with the tough stuff. Tested it on some young folks, and they seemed to like it. It s rather casual for Wiley, a serious academic publisher. I m glad they let me do it this way.

MsgId: *infinities(116)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:19:47 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

You've said in the book that Buckminster Fuller worked 50 years ahead of his time. Can you tell us about some of his inventions or ideas that have particular relevance today, even though Fuller himself has been gone for 13 years now?
MsgId: *infinities(117)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:22:38 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Bucky said that he worked 50 years ahead so that we would have the things we needed to overcome critical problems that he saw coming. He didn t regard this as predictive in the usual see-the-future-in-a- crystal-ball-way. Consider if you were in the mountains and there was a terrific cloudburst. You could "predict" that there would be a flood in a town downstream. But it isn t a guess; it s inevitable. That s how he saw things.

So he knew we d run short of resources, and pollute ourselves into trouble. He called for a Design Science Revolution to figure things out before doom became inevitable. "More-with-less" was his motto. We'd now call that "replacing mass with information." It requires research, good science, resource efficiency, know-how, and, most important, systemic thinking. Our education rewards specialists. He recommended that we attend connections between specialties. That's what the study of ecology does. Omnidisciplinary as nature is, rather than multidisciplinary, which is merely an academic convenience.

He said that "good hardware is one of the few irrefutable proofs of clear thought." During his lifetime, he worked especially with shelter because that is the furthest behind technically. Houses being built today are essentially using technology that is 200 years old! Held together by friction and gravity, and very wasteful of material, energy, and people s time. He also attended automobiles. His 1933 Dymaxion car was as long as a stretch limo, could seat 11 people, go 120 miles per hour, and got about 30 miles per gallon. It had three wheels (no need for any more), three chassis, rear engine, and front-wheel drive. It steered from the back and could U-turn in its own length. Not bad for 1933, or now for that matter.

He suggested correctly in 1968 that education would become interactively electronic. At the time of his death in 1983, he was working on the geometry of light, and a computer laid out geodesically (because geodesic geometry - the same as is used in his remarkable domes - is maximumly efficient geometrically.

MsgId: *infinities(121)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:30:00 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

Fascinating! He truly was ahead of his time. We can't talk about Buckminster Fuller without talking about domes. I can't think of any other design that so perfectly illustrates the concept of "futuristic." What make the geodesic dome so special?
MsgId: *infinities(122)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:33:54 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Geodesic domes add ultimate strength, as they are completely triangulated. The pattern you see on, say, the huge dome at Disney World in Florida, is the pattern of where the stress wants to go naturally. Rather than just the opposite of nature, Bucky thought it would be a good idea to just put the structure where nature wanted it. You can see the geodesic pattern in eggshells, breases, eyeballs, testicles, and many viruses, among other things. Bucky thought that the structure of atoms would probably turn out to be geodesic.

Geodesic domes are the only structures that get stronger as they get bigger. They have proved to be the strongest structures of any. There are about 300 000 geodesic domes in use today, making Bucky the architect with the most buildings made using his discoveries. By the way, he didn t use the word creativity. He said all we can do is discover, what nature permits. Geodesic domes lend themselves well to mass production, getting away from what he called the "craft and graft" industry of hand-building homes and other buildings where the handicraft bestows no advantage whatever, and drastically raises the cost.

Bucky called architects "Exterior decorators." Think if your car was built in your driveway by a squad of artisans using crude hand tools to execute a design resembling some architectural style fad hundreds of years old. The materials would sit in the rain for the many months of construction, and the car would cost very close to the cost of a house.

It might or might not work well. Worse, you d have to get a permit in every town, and have the things inspected over and over by bureaucrats as it was made. Bucky was neutral about wooden domes of the sort you see offered as plans and kits. He lived in one that leaked like a sieve. I am less kind. I think hand-made domes fashioned from the usual easily degraded materials used in conventional constgruction don't exploit many of the advantages of a dome.

Geodesic domes have a reputation for leaking. Most leakers are the wood kind. Bucky sneered, "Why did you make it with holes in it? You wouldn t make a boat that way!" But it turned out that geodesic domes leak if they are not properly designed to take into account the expansion and contraction of the geodesic pattern and temperature changes. Most dome makers have long since solved the problems. Mine are made so they can t leak, which is better than don t leak.

MsgId: *infinities(131)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:45:01 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

"Can't" is always better than "don't," it's true. Another great concept of Bucky's that you describe in the book is "World Game." Can you explain the concept to our audience, please?
MsgId: *infinities(132)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:46:36 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

World Game is a concept Bucky developed in which worldwide data is collected about resources, people, customs, economics, and everything else. Originally, he proposed projecting the computer data dynamically on a huge sphere (geodesic, of course) enabling United Nations reps to try patterns of fair distribution and cooperation. He thought that with good information, it would become clear that peaceful cooperation would be best for everyone, everywhere, including businesses. The World Game Institute in Philadelphia presents sessions and workshops using a basketball court-size world map to illustrate the numbers in their enormous data bank. It is quite instructive and getting more influential.
MsgId: *infinities(134)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:48:58 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

We all have the same 24 hours in every day, yet Fuller seemed to get more work done in a day than others could. Was the secret his sleep pattern or diet?
MsgId: *infinities(135)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:50:32 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Bucky thought that we need eight hours of sleep only to repair the physical damage done in the previous sixteen or more hours. If we catnap briefly when tired, the physical damage doesn t need so much time to repair. He suggested that what we really need sleep for is to record what our senses have brought in, integrate it with our memory, and see what our subconscious can do with it. It worked for him; he got along on less than four hours for much of his life, and had amazing vitality even when in his eighties. For many years, his diet consisted only of steak, prunes, Jell-O and strong tea at every meal. But he didn't adjust that to exercise and finally had to change in order to control his weight and cholesterol. Must have worked for him - - he was still truckin at 87. I ve tried the catnap bit, and it seems to work well. The downside is that your mate has to have the same schedule. That s much harder to do. Bucky couldn t get that right either.
MsgId: *infinities(138)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:55:18 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

That sounds like a pretty daunting task -- and coordinating an odd schedule and diet with one's partner can't be easy. Another point you make in the book is that Bucky wasn't looking to make big bucks from his inventions. What was it that soured Fuller on ventures whose primary goal was money-making? Most people would think that's a top priority.
MsgId: *infinities(139)
Date: Fri Nov 7 21:57:06 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Bucky explored what he thought needed exploring. After his 32nd year, he didn t have moneymaking as his goal. That idea came from noting that all other animals don t have to make a living. Squirrels don t have to buy the nuts. He figured that if we did what nature had intended us to do, we d be taken care of one way or the other. He didn t consider this daring or even altruistic, just good sense.
MsgId: *infinities(141)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:00:24 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

With so many incredible inventions - - and many that seem to be such a perfect fit for today's problems - - how is it that Fuller is not better known?
MsgId: *infinities(142)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:04:37 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

(By the way, geodesic domes, which are one of the few structures that are earthquake proof, are illegal in San Francisco.)

Also, Bucky s books aren t seen as "new" by current marketers, even though they are still way ahead of most of what you see in popular media. And, he was not a specialist in a society that rewards specialists. Nor was he a generalist in the sense that he knew a little about a lot of things.

He was a comprehensivist, a person who discovers and analyzes systems. He was well aware of his lack of fame. I heard him many times introduce himself as "the world s most successful failure." But, of course, he wasn t a failure at all.

MsgId: *infinities(144)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:07:07 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

Where can people turn - besides your book - to learn more about Bucky and his works?
MsgId: *infinities(145)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:13:16 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

When I started "BuckyWorks," there were only a few Buckminster Fuller sites on the WEB. Just two years later, there are more than 100 and the number is growing rapidly. Just tell your browser to find Buckminster Fuller. You'll also get results from "Synergetics," Dymaxion," and "geodesic" as keywords.
MsgId: *infinities(146)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:13:49 EST 1997
From: OMNI_Moderator_Noonan At: 152.163.206.236

Excellent -- we'll have good surfing for "BuckyWorks"!

I'm sorry to say we're at the end of our time for tonight. This has been an extraordinary adventure. It was a privilege to read your book, J. Baldwin, and to have you here with OMNI tonight to share your insights on Buckminster Fuller and his works. Thank you very much for joining us in Infinities!

And to our audience, be sure to pick up a copy of "BUCKYWORKS." It's a very understandable, fun to read book - - and a great way to become acquainted with Buckminster Fuller, his ideas and his inventions. You'll want to know more, and toward that end, the author has included a wonderful bibliography (with comments and suggestions) in the back of the book that show you where to find more information or learn more about the "BuckyWorks" covered in the book. Good night, everyone!

MsgId: *infinities(149)
Date: Fri Nov 7 22:15:49 EST 1997
From: jaybaldwin At: 152.163.206.87

Thanks: JB


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