Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity [Illustrated] [Paperback]

In its day (1969-72, when I first read it), this was one of those inspirational heartbreakers -- why can't EVERYONE see the promise of the approaching possible Golden Era? But with time (what, over 35 years now, since I first read it) even the great futurist himself seems a little dated. And I'd forgotten (or never really noticed before) how angry he could get, and not just at the Great Pirates who well deserve(d) it (especially considering recent economic news), but for those who had slighted him in the past as a gadfly of sorts. These lectures/expositions are a series of previously-published papers, and there is a lot of redundancy, but the basic question ("It's up to us, do we want to succeed or fail?") still rings true. And some of his ideas, like the World-Wide Electrical Power Grid, and the end of the Nation-States were absolutely brilliant in their foresight. The bottom line, however, and what I think will be his legacy, is to look at the world not only differently (the sun doesn't set, the world turns), but holistically (there is no up and down, only in and out)... and how about those buckminsterfullerene molecules -- they will change the world. We'll miss your kind, Bucky... we already do. (As a side note, I got to shake hands and speak briefly with Bucky after his Earth Day speech at Florida State University in 1974[?], just as the sun went down, and it still brings a tear to my eye to recall how both intelligent and innocent he was at the same time.)

In the 1960's, Buckminster Fuller lectured to anyone who would listen (and he had no trouble getting speaking engagements around the world) that shipbuilders, and then aircraft engineers, aerospace engineers, electronics engineers and companies in the business of building advanced weapon systems, had stumbled across principles for doing more with less, a trend he called "ephemeralization," which squeezed ever higher performances out of every pound of resources. By bringing the obsolete versions of these technologies onto the civilian market while going on to the next technological frontiers, these companies had inadvertently raised humanity's economic efficiency and started the process of overcoming traditional Malthusian limits. Fuller estimated that only 1 percent of humanity could live "successfully" on a physical level before the 20th Century because of the inefficient use of resources, but because of ephemeralization, by the 1960's the percentage of successful humanity had reached into the 40's. Fuller then argued (over and over again, which makes this book a bit repetitive) that a "design science revolution" led by 1960's college students could bypass political barriers and in a decade or so bring this level of success to "100 percent of humanity," even with population growth, which Fuller expected would stop once everyone became sufficiently affluent.

Well, 40 years have passed since then. We still don't have anything near "100 percent of humanity" living as a physical success despite enormous economic growth since then (and many countries have slipped backwards), so what happened to all those trends Fuller claimed he identified from the scapbooks he kept and called his Chronofile? (I would especially like to see the "500 pound black box," costing $2 a pound in 1960's prices, that Fuller predicts on pages 432-3 would come out of the space program and supply an Earth-based household with its needs for fresh water and sewage recycling without a plumbing hook up. Perhaps we never got that because the manned space age effectively ended over 30 years ago after the Apollo moon landings, an example of technological progress hitting limits instead of shooting off exponentially.)

And why does Fuller still have a cult following? He seems way over-rated as an inventor, considering that his most famous invention, the Geodesic Dome (which he might have cribbed from a German architect who built one over a planetarium in the 1920's), just doesn't work that well as a practical shelter. In fact, we've seen many of his domes demolished and replaced with more traditional structures since the 1960's.

Contrast Fuller with Ray Kurzweil, a current celebrity inventor who lectures to everyone who will listen about the Singularity. Kurzweil, like Fuller, has drawn graphs which allegedly show trends to support his vision of the future; but Kurzweil, unlike Fuller, also has some inventions to his credit which happen to work and do useful things, like music synthesizers and reading machines for the blind. But despite Kurzweil's more solid accomplishments, I suspect he'll resemble Fuller as a failed futurologist in another couple decades.

On the bottom line, "Utopia or Oblivion" has some historical value; but like a lot of gee-whiz books about "the future" published in the 1960's and 1970's, it makes for disappointing reading in the real 21st Century. Fuller's false alternatives of utopia or oblivion failed to take into account man's ability just to muddle along.

Series of Essays. I was mostly interested in the title essay. Fuller is circuitous and long-winded with a few good "kernels" hidden within :-)