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The following is Buckminster Fuller talking about his world game concept/proposal (it is excerpted from his book, &Page 147;Critical Path”)
"World Game's integrated world computer
system will have the task of differentiating out the abundant resources and facilities from the scarce, and differentiating the scarce into degrees of scarcity as well as into
the day-to-day fluctuations of the borderline cases. The computer will keep constant track
of where the resources are geographically located or where they are
traveling. That which
is in constant abundance is 100-percent socializable. That which is scarce must be
reserved for tasks that serve all society in general. The element oxygen in the atmosphere
is in abundance at sea level and need not be distributed by artifacts.
Oxygen at 11,000
feet and more above sea level is critically scarce and must be compressed into tanks and
distributed for breathing through masks and tubes.
The gas helium is very scarce on planet Earth. It has very important,
unique characteristics. Number one, it is not flammable, as is hydrogen, though it weighs almost
as little as hydrogen. Helium, though the socially theoretical property of everyone,
becomes useless to anyone if compressed into four billion separate bottles, each of which
is distributed to each of our at-present four billion Earthians. There are a number of
technical tasks that helium can perform to the advantage of all humanity, all of which can
be programmed into the computer.
The relative abundance of the ninety-two regenerative chemical elements in the
thus-far-known Universe is about the same as the inventory of their relative abundance on
Earth. The relative abundance of the chemical elements is also approximately the same as
that of their occurrence in the organisms of the human bodies. All this data and all the
tasks that can be performed by each element to the greatest advantage of all humanity will
be programmed into the world-integrated computers to make it evident to all humanity which
eco-technological strategy at any given time will produce the highest
advantage for all,
against which information it can be determined what alternative advantages might attend
implementing and supplying the essentials for realization of newly proposed invention
initiatives of various humans.
It was World Game that asked one of the world's greatest oil geologists, Francois de Chadenedes, if he could write an accurate scenario of nature producing petroleum on planet
Earth through the photosynthetic transformation-into-hydrocarbon of Sun radiation by the
vegetation and algae and the succession of events following their
transformation as the
vegetation is consumed by other biologicals, or is transformed into various residues, all
of which are blown by winds or washed by streams and gradually accumulate in various
geographical locations and become progressively buried within the planet's outer crust.
Thereafter there were various heats and pressures (caused by ice ages, etc.), earthquakes,
or deep burial below water or soil until those chemical heats and pressure conditions
occurred which are essential to the production of petroleum. De Chadenedes said he could,
and after a year he presented us with the scenario with all of its time
increments and
pressure conditions spelled out. We then asked him to figure how much it would cost nature
per each gallon of petroleum for that much pressure and heat for that much time, were it
calculated at the retail rate for that much energy for that length of time as charged us
by the public utilities. The cost came to well over a million dollars per
gallon.
Since World Game's accounting system is that of the Universe's own
time-energy
intertransforming requirements, we must accept as cosmically unquestionable this costing
of petroleum, coal, and gas resources, which nature has been syntropically importing and
accumulating on planet Earth in order, ten billion years hence, to turn the Earth into an
energy-exporting (entropic) star.
For this reason World Game considers all fossil fuels to be nature's own savings account,
deposited in our "Earth bank" and not to be stolen by exploiters. Everyone knows
that we should live on our (energy) income and not our savings account. Nor should we burn
our capital-account production equipment in order to produce
meter-marketable energy, for
there will soon be no further production capability. Atomic energy by
fission or fusion
constitutes burning our terrestrial production equipment.
As mentioned, World Game finds that 60 percent of all the jobs in the U.S.A. are not
producing any real wealth—i.e., real life support. They are in
fear-underwriting
industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc. The majority of the jobs occasion the
individuals using three to four gallons per day in their automobiles to go to and from
work—at true cosmic costing this means four million dollars per worker per day.
Obviously the computer finds that it would save the planet Earth's energy account $500
trillion a day to give all the non-wealth-producing workers their full pay to stay at home.
In the same way the World Game's world-around-integrated computers will show that it will
save-pay handsomely to pay all professors and teachers in full to stay at home or in their
laboratories and relinquish all teaching to video cassettes, whose
selectable programs are
to be called out by the individual students of all ages around the world to be shown on
their home television sets. The old educational facilities and a small
fraction of
individual teachers who love most to teach will use the old educational
facilities within
which to produce the cassette programs.
The computer will prove to society that it will pay to introduce automation wherever
feasible and to allow the machines to work twenty-four-hour days while paying yesterday's
workers in full to stay home. Only those who love each particular technology will keep the
world-around video education in operation. Those who pass the exams to qualify for such
working will not be paid for it. They will act as does any amateur
athlete;doing what
they do for the love of it. This competing to qualify for all the production and service
jobs will govern all work. The work will not be paid for. Everything the
individual needs is already paid for.
Rudyard Kipling's ; “L'Envois”; tells the
story.
When Earth's last picture is
painted,
And the tubes are all twisted and
dried,
The oldest of colors have faded
And the youngest of critics have
died,
We shall rest
And well shall we need to
Lie down for an eon or two
'Til the master of all good
workmen
Shall put us to work anew.
Then only the master shall praise
us,
And only the master shall blame,
No one will work for money,
And no one will work for fame.
But all for the love of the
working
And each in his separate star
Shall draw the thing as he sees it
For the God of things as
they are.
World Game shows that we can discontinue
newspapers and save the trees for fuel-alcohol production. World Game finds that all news can be disseminated by television and that computers can keep track of all the information
that fills the advertising and want-advertisement pages, and any individual looking for any kind of opportunity can get the matching information from the computer in seconds.
Individuals can go shopping by cable television.
Local Universe is the term used by World Game to identify the macro-cosmic limits of human
observation. These macro-limits are identified as the radius of the present maximum phototelescopic and-radar-reached information (in 1980 the spherical sweepout of an approximately eleven-and-one-half-billion-light-year radius) around planet Earth in all directions.
World Game takes the inventory of relative abundance of all the chemical elements present
within that radius as spectroscopically analyzed by the light received in all directions
around us from all the stars of all the galaxies within that
eleven-and-one-half-billion-light-year radial distance.
World Game takes the relative abundance of all the chemical elements thus far found on
planet Earth. The local Universe inventories and the Earthian inventory of the relative
abundance are somewhat similar, as is the relative abundance of the chemical elements
present or acceptably present in human beings' bodies. The Earthian
inventory includes all
the isotopes of all the chemical elements and the relative abundance of the latter. In respect to the Earthian abundance, some of the elements are so relatively plenitudinous as
to make them available for various universal technological uses; they are therefore socializable, but only when employed with other elements in instruments, machinery, structures, medicines, and nutriment.
World Game notes that gold is the most electrica11y conductive of all
elements. It is also the most highly reflective of all metals, and therefore has many functional uses. New computer circuiting and such functions as the new laser energy beaming with rubies will
occupy the majority of the rare metals and jewels.
Rubies function in producing laser beams, etc. Diamonds, being the hardest of all
elements, have many cutting and other technical functions. All the rare
stones and metals
will have industry's unique industrial tasks to perform. The question then arises as to
who will determine which technological initiatives should have prior access to the
inherently scarce, high-advantage functionings of the scarce and rare
inventories of
chemical elements.
World Game finds that the computers fed with all the relevant energy
efficiency facts will
be able to demonstrate which uses will produce the greatest long-term
benefit for all
humanity
World Game foresees that the greatest problems for humanity to solve in the future will be
how to accommodate the initiatives of millions of humans who, freed from muscle-and
nerve-reflexing jobs, find their inventory of past experiences and their
minds integrating
synergetically to envision ever greater advantages to be realized for
humanity. We will
realize this age of regenerative inventing which is rendering humans very effective in
their cosmic functioning as local Universe information-gatherers and local Universe
problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative
Universe."--Buckminster Fuller
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