What’s it like to share more about Buckminster Fuller in schools? I’ve done some experimental curricula for both pre college and college level courses, and tested them with willing participants.
Sometimes I brand what we’re learning as Martian Math, opening the door to ETs maybe having different concepts than we do. Certainly Synergetics is somewhat alien.
I contextualize Martian Math with a storyboard: ETs and Humans are working together on a hydroelectric project i.e. a dam. So now we need to train some humans to understand the Martians better, in order to collaborate more closely. This is that training, I tell them.
That’s the story in the background, encouraging an imaginative interplay of geometry and science fiction.
Let me take you on a tour of some of these experiments, taking place at different times in a variety of venues, as the relevant technology has continued to improve.
Bucky Inspired: Comprehensivity to Understand and Change the World
Sunday, May 7, 2023
Sign up on Meetup for the online event presented by 52 Living Ideas, Sunday, May 7, 2023 at 6:00pm Pacific Time.
Design Science
Bucky Fuller is credited for popularizing a lot of memes, some of which developed into full-fledged physical artifacts, such as the geodesic domes, which blossomed everywhere in architecture, most impressively on the industrial scene, but also in the form of do-it-yourself affordable shelter solutions.
However “the industry industry missed” (Archibald MacLeish) is still missing for the most part. We have the mobile home industry instead, which gets little input from the aerospace sector. Fuller’s overall strategy was to introduce more tension over compression, as a design principle, thereby making artifacts more performant per pound.
He pointed out this was a general trend: as humans become more confident and competent with a technology, they optimize it to become less wasteful of resources. He called this trend “ephemeralization” (Arnold Toynbee: “etherealization”). Ephemeralization was evidence of our growing mastery of the generalized principles (or “natural laws” as we say in English).
Other memes he coined were more nebulous in terms of outcome. Consider his “design science revolution” (DSR) aimed at ending world hunger (The Hunger Project), bringing electricity to currently under-served millions (World Game), and improving the general public’s comprehension of our human potential (Synergetics).
Read the full article on Medium.
Trimtab
Buckminster Fuller made it his life’s mission to be a trimtab. He had his epitaph read, “Call me Trim Tab.” He was “thinking about what one little man could do.” To learn more and to find how many people have been inspired by Buckminster Fuller, follow the Bucky Inspired series of presentations offered by 52 Living Ideas.
The Trimtab publication is being offered as a way to learn, connect, share, and act as a murmuration of human beings, applying a similar experiment, Guinea Pig B, to be a trimtab, but expanding the scope from the influence that one individual can have to the influence a creative, collaborative, self-organizing learning community can have.