[HN Gopher] 'Inventor of the Future' Review: Buckminster Fuller'...
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'Inventor of the Future' Review: Buckminster Fuller's Big Designs
Author : Caiero
Score : 23 points
Date : 2022-10-02 03:40 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Google considered a large geodesic dome for their Mountain View
| HQ. It would have been an improvement over the awful-looking
| thing actually built.
| sposeray wrote:
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Yet another article about Fuller that categorically dismisses his
| ideas and historical importance based on a few shallow
| misunderstandings that likely came from reading other shallow
| summaries rather than actually reading his work.
|
| Here are a few of the factual inaccuracies that this article uses
| to build a wholly incorrect view of Fuller:
|
| > attempts at industrializing housing production have failed
| again and again
|
| Manufactured homes are nowadays about 10% of new homes in the
| USA, hardly an abject failure.
|
| > Fuller chauffeured Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart to the
| White House--the car never made it to a production line. But its
| chubby front somehow portends the VW bus
|
| This is a deep misunderstanding of the important influence of the
| Dymaxion car on vehicle design. The reason it looks similar to
| the VW Bus is because the bus copied the 'forward control'
| concept, which radically increased the interior space and
| passenger count for a small efficient vehicle. To dismiss it as a
| funny coincidence is really ignorant.
|
| > Fuller also came up with the concept of "tensegrity"
|
| As Fuller himself admits, he did not come up with this concept,
| one of his students did, he only came up with the word itself.
| Fuller's contribution was showing examples of how concepts like
| this could help build a better future for humanity, e.g. by
| reducing the resources needed to construct buildings.
|
| > Fuller did not really understand that "design" means something
| altogether different at different scales
|
| This is a really absurd assertion, since it's one of the key
| focuses of his work- the geometric and mathematical implications
| of scaling designs. "Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of
| Thinking" talks about this concept he supposedly fails to
| understand in extreme depth.
|
| > Fuller did not accept evolution and saw the world as the
| creation of an intelligent god
|
| This is also untrue, he talks often about evolution as a fact in
| his writings, but does have some deep spiritual beliefs that
| inspired his self confidence and efforts. As far as I can tell,
| they have no connection with established religion, or any
| opposition to scientific concepts like evolution.
|
| > It is no wonder, therefore, that Fuller had little of use to
| say about cities and metropolitan areas
|
| Again, the author here clearly has read none of Fuller's work,
| and has no familiarity with which concepts he has a lot or little
| to say about. In this own article he talks about his concept of
| building a dome over Manhattan, which directly contradicts this
| assertion. In short- Fuller saw the haphazard unplanned design of
| cities to be massively inefficient, especially the massive
| surface area requiring huge amounts of heating and cooling. He
| came up with tons of ideas to increase the efficiency and
| livability of large cities and metropolitan areas.
|
| > Fuller's built forms--Dymaxion houses or geodesic domes--all
| have circular footprints and are at their best when positioned in
| the middle of an open field. Dense cities, on the other hand, are
| never made from circular footprints.
|
| This is easily the silliest assertion of the article- again an
| example of claiming Fuller never considered issues that he
| actually wrote entire books about. Really a huge amount of
| Fuller's work was on the mathematics of efficiently packing
| spheres into large systems, with direct discussions of the
| implications of this for constructing cities more efficiently and
| thoughtfully. This problem is a key focus of the book
| "Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking"...
| complete with pages and pages of diagrams of different ways of
| packing spheres and circles, and detailed discussions about the
| implications for urban design!
| blastro wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to write this out. I'm a big Bucky
| fan and I agree with your takes here.
| [deleted]
| digdugdirk wrote:
| "Buckminster Fuller's technological insights, while impressive,
| are not what we need today. We do not need grand designs and we
| do not need controlling designers at the helm to direct our
| choices for the future. We need arrangements that will allow us
| to remain free to do as we please and pursue our dreams while
| abiding by rules, reached by common agreement, that ensure our
| freedoms do not result in harm to others or to our planet. We can
| think big about our common future, and we must welcome
| appropriate technologies, but only if they do not rely on greater
| and greater social controls by those who decide they know best
| how to make us safer and happier."
|
| An interesting comment, and one which I don't entirely disagree
| with. But there is some inherent benefit to the "big idea person"
| who is able to bring large groups of people along with them to
| work on those big ideas together.
|
| Have their been any examples of that same effect occurring in the
| realms that the author describes?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Every time I read statements like this, I wonder if the authors
| would really approve of eliminating building codes in
| earthquake and hurricane zones, in the name of regulatory
| freedom and improved market effeciencies...
|
| It's almost as if they feel the need to state their ideology
| upfront as a means of presenting their bona fides to the
| outlet's owner, regardless of the practical nature of the
| issue.
|
| In the case of Fuller's geodesic domes, well, one might argue
| that developing robust building codes for such domes would be a
| problem that might even prevent their standardized development
| across the country (i.e. how strong do the interties need to
| be, do they need to model their resistance to hurricane-force
| winds, etc.) - but the alternative would be a lot of collapsed
| homes after typical natural disasters strike, which would sour
| the market on the the model for years to come.
| feet wrote:
| >I wonder if the authors would really approve of eliminating
| building codes in earthquake and hurricane zones, in the name
| of regulatory freedom and improved market effeciencies...
|
| I think you missed the part of the quote where they said
| "abiding by rules"
|
| >abiding by rules, reached by common agreement, that ensure
| our freedoms do not result in harm to others or to our planet
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| I genuinely think Tesla's done good work in the field despite
| all transactions it does being voluntary.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It's interesting that there was a review of this same exact book
| going around recently that gave me an entirely different view of
| Fuller. Reading two different reviews of the book give such
| different impressions of it, and of him.
|
| The other one painted a picture of him as a guy who was a master
| of networking and taking credit for other people's ideas, and
| talking a big game. I can't find it, but here's a discussion of
| yet another different sounding review of this book on HN a month
| ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677512
| haspoken wrote:
| https://archive.ph/cL8nC
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