Critical Path, by R. Buckminster Fuller

Here are some of the highlights I noted while reading this comprehensivist masterpiece. I am sharing these notes with you to interest you in reading the whole book yourself. (So, St. Martin's Press, please don't sue me.)

Preface

• "Critical Path comprehensively traces all the important trends of history that have led to this moment of humanity's potential first-state success and its opening of a whole new chapter of humanity's ever functioning in local support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe." (p. xxxvi)

• Control structures initially gained power by controlling the vital lines of supply. They use a divide-and-keep-conquered approach, which is still used today. (p. xx & xxvii)
• Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, granted shippers limited liability, relieving shippers of the responsibility of compensating families for their members who were killed or injured on ocean voyages, which greatly favored big-money interests over poor, bread-winners bearing the losses. (p. xxi)
• Thomas Malthus, in 1800, was the first to have an inventory of the world and its resources (p. xxi)
• The Battle of Trafalgar, in 1805, was the first time Earth was embraced as a spherical, closed system (p. xxii).

• Most of the world's governments hold one of the following two assumptions (pp. xxii to xxiii):
  1. Workers are the fittest to survive, and enterprisers are parasites (socialism).
  2. Enterprisers are the fittest to survive, and the workers are dull and visionless (capitalism).
  The major tenet was that there was a scarcity of resources needed for survival (Bucky spends a large portion of this book describing why we have abundance of resources for sustaining life).

• Current machines (engines, buildings, etc.) are only 15% efficient aggregately. For example, a 2-mile diameter sphere covering Manhattan would be 84 times more efficient than the current buildings. (p. xxiv)
• Bucky proposed a design revolution for creating "livingry" not weaponry for war: "With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful. (p. xxv)

  He wanted to use a worldwide communications network to disseminate information about this new paradigm---that is, the design revolution which could produce this livingry abundantly. (p. xxxvii) I'd say that the internet, communications satellites, and radio & television broadcasts are the beginnings of this network.

• He advocated using computers to determine the optimal uses of physical substances, rather than allowing uninformed opinion to rule. For example, a computer calculated that General Motors could give their workers a labor-union grant and both would profit more. (p. xxviii)
  
  He calculated that when electrical power could be distributed efficiently a distance of 1500 miles, then the eastern and western worlds could share the electricity-producing equipment and thus not have to build more power plants! (p. xxxi) Note that the Global Energy Network Institute is now championing this effort.
• He identified the process by which cultural beliefs come about: (p. xxx)
  1. Respected opinions.
  2. Selfishness-conditioned reflexes.
  3. Precedent.
  4. Exception-less concepts.
  5. Social law.
  He saw the computer as the most effective way of obsoleting erroneous opinions.
  
• He believed that the only way to survive is by embracing the truth (individual human integrities), and by starting a design-science revolution. (pp. xxxvii & 266?)
• "Do things that you see need to be done, which no one else seems to see need to be done...
  Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are intensely interested in. ... You will find the world responding to your earnest initiative." (p. xxxviii)
  
  

• (Haven't read yet.)

Chapter 8: Critical Path, Part 2

• 60% of all jobs are not productive; they don't produce additional life support. Bucky proposed granting fellowships for people to stay at home to explore what needs to be done (pp. 262 & xxxiv)
  Refer to The End of Work, by Jeremy Rifkin, for a similar proposal.
• The greatest luxury in the world is to live unencumbered, get information in a split-second, and have access to any environmental condition in a day" (p. 264)
• The only real education is self-education. (p. 264)
  All great self-educated individuals intuitively derived what & when to learn!
  Thereafter, they learned via:
  1. Self-conducted experiments.
  2. Seeking other self-educated individuals.
  3. Going to books of great learners (if that individual is dead).
  4. By word-of-mouth of craftsman-artists.
• Educators push for "personal equation" in education, but movies are the most motivational form of learning. Instead, he advocated video-taped, internationally broadcast, home-based education (pp. 265, xxxv)
• The only hope for a solution to global problems is for a democratic society becoming self-educated, thoroughly and comprehensivistically, and then sorting, ordering, and working on the most vital problems. (pp. 265 & xxxvii)
• Bucky proposed individuals discovering what they like by works of their own choosing, and then
  demonstrating competence as if qualifying for an Olympic team. (p. 266)
• He saw a system in which non-consumables can only be rented, not purchased. (p. 266?)
• Many of his proposals were made feasible by someone else inventing an enabling technology or device. For example, the automatic door on the Dymaxion House. (p. 268)

Chapter 9: Critical Path, Part 4

• (Haven't finished reading.)
  
  
  

Appendix 1: Chronology of Scientific Discoveries & Artifacts

• (Haven't finished reading.)
  
  

Appendix 2: Chronological Inventory of Scientific, Technological, Economic, and Political World Events

• (Haven't finished reading.)