[KaiserJeep]

-snip-
OK then, I'm glad you actually know about the founder of the Venus Project! I also don't discount what you point out about his inability (failure?) to actually sell any of his products or visions. Actually, according to his visionary principles, i doubt "selling" his products or plans would be the appropriate term, but regardless, in your opinion, under what scenario do you think his products would start to become commercially plausible. I use the word "commercially" very loosely. Perhaps the better way to phrase that question is what would have to happen in our world to get us to pay attention to what he's been developing for the past 50 years?

I can imagine no scenario where this utter incompetent loser could even make a living at doing anything except delivering inspiring lectures. Nor is he qualified to architect a society managed by a computer - in fact he still sketches with a pencil, he's computer illiterate.

Read between the lines. A cluster of oddball utopians in a remote Florida forest. No particular insights, and design concepts literally from the "Mid Century Modern" architectural movement of the 1950's and 1960's. Reconsider your opinions in the light of my remarks.

[salinsky]

Fuller did not invent the geodesic dome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_dome

[Timo]

-snip-
OK then, I'm glad you actually know about the founder of the Venus Project! I also don't discount what you point out about his inability (failure?) to actually sell any of his products or visions. Actually, according to his visionary principles, i doubt "selling" his products or plans would be the appropriate term, but regardless, in your opinion, under what scenario do you think his products would start to become commercially plausible. I use the word "commercially" very loosely. Perhaps the better way to phrase that question is what would have to happen in our world to get us to pay attention to what he's been developing for the past 50 years?

I can imagine no scenario where this utter incompetent loser could even make a living at doing anything except delivering inspiring lectures. Nor is he qualified to architect a society managed by a computer - in fact he still sketches with a pencil, he's computer illiterate.

Read between the lines. A cluster of oddball utopians in a remote Florida forest. No particular insights, and design concepts literally from the "Mid Century Modern" architectural movement of the 1950's and 1960's. Reconsider your opinions in the light of my remarks.

I have no opinions of the guy at all. I just learned who he is. Reconsider your remarks before you post baseless insinuations.

[onlooker]

I think Kaiser, Timo is playing the game of attorneys who besmirch the reputation or credibility of the witness to then simply reject his/her message.

[radon1]

People with real experience in large-scale central planning tell that the matrices used to calculate the planning parameters turn out to be immense and and the same time very sparse. This makes them "unstable", i.e. even a small variation in input data may produce large and unpredictable swings in output results. This makes a formalized computational central planning virtually impossible for all practical purposes.

[Hawkcreek]

- Nor is he qualified to architect a society managed by a computer - in fact he still sketches with a pencil, he's computer illiterate.

I've been well qualified in Acad for years. I used it every day for years before I retired, but still did a lot of sketches with a pencil and paper before beginning an Autocad drawing. Just seems easier to think with a sketch pad and cup of coffee rather than a screen and mouse at hand.
A lot of my engineer friends are the same way. We have talked about this quirk several times.
It just seems that a sketch can give some people a vision and direction better than software can.

[Sixstrings]

Article from 1985:

The Great Idea Chase

You can hear the glorious, smoothly humming hydraulic future in Jacque Fresco`s eager voice, see it in the eye in your mind. Cities and their inhabitants thrive under the sea.

Houses are heated by pipes laid beneath highways that conduit the gathered asphalt heat into private residences. Grain is stored in the natural refrigerator of the polar regions.

Fossil fuels have been abandoned, as solar power runs everything from your air-conditioning -- if you need it in houses that are properly built and insulated, which you probably won`t -- to your backyard barbecue, where a mirror and two pyrex reflectors cook both sides of the meat at the same time.

And when something goes wrong with your car, two handles are turned, the entire engine unit pulls out, a courtesy engine is plugged in and you`re back on the road while the garage works to find the problem.

Welcome to the future, or at least Jacque Fresco`s vision of it. It all seems eminently attainable . . . until you open your eyes and look around.

What you see are 22 acres with four organically flowing domed structures -- two of which are finished, one of which is furnished -- a little lake with a baby alligator sunning himself by the water`s edge, and a landscaped path leading back among 400-year-old cypress trees.

It is here, on this quiet patch of land in Venus, Fla., that Jacque Fresco and his companion, Roxanne Meadows, are constructing a prototype of the possible.

``I tried walking around with a briefcase, and selling myself,`` says the peppery Fresco, a vigorous and muscular 69. ``And I found that people think you`re an idiot if you don`t have anything to show them, if all you have are ideas and a vision. All right. I`ll show them something.' ...

Inventors will tell you that they fall into two categories. The first and largest category are ``garage inventors,`` a phrase invariably uttered with a dismissive sniff because they are mere tinkerers, gadgeteers and visionaries like Fresco.

These are people who specialize in a kind of comprehensive anticipatory design whose adoption would necessitate radical alterations in what George Will would call the social fabric. ...

Viewed with either suspicion or condescension, derided as eccentrics, few of them have any money but all of them have hopes. They live for the gratification of that moment when lightning strikes, and an idea is fully formed in their minds.

That and the possibility that some -- or at least one -- of their inventions will be successfully marketed and all those lonely, obsessive hours spent in their workshops will be validated and the lot of mankind will have been improved.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-07-14/features/8501280616_1_inventors-idea-garage

[Timo]

Thanks SS. I see the article is from 1985. From our perspective, things have denigrated quite a bit. I wonder what the world looks like now from his perspective. I did watch his documentary, The Choice is Ours. That was produced rather recently, within the past two years for certain. Regardless of how he sees the world changing, he's still at it. 100 years old, and still fighting the good fight.

I noticed, though, that most of the film focused on human behaviors, rather than techno-fixes to all of our problems. He makes it quite clear that technology can be used for both good and bad. So far, the bad has outweighed the good, and that is a reflection of our behaviors. Our behaviors are learned, and are not instinctual, or even genetic. Interesting viewpoint. It mirrors a whole lot of what we've dragged on about over the years here at this place.

Hope springs eternal.

[Sixstrings]

Thanks SS. I see the article is from 1985.

You're welcome. Great thread by the way Timo.

I just noted the date so anyone didn't think the article I posted was recent; that was when he was first building his place.

Well anyhow, I looked at the wiki.. I read some of the articles.. watched a little bit of his talks.. there's obviously a bit of "guru" thing goin' on, but, I didn't see anything really negative about him.

From what I can tell he seems like a good guy, so I'm not going to criticize.

And then my other reaction is just that it's pretty cool what he's done.. that place is probably the most interesting thing there is, in "Venus, Florida."

Eccentrics that build something cool for folk to come look at and tour -- that's a good thing, I'm not gonna knock that.

Without people like this, then all Florida would have is just never-ending strip malls and suburban conformity and the whole place looks too much the same and everyone is a Republican.

The topic of futurism in general though, is a whole other thing and maybe that can be discussed more in this thread.

From our perspective, things have denigrated quite a bit.

Well actually I wouldn't say that.. it seems to me things are headed the futurists' way, really.

Which is a deep topic and whole other subject.. a lot of this I may not like or agree with. It's like "socialist." It's humanism. Which may either be a good thing, or maybe not.

Isaac Asimov was a humanist, and he influenced Gene Roddenberry and humanism "perfect society futurism" is a big part of the Star Trek world.

All poverty is gone.. all strife between people gone.. interestingly, Roddenberry was so INTO this, when ST: TNG was being produced that he told the writers -- there can't be any conflict. That's all in the past, in the 23rd century. (or whatever) And then the writers constantly struggled with him that whole first season, they told him "you can't have a drama without conflict! It is impossible!"

It turned out, that it was impossible.. and Star Trek tng had to change in the following seasons.

I guess I'm off topic at this point, but I'm just illustrating that maybe a future perfect world is not actually possible.. any more than Star Trek could just be ALL perfect world humanist like Roddenberry first envisioned..

In history, we see that communist regimes haven't worked out either.. they had visions of shiny future cities, and social engineered societies, too.

I noticed, though, that most of the film focused on human behaviors, rather than techno-fixes to all of our problems. He makes it quite clear that technology can be used for both good and bad. So far, the bad has outweighed the good, and that is a reflection of our behaviors. Our behaviors are learned, and are not instinctual, or even genetic.

I watched the clip about depression:

Jacque Fresco - Depression, Self Image
https://youtu.be/B-0ETX4z_DU

He's a tad eccentric.. but he's interesting, and thought provoking.

I wonder, did he MAKE all those models? Did he do all the drawings? They look pretty good to me:

(I like that design above)



http://ryanadamsinteriors.blogspot.com/2012/02/jacque-fresco-industrialsocial-designer.html

[Tanada]

Those drawings look like variations on the theme of Arcology.

arcology-anyone-t54671.html

[careinke]

Those drawings look like variations on the theme of Arcology.

arcology-anyone-t54671.html

Sometimes the same ideas seem to spring up spontaneously from different locations and different directions. The time just seems ripe for them.

[efarmer]

This is an old notion, I.E. what if we could take our most lofty aspirations, goals, and the fairest process of administering civilization and put it into software that would then remove all the more sinister, petty, greedy, and ignorant aspects of humanity in order to more fairly and constructively run human life and endeavors. First the programmer has to sell themselves as a role model to enough people that are willing to submit their existences to management by their noble code and logic, then the programmer has to resist all human temptation to not let the power his creation gives him make him go naughty and shoot his little codeship off into the weeds and off the pavement of the "high road" it was intended to run on.

There were a group of men in 1776 who attempted to devise a system to be implemented and self doctoring with inertia and time constants designed in to keep it from being able to be perverted quickly by the meme of the moment or period. It was determined that people would forego their own rights in return for access to credit and consumer goods, and via the advertising of same their elected representatives were really owned by the corporations who delivered this access to credit and consumer goods as this was their majority source of funding for obtaining office and producing fantasy spots for media to pretend to be something electable.

If thy computer offendeth thee, pluck out it's Pentium or simply pull the plug. If humans cannot govern themselves, they cannot create fair machines to replace themselves with that are any better than their own dominion over their own evils as tempered by their striving to implement their loftiest objectives via self discipline.

[Timo]

ef, well said. Humans are the source of all of their own problems. Nothing we can do can or will ever change that sad fact.

Does that mean we're doomed?

Not necessarily. We just need to become self-disciplined enough to avoid our own extinction. So far, we've managed that fairly well. However, now we've gone and started messing with the very systems that maintain life on this planet. We have yet to figure out how to manage or control those systems. They are thus far WAY beyond our control.

It seems the best we can do is to simply keep being human. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

There's no way to win, is there?

[ennui2]

THX-1138 was about centrally managing humanity via an algorithm. Every person's worth was crunched in a computer, their productivity, etc... Today you see something similar to this in the emphasis on economic metrics (or employment numbers) as equivalent to the general welfare of the country. Obviously it only tells part of the story.

[ennui2]

THX-1138 was George Lucas, not Spielberg.

I'm sure you know all about Redwoods but apparently you know nothing about films.

[Dooma]

By looking at some of those designs, I would swear that the man has a soft spot for Thunderbirds...