Who was R. Buckminster Fuller?
Bucky has Fourteen Concepts. They are
Concept One: Universe
Bucky always starts with Universe. This is his definition of it: “Universe is the aggregate of all humanity’s all time consciously apprehended and communicated experiences.”
Concept Two: Humanity
The human is not an accidental onlooker “who happened in on the ‘Play of Life,’ but an essential syntropic function of Universe.”
Concept Three: Children
“Focus on new life. Since children are the hope of the future and 98% of the environment’s positive or negative effects upon new life are wrought by age thirteen, it is obvious that effective work in advantaging life through environment can mainly be realized within the first thirteen years.”
Concept Four: Teleology
Teleology by Bucky’s definition means “the intuitive conversion by brain and mind of special case, subjective experiences into generalized principles…which permit the individual to reform the environment…so as to provide ultimately higher advantages for men” and to inspire others to do likewise.
Concept Five: Reform the Environment,
Not Man.
Bucky’s philosophy and strategy confine design initiative to reforming only the environment and never to emulate the almost universal attempts of humans to reform and restrain other humans by political actions, laws, and codes.
Concept Six: General Systems Theory
Using the generalized principles he has discovered, Bucky says “I always start all problem-solving with Universe, and thereafter subdivide progressively to identify a special local problem within the total of problems.” He thus attacks it comprehensively and anticipatorily.
Concept Seven: Industrialization.
“Industrialization consists of tools”. It involves “all experiences of all men everywhere in history.” Bucky sees it as inherently comprehensive and omni-interrelated in respect to all humanity. And he believes that, though subsystems of it are run shortsightedly by selfishly motivated people, the whole works inadvertently towards ultimately providing all men with higher standards of living….Because energy plus know-how is wealth, “the integrating world industrial networks mean ultimate access of all humanity to the total operative commonwealth of Earth.”
Concept Eight: Design Science
Design Science is concerned “with the scheduling of the complex interaction of the general systems events of industrialization.” The rapid advance of technology in one field- air transportation, for example – must be “comprehensively integrated with all other vastly accelerating environment relationship transformations.”
Concept Nine: The Service Industry
“Humanity is gradually trending towards becoming Worldians.” Therefore, the static appurtenances of life – houses, automobiles, even typewriters – will all be rented like telephones because of man’s increasing mobility. Amplifying this thought in another article, Bucky foresees man’s ability to deploy at will all over the earth and the solar system by means of autonomous structures made livable by our astronauts life-support ‘black box’. And he adds, “Quite clearly, man, free to enjoy all of his planets…will also be swiftly outward bound to occupy even greater ranges of the universe.”
Concept Ten: Ephemeralization
“The acceleration of doing more with less…will complete the task of providing enough for all humanity within another thirty-four years…despite political systems that deliberately divide society and set one group against another.” Bucky believes that without the interference of political systems it could be done in twenty years.
Concept Eleven: Prime Design Initiative
Bucky believes that it is essential for the individual, invention-developing pioneer to maintain his economic initiative and not get tied up with the massive capital-cum-bureaucracy of large corporations, despite the leverage of their wealth.
Concept Twelve: Self-Discipline
Instead of the obligation to make a living, Bucky substitutes the higher obligation of the individual’s syntropic responsibility in Universe.
Concept Thirteen: Comprehensive Coordination
Comprehensivity instead of specialization is Bucky’s key to successful design competence. His foremost self-discipline is never to try to sell one of his ideas to others. He will just design and test it, and wait for others, who need it, to come to him. He only goes where he is asked to speak because, if you force your ideas on people they listen unwillingly, but if they ask you to speak to them – especially if they pay a high fee -“they are very receptive.”
Bucky incessantly engages in trying to make all his previous inventions obsolete by designing better ones.
Concept Fourteen: World Community and its Subcommunities
Bucky believes that Chapter Three of World History is just beginning, in which world man will realize his potential for success as a function of Universe through his accelerating mastery of “vast inanimate, inexhaustible energy sources combined with doing more with less.”
Source: http://www.solutioneers.net/solutioneering/bucky4kids.html