Buckminster Fuller S World Game And Its Legacy

This book studies R. Buckminster Fuller’s World Game and similar world games, past and present. Proposed by Fuller in 1964 and first played in colleges and universities across North America at a time of growing ecological crisis, the World Game attempted to turn data analysis, systems modelling, scenario building, computer technology, and information design to more egalitarian ends to meet human needs. It challenged players to redistribute finite planetary resources more equitably, to ‘make the world work’. Criticised and lauded in equal measure, the World Game has evolved through several formats and continues today in correspondence with debates on planetary stewardship, gamification, data management, and the democratic deficit. This book looks again at how the World Game has been played, focusing on its architecture, design, and gameplay. With hindsight, the World Game might appear naïve, utopian, or technocratic, but we share its problems, if not necessarily its solutions. Such a study will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, game studies, media studies, architecture, and the environmental humanities.

"This book studies R. Buckminster Fuller's World Game and similar world games, past and present. Proposed by Fuller in 1964 and first played in colleges and universities across North America at a time of growing ecological crisis, the World Game attempted to turn data analysis, systems modelling, scenario building, computer technology and information design to more egalitarian ends to meet human needs. It challenged players to redistribute finite planetary resources more equitably, to 'make the world work'. Criticized and lauded in equal measure, the World Game has evolved through several formats and continues today in correspondence with debates on planetary stewardship, gamification, data management, and the democratic deficit. This book looks again at how the World Game has been played, focusing on its architecture, design, and gameplay. With hindsight, the World Game might appear naèive, utopian, or technocratic, but we share its problems, if not necessarily its solutions. Such a study will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, game studies, media studies, architecture, and the environmental humanities"--

The documents in this series originated with a proposal made by R. Buckminster Fuller to the International Union of Architects (I. U. A.) at their VIIth Congress in London, England in July, 1961, launching the World Design Science Decade. He proposed then that the architectural schools around the world be encouraged by the I. U. A. to invest the next ten years in a continuing problem of how to make the total world's resources which [in 1961] serve only 40% serve 100% of humanity through competent design despite a continuing decrease of metal resources per capita. In essence, The World Design Science Decade series of documents suggests, in great detail, ways in which world architectural schools, and specifically their students, should initiate, and assume The Design Science Decade. The total series includes many of Fuller's most prescient ideas. A note from the series editor, John McHale: "Though the language of some of the texts may seem difficult at first approach, it should be borne in mind that one of our major problems in thinking today [1965] is the use of language systems which still represent a fixed, structurally compartmentalized world view. The terms available to us for the expression of dynamic, rather than static, concepts are far from satisfactory. Fuller's language is particularly representative of the 'transitional state' (of the western world) between the older, traditional, noun-centered culture to its present day, changing, verb-centered culture'. In his search for an adequately descriptive terminology he tends to employ concepts and usages from many different fields juxtaposed in ways which may be unfamiliar to those more customarily restrained within the vocabularies of particular disciplines." Description by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, courtesy of The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller's humanitarian take on the war game Initially proposed for the US Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, Buckminster Fuller's World Game was an educational simulation intended to create solutions for overpopulation and the uneven distribution of global resources. An alternative to war games, it uses Fuller's Dymaxion map and requires a group of players to cooperatively solve a set of metaphorical scenarios, thereby challenging the nation-state perspective with a more holistic "total world" view. The World Game was played for the first time in 1969 in New York, and evolved over the next decade. Proposals for World Game centers described a vast computerized network that could process, map and visualize environmental information drawn from (among other sources) Russian and American spy satellites. Fuller claimed that their optical sensors and thermographic scanners could detect the location and quantity of water, grain, metals, livestock, human populations or any other conceivable form of energy. Despite Fuller's plans for a photogenic, televisual and cybernetic form of mass participation, through Fuller's life the World Game remained largely speculative and pedagogical. It appeared primarily through copious research reports, resource studies and ephemeral workshops. The book tracks this textual dimension by assembling documents related to various instances of the World Game conceived, proposed and played from 1964 to 1982, examining the World Game as a system for environmental information and as a process of resource administration.

Buckminster Fuller - ein echt amerikanisches Genie - war weithin bekannt als Architekt, Ingenieur, Mathematiker, Autor und Erfinder. In diesem Buch sind Fullers wichtigste Ideen und Erfindungen in Form von Worten und Bildern zusammengetragen. Lassen auch Sie sich inspirieren, über alternative Lebensweisen nachzudenken! (02/98)

My thesis explores the idea that Buckminster Fuller’s World Game is really a formal calculus capable of representing world-scale sustainability problem-solving according to the fundamental principles of a (blockchain) database + (Fuller projection) map + (machine learning) simulation in the form of a game. These computational media comprise an operational formalism which embraces all effective procedures for world-scale problem-solving. If this hypothesis is true, then that would mean World Game’s comprehensive use of the aforementioned fundamental principles are necessary for a sustainable Earth-scale civilization. Furthermore, the protocol for solution formation in the form of World Game “game” is sufficient for solving the problem of “making the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone” — the objective of World Game. If this hypothesis of sufficiency is true, that means World Game’s principles are in effect synonymous with the process of making the world work. In plain English, a problem-solving engine like World Game is necessary for the survival of humanity, period.

Using five case studies of contemporary art, this book uses ideas of systems and dispersion to understand identity and experience in late capitalism. This book considers five artists who exemplify contemporary art practice: Seth Price; Liam Gillick; Martin Creed; Hito Steyerl; and Theaster Gates. Given the diversity of materials used in art today, once-traditional artistic mediums and practices have become obsolete in describing what artists do today. Francis Halsall argues that, in the face of this obsolescence, the ideas of system and dispersion become very useful in understanding contemporary art. That is, practitioners now can be seen to be using whatever systems of distribution and display are available to them as their creative mediums. The two central arguments are first that any understanding of what art is will always be underwritten by a related view of what a human being is; and second that these both have a particular character in late capitalism or, as is named here, the Age of Dispersion. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working in art history, contemporary art, studio art, and theories of systems and networks.

A compelling call to apply Buckminster Fuller's creative problem-solving to present-day problems A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and life-long devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death. You Belong to the Universe documents Fuller's six-decade quest to "make the world work for one hundred percent of humanity." Critic and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats sets out to revive Fuller's unconventional practice of comprehensive anticipatory design, placing Fuller's philosophy in a modern context and dispelling much of the mythology surrounding Fuller's life. Keats argues that Fuller's life and ideas, namely doing "the most with the least," are now more relevant than ever as humanity struggles to meet the demands of an exploding world population with finite resources. Delving deeply into Buckminster Fuller's colorful world, Keats applies Fuller's most important concepts to present-day issues, arguing that his ideas are now not only feasible, but necessary. From transportation to climate change, urban design to education, You Belong to the Universe demonstrates that Fuller's holistic problem-solving techniques may be the only means of addressing some of the world's most pressing issues. Keats's timely book challenges each of us to become comprehensive anticipatory design scientists, providing the necessary tools for continuing Fuller's legacy of improving the world.