I spent the early part of this afternoon looking at Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome.
Who, you may ask, was Buckminster Fuller? He was my favorite theorist of technology and the human condition, also known as a futurist. He was and is still my favorite because his optimistic views - I and he would say they were not only optimistic but realistic - most closely agree with my own. He thought, for example, that human intelligence channeled through technology was the ultimate anti-entropic force, able to overcome the ubiquitous down escalator of existence and turn it upward.
This view has a plethora of practical significance. Just a few weeks ago, someone asked me how a media theorist would explain the fact that we have much more computing power in our current smartphones than our laptops of just a few years ago. "Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion principle," I immediately replied, citing the name Fuller gave for the phenomenon he noticed back in 1938 in his Nine Chains to the Moon, that as technologies are evolved, they do more and more with less and less size.
Unlike the myriad of easy critics in the academic world, Fuller saw technology as intrinsically, inescapably, and beneficially human. For the point of view of the interior mind, he also observed in Nine Chains to the Moon, there is no difference between eyes and eyeglasses.
Which brings us to the geodesic dome, a term Fuller took from earlier inventions, and applied it housing - "dymaxion housing" - which Fuller saw as the most efficient way, requiring the least amount of energy and human resources, to build efficient homes, offices, and structures for sundry human uses. The Dome at Woods Hole - pictured above - is oldest existing geodesic dome in the world, constructed in 1953 in Woods Hole in Falmouth, MA, and serving for many years as a restaurant. It's fallen into disrepair, and, just yesterday, my wife Tina saw a note on Facebook from Jessica Lipnack (an old friend of Tina's and mine, from the very early days of Connected Education), that she would be in Woods Hole today, as part of project to raise money for repair of the geodesic dome to full functionality.
We drove about an hour to see her at Highfield Hall near Woods Hole, and were rewarded not only by the first face-to-face conversation we had in decades, but the chance to meet and talk to Allegra Fuller Snyder, Buckminster Fuller's daughter, and see a small version of the dome, being constructed before our very eyes, to serve as a beacon for restoration of the original dome.
It was gratifying indeed to see the future still so much alive and kicking.
This view has a plethora of practical significance. Just a few weeks ago, someone asked me how a media theorist would explain the fact that we have much more computing power in our current smartphones than our laptops of just a few years ago. "Buckminster Fuller's dymaxion principle," I immediately replied, citing the name Fuller gave for the phenomenon he noticed back in 1938 in his Nine Chains to the Moon, that as technologies are evolved, they do more and more with less and less size.
Unlike the myriad of easy critics in the academic world, Fuller saw technology as intrinsically, inescapably, and beneficially human. For the point of view of the interior mind, he also observed in Nine Chains to the Moon, there is no difference between eyes and eyeglasses.
Which brings us to the geodesic dome, a term Fuller took from earlier inventions, and applied it housing - "dymaxion housing" - which Fuller saw as the most efficient way, requiring the least amount of energy and human resources, to build efficient homes, offices, and structures for sundry human uses. The Dome at Woods Hole - pictured above - is oldest existing geodesic dome in the world, constructed in 1953 in Woods Hole in Falmouth, MA, and serving for many years as a restaurant. It's fallen into disrepair, and, just yesterday, my wife Tina saw a note on Facebook from Jessica Lipnack (an old friend of Tina's and mine, from the very early days of Connected Education), that she would be in Woods Hole today, as part of project to raise money for repair of the geodesic dome to full functionality.
We drove about an hour to see her at Highfield Hall near Woods Hole, and were rewarded not only by the first face-to-face conversation we had in decades, but the chance to meet and talk to Allegra Fuller Snyder, Buckminster Fuller's daughter, and see a small version of the dome, being constructed before our very eyes, to serve as a beacon for restoration of the original dome.
It was gratifying indeed to see the future still so much alive and kicking.
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