Posted by: Waity
Institution: Aldridge State High School
Date posted: Wed May 6 2:40:49 1998
Message:
F. Buckminster Fuller created some pretty cool little ball thingies
Posted by: Waity
Institution: Aldridge
Date posted: Wed May 6 2:27:51 1998
Message:
Bucky Balls Rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Jesse E. Markham III (jtm@gnv.fdt.net)
Institution: Private Citizen/Gainesville, Florida, US
Date posted: Thu Jan 16 23:13:06 1997
Message:
It's a testament to how beloved Fuller was to have a scientist(s?) name a newly discovered form of carbon after someone not directly related to the discovery at all, but who "only" inspires exploration. Fuller's genius lies in his enthusiasm for looking at what already exists in new ways, not to codify and impose a paradigm for such considerations as exclusive personal glory, but rather to encourage creative thought regarding what already exists, to make the most efficient use of resources with the fewest number of assumptions, and in the process set an example for others with his very approach. Inventions like modern industry and nuclear science have proliferated with all kinds of assumptions about the value or importance of those enterprises regardless of the consequences. Fuller was ever mindful of consequences. He was impatient for them. He wanted to know how useful a thing was before he tried to sell it to anybody else. On the other hand, he would recognize the need for a change and invent something to accommodate that need rather than, say, create something and then create a need for it, a synthesis on top of a synthesis based on an assumption about the intrinsic merit of the idea, however artificial and intrusive its actual nature. He only assumed that something must be as organically graceful as possible. That is, he looked for the invention whose design would most conveniently and usefully complement the organic world to which it would be introduced. He strove to foster this kind of respect in inventing towards the natural world and to collaborate with the environment and everyone in it as much as he could, rather than create something to profit and/or merely please a handful of shrewd investor/elitists. If nothing else, this practice alone set him apart from the average mind as making him a champion of the community and everything in it: the cosmos as community.
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