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bill_swanson's review against another edition
3.0
I read this book in the early 70s when I didn’t see how humanity would get out of the mess we had created. I appreciated his enthusiasm and optimism, but I didn’t really understand the choice we had between utopia and oblivion until I became familiar with the philosophy of Oscar Ichazo. Fuller tends to present the solution as technical, whereas Ichazo shows that this is fundamentally a spiritual problem. They both agree that the solution needs to be scientific: Fuller looks for a material solution and Ichazo proposes a spiritual solution.
loppear's review against another edition
4.0
A collection of essays, addresses, and statements by Fuller in 1964-65, making the argument that a) we now know there are enough resources in the world to sustain all of humanity b) because since the development of naval and aerospace technology (for a few hundred years, but not generally recognized) we have begun doing more-with-less but c) we're currently only getting the secondary benefits of this ephemeralization because it is directly developed for weapon- and war-making so d) accomplishing the success of 100% of humanity will not come through politics but d) through a design-science revolution in education e) reforming the environment in which humanity lives and is raised.
There's some strongly 60's idealism that seems necessarily quaint reading today, belief in the power of industrialization and television for good for instance. And a sense of urgency that is just a bit sad today, warning that waiting for the secondary benefits of development in 20 or 40 years (optimistic in itself!) is likely too late as we burn through our "savings account" of concentrated energy sources.
This collection is a little long and repetitive, but enjoyable to see the ideas repeated and reintegrated to different audiences; if you were to only read the chapters "How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe", "Utopia or Oblivion", and "Design Strategy" you would get all of it. (These don't appear to be available outside this collection, however.)
There's some strongly 60's idealism that seems necessarily quaint reading today, belief in the power of industrialization and television for good for instance. And a sense of urgency that is just a bit sad today, warning that waiting for the secondary benefits of development in 20 or 40 years (optimistic in itself!) is likely too late as we burn through our "savings account" of concentrated energy sources.
This collection is a little long and repetitive, but enjoyable to see the ideas repeated and reintegrated to different audiences; if you were to only read the chapters "How to Maintain Man as a Success in Universe", "Utopia or Oblivion", and "Design Strategy" you would get all of it. (These don't appear to be available outside this collection, however.)