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Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth Paperback – July 15, 2008
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In this accessible volume, first published in 1969, Fuller offers advice on how to guide "spaceship earth" toward a sustainable future
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. For more than five decades, he set forth his comprehensive perspective on the world’s problems in numerous essays, which offer an illuminating insight into the intellectual universe of this renaissance man. These texts remain surprisingly topical even today, decades after their initial publication. While Fuller wrote the works in the 1960’s and 1970’s, they could not be more timely: like desperately needed time-capsules of wisdom for the critical moment he foresaw, and in which we find ourselves. Long out of print, they are now being published again, together with commentary by Jaime Snyder, the grandson of Buckminster Fuller. Designed for a new generation of readers, Snyder prepared these editions with supplementary material providing background on the texts, factual updates, and interpretation of his visionary ideas.
Initially published in 1969, and one of Fuller’s most popular works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth is a brilliant synthesis of his world view. In this very accessible volume, Fuller investigates the great challenges facing humanity, and the principles for avoiding extinction and “exercising our option to make it.” How will humanity survive? How does automation influence individualization? How can we utilize our resources more effectively to realize our potential to end poverty in this generation? He questions the concept of specialization, calls for a design revolution of innovation, and offers advice on how to guide “spaceship earth” toward a sustainable future.And it Came to Pass – Not to Stay brings together Buckminster Fuller’s lyrical and philosophical best, including seven “essays“ in a form he called his “ventilated prose”, and as always addressing the current global crisis and his predictions for the future. These essays, including “How Little I Know”, “What I am Trying to Do”, “Soft Revolution”, and “Ethics”, put the task of ushering in a new era of humanity in the context of “always starting with the universe.“ In rare form, Fuller elegantly weaves the personal, the playful, the simple, and the profound.
- Print length152 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLars Muller
- Publication dateJuly 15, 2008
- Dimensions4.75 x 0.5 x 7.5 inches
- ISBN-100935754016
- ISBN-13978-3037781265
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Product details
- ASIN : 3037781262
- Publisher : Lars Muller; 1st edition (July 15, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 152 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0935754016
- ISBN-13 : 978-3037781265
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 4.75 x 0.5 x 7.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #152,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22 in Architectural Criticism
- #71 in Individual Architects & Firms
- #168 in Modern Western Philosophy
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Spaceship Earth provides a justification, based on Fuller's unique and compelling narrative of the history of western civilization, to reject specialization as harmful to the survival of our species. He reveals the great deception of shortages (energy, jobs, money) as a boldfaced lie by the world's most powerful interests (the "great pirates") and backs his assertion with compelling evidence. By putting boundaries on our thinking, e.g. the common prefaces to verbal expression we often hear, like "I'm not a lawyer," or "I'm not an engineer," that unfairly diminish the value of people's mental capacity to make moral judgments, we facilitate the "divide and conquer" strategy of the great pirates.
Original thinkers do not always command attention. People tend to refer to them as "ahead of their time," or "impractical," or even "dishonest." Amazingly, Buckminster Fuller enjoyed the opposite during his lifetime. A master of many disciplines, he received no less than 41 honorary PhDs., yet described himself as a "non-conforming misfit" and was expelled from Harvard University, twice!
The introduction is written by Fuller's grandson, Jamie Snyder, who lived and worked with Fuller for 28 years. He admits that Bucky's writing style can be complex due to his tendency to invent words and spin dynamic phrases when nothing else could express his thoughts. Snyder's suggestion is to just read through sections that are not immediately clear to get a sense of meaning, then after consideration, reread them. I found this technique very effective towards gaining an understanding Fuller's system-dynamical thinking style where it became complex in the later chapters.
Spaceship Earth conveys a vital message for humanity. Do not leave solutions to those supposedly "in charge" (politicians). Fuller advocates empowering everyone, literally, in the activity of innovating ways to do more with less in order to save our planet from the insatiable drive to consume every single drop of oil, every fish in the sea, and every breath of fresh air, before it is too late.
This book is suitable for all audiences, yet I think that young people may be especially able to embrace its message and integrate Fuller's concepts into their educational plans and life styles. If Amazon had a six-star category, this is the one book I'd place in it.
But, these concepts are not very practical. Life is not about finding the perfect path or process to follow; life is about finding the best options considering all of you localized limitations.
I do believe in his statement that given 100K people the freedom to purely think the ground breaking result of just one would provide for the other 99,999. The problem is the number of those remaining people who generate plans only to exploit the others; their tax on the system is much greater than just survival.
I give Bucky a pass on his cultural and scientific fallacies since his perspective is from the 60s. Facts have half lives and when he is misguided is reasonable given the time. I do not believe these issue would alter his final conclusions.
Those final conclusion is ... all of the Earth's population could easily remove the suffering of limited resources and destruction of our environment as long as we all place that as our highest priority.
I applaud this and agree with it. What is missing is how do we influence the world to also believe this? And, should we?
Bucky starts out by giving us his version of the great man theory of human development. Then he moves into our present world. Showing us how it developed and the great opportunities we have before us at this very moment and the very real power we have developed to wipe out all life. Bucky, however, is optimistic of our future. He says that we have the power to transform the world right now. With a bit of engineering and the right frame of mind we can re-design our world as if were were living on a spaceship. Where we have to look after everything, from cleaning our water and our air. Look after the sea and life forms that accompany us. Even looking after each other. In this book Bucky lays presents us with a plan that will solve a lot of the world current big problems.
If ideas had weight then this thin book would be impossible to lift up
The insights will open your eyes
Fuller explains just how we got into this mess - and how to get out of it
We should have listened. But there's still time.
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I found this book to be something of a curate's egg. In places it uses language to develop ideas in a really clear way. In other parts the language and structure of the description seems to make the ideas rather impenetrable. On balance, however, the ideas win through.
(Having found out a little more about R. Buckminster Fuller I have learned both that this is one of his more accessible volumes, and that his other books may well be worth the challenge.)
It is a book with some wonderful ideas, not least the one captured in the title, that the Earth is a spaceship travelling through space escorted by the Moon and following its mother ship, the Sun. Though written in the 1970 this metaphor, or perhaps its simply a realisation, provides a framework which encompasses many of the problems of sustainable living we are currently grappling with.
Equally the book has some very vivid and enlightening imagery with which to entice the reader to see and begin to challenge their current paradigm. It for example begins with a story of Global Pirates which is used to describe the recent history of western civilisation, its creation of empires and the division of the world into those that have and those that have not. In a dozen pages or so it describes our current paradigm for how the world works and some of the key characteristics of our environment and the thinking this has created.
For example our understanding of need and scarcity, the role of nationality, the use of knowledge. I found the description very thought provoking and began questioning many of the assumptions that drive my, and possibly our current behaviour. He outlined the assumptions that there will always be shortages of resources and food, which underpin a view of haves' and have-not's and our need to protect what we have, often at much greater cost than sharing what we have.
This is a thought provoking book, which though in parts challenging, is concise enough to warrant some re-reading. The ideas may shake your understanding and beliefs, which may be one of the most powerful ways of enabling change.
Son ideas muy interesantes, que aún hoy consideraría "futuristas", pese a que el autor ya auguraba los cambios que propone para finales del siglo XX.
El libro está en un inglés un tanto _denso_ (expresiones seguramente de la región del escritor), pero cualquiera con un nivel medio-alto de inglés podría atreverse con este libro.







