Tag: bucky fuller

ASFO 2025–05–10

More public outreach — the Friends of the Haltom City Public Library annual Book Sale and Flea–for–All may seem an odd place to talk to people about atomic power, but you have to go where the people are. Also a quick calculation that Comanche Peak 1&2 have generated as much power since they came into service as 3700 large wind turbines in their whole working lives ; the new Pope and his priorities, with a quote from the famous encyclical letter of Leo XIII, On the Condition of the Working Classes ; and a scathing editorial from a Spanish grid executive and renewables proponent, explaining that the big blackout should not have come to a surprise, because integrating wind and solar into the grid is more expensive and difficult than the Spanish Government has been willing to face, and also pointing out that shutting down nuclear power is not compatible with reducing CO₂ emissions.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2025–05–13 “So ignorantly, myopically, and statically conceived and so obsolete is the whole housing art that its death led the Crash of 1929, since when its ghost script has been kept in rehearsal by US government subsidy at a total underwriting cost to date of $200 billion.” Finishing up Design Strategy, and moving on to the epilogue of Utopia or Oblivion. (Minor glitch at the beginning.)
  • 2025–05–16 “In this way we discover that the buildings, which controlled energy conditions of heat, cold, dry, and wet, were in effect machines because machines process and control energy. Because we are conditioned to think of the house as static, we fail to realize that the automobile is as much a part of the house as is the addition of a woodshed.” And with that, we complete our reading of Utopia or Oblivion : The Prospects for Humanity (1969) by R Buckminster Fuller.

ASFO 2025–05–03

Power outrage! in Iberia, and the Spanish Prime Minister runs his mouth off in a fashion which shows a disturbing degree of ignorance — and another in Pittsburgh, where the cause is a great deal more obvious. Also, more work on blast, and my advice for Mark Carney.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–05–06 “Minmaxfamfax” is a clue that we are continuing with Design Strategy from Utopia or Oblivion. Also there is a thunderstorm going on in the background.
  • 2025–05–09 “California is the center of the outermost jumpoff pad of humanity’s springboard.” Concept 14, World Community and Subcommunities of World Man, means we have almost reached the end of Design Strategy, and with it, of Utopia or Oblivion. We will probably finish the book Tuesday.

ASFO 2025–04–26

You can’t apply technological solutions to social problems — has there ever been a statement so widely and sententiously repeated, and so blatantly false? Also, the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster ; the world mourns a high–school teacher from Argentina ; progress toward blast №3 ; more on “nuclear batteries” ; and I talk a little about currency reforms.

Supplementary Show

2025–04–29 “Because man’s legs are so short and the planet Earth so big and because the few areas around it where he could find immediate vital support in his early days on the planet amounted locally to less than 5% of the earth’s surface, man has mistakenly identified himself during the past eight millenniums with the rooted vegetation rather than with the mobile vertebrates of which type he is a member.” Continuing with Utopia or Oblivion, we have the whole of Curricula and the Design Initiative, and a first part of Design Strategy.

ASFO 2025–04–19

Stardrive! When will we get it, and how? Perspectives on a “nuclear battery” and an “all–woman spaceflight” ; a little more about tariff and non–tariff trade barriers and their utility, the adage “de minimis non curat lex”, and the straw–man of the “US–made iPhone” ; and likely–final remarks on the gold standard.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–04–22 “Evolution is not confined to the organic man, but consists of the combined man and his environment.” The title piece from Utopia or Oblivion (1969) by R Buckminster Fuller. Also a recommendation for another book, Carry On, Mister Bowditch (1955) by Jean Lee Latham.
  • 2025–04–25 “Either war is obsolete, or Man is.” Conclusion of Utopia or Oblivion, but not of Utopia or Oblivion. Fuller discusses the reasons for failure of past forms of utopianism, and the radical differences in circumstances today.

ASFO 2025–04–12

Yuri’s Night! Find your local party. Mail Call! The significance of the prospective new power reactor at the University of Illinois. And more thoughts about industrial policy, world trade, and the old adage “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end”.

Supplementary Show

  • 2025–04–15 “Anyone can use the telephone. Any two can have any kind of telephone conversation they want. They can call themselves communist, capitalist, or any other kind of name. The telephone works for either. But the telephone shrinks the world for both, and disasters can be averted by means of it, and when disasters occur it brings swift help from great distances.” More from Utopia or Oblivion, continuing with How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe.
  • 2025–04–18 “The men and women who work on television get and hold their jobs through their diction, good vocabularies, confident tone, and pleasing personalities.” The conclusion of How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe.

ASFO 2025–03–15

Beware the Ides of March! I’m not yet back to doing a full show yet, but please accept these few minutes of commentary about geopolitics, the latest semi–successful lunar landing mission, my dental well–being, and the potential of “generative AI” to provide an always–on, personalized cult leader for anybody who is even remotely, momentarily susceptible. Exciting times we live in, to be sure!

Supplementary Show

2025–03–18 “Quite clearly, Man is coming into a completely new ecological relationship to his Earth, and quite clearly, we are accelerating into an entirely new relationship of Man to Universe. In speaking to you I have to take that statement as my fundamental premise, not just as an interesting aside. The problems of our moment are as unprecedented as they are vast. The solutions will have to be unprecedented and vast.” Picking up again with Utopia or Oblivion by Fuller, we finish Geosocial Revolution and begin How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe.

ASFO 2025–01–25

The present world situation, it is clear, is unsatisfactory — although hopeful signs are there to be seen for those who will but look. But why are those who have it all the most unsatisfied? Also, mixed news from Canada, stupid news from Chile, and even stupider, colossally stupid, news from Britain ; new additions to our archive of scanned nuclear–energy public–information materials ; and if you’re going to be in the Dallas area 14—16 February, come up and see us at FenCon.

Supplementary Show

2025–01–28 “With these interlinkages of the lever and channeled energy, Man is now in the wealth–making business, which is to use his brain to get nature’s vast energy patterns to do the energy work of supporting and regenerating him.” More from Geosocial Revolution in Utopia or Oblivion.

ASFO 2025–01–18

Has the capitalist owner–class, like its mediaeval equivalent (albeit with far less tangible reason), embraced the delusion that it represents a higher order of life than the working class? Will the USA, as a result, see a wave of CEO shootings in the coming year? Are our measures of historical time obsolete in the face of increased human life expectancy? Also, a little bit of astronomy, a little bit of space travel, and Mail Call! Two postcards from Canada this week, and a letter from Australia.

Supplementary Show

2025–01–21 “The fundamental and prior problem of Man’s surviving successfully on this little sun–orbiting spaceship, ‘Earth’, cannot be solved by political theory and is not to be left to the politician’s ultimate lever — war — hot, subversive, cold, or cool.” More of Geosocial Revolution from Utopia or Oblivion by R Buckminster Fuller.

ASFO 2025–01–11

The metaphenomenon of recurrent phenomena occupies a considerable part of my attention this week. Also, a recommendation for a book, The Flying Sorcerers by Gerrold and Niven ; a consideration of the Car Culture in America ; and a warning to be aware of the ape brain that lies between the lizard brain and the higher faculties of consciousness.

Supplementary Shows

  • 2025–01–14 “There is now a very large inventory of ways in which Man has been teaching, thinking, and accounting events and values which have no experimentally–demonstrated validity.” The remainder of Summary Address at Vision 65 just rounds out the hour (hey, it had to happen sometime), and provides the title for the book, Utopia or Oblivion.
  • 2024–01–17 “For every problem solved a plurality of new problems arise to take their place. But the problems need not be those of physical and economic survival.” More from Fuller, a short piece titled The World Game — How to Make the World Work, describing a very interesting computer simulation effort, and the beginning of a longer piece entitled Geosocial Revolution.

ASFO 2025–01–04

We humans, time–binding animals that we are, have now exhausted the first quarter of the twenty–first century. And what do we have to show for it? Colonies on the Moon, research outposts on Mars, expeditions to the asteroids and Jupiter? Peace, prosperity, and healthy ecosystems on Earth? Make better choices, children!

Supplementary Shows

  • 2025–01–07 “When we have something vital to say we can usually develop the means of communication. Today with our great vocabulary inheritance we squander meanings on unworthy causes and communicate little that needs to be said.” More of Utopia or Oblivion by Bucky Fuller, the tail end of Prevailing Conditions in the Arts, and the start of Keynote Address at Vision 65.
  • 2025–01–10 “We find that man is developing an increasing confidence in the way in which computers are resolving heretofore vexing and seemingly unsolvable problems.” Completion of Keynote Address at Vision 65, and beginning of Summary Address at Vision 65.