Education Automation on Spaceship Earth: Buckminster Fuller's Vision. More Relevant than Ever Author(s): Allegra Fuller Snyder and Victoria Vesna Source: Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 4 (1998), pp. 289-292 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576664 Accessed: 14/09/2010 14:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo. http://www.jstor.org Education Automation on Spaceship Earth: Buckminster Fuller's Vision- More Relevant than Ever ABSTRACT R. BuckminsterFuller is perhapsbest known for his inven- tionsof thegeodesic dome and Fuller theDymaxion car; his inventive Allegra Snyder ideasand approach to education with VictoriaVesna havemostly been ignored. He waspassionate about teaching andlectured widely. This aspect of BuckminsterFuller is dis- cussedby someone intimately fa- miliarwith the multifaceted man-hisdaughter, Allegra Fuller R1~ . Buckminster Fuller (Fig. 1) took an ex- [1]. Fuller was an architect, de- Snyder-inan interview with art- VictoriaVesna. Cur- traordinary path in his own education, from a turbulent his- signer, engineer, poet, philoso- ist/educator where he was to author and icono- rently,Fuller Snyder is chairper- tory at Harvard University, expelled twice, pher, global sonof theBuckminster Fuller receiving 67 honorary doctorate degrees. He left behind an clast, but, most of all, a Institute,an organization that enormous body of documentation, now housed at the proponent of the philosophy of actsas a centralrepository for Buckminster Fuller Institute in Santa Barbara, California, synergy [2]. He was also very anenormous collection of arti- facts,manuscripts and media which is directed by his daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder. much involved in promoting his documentingthe life and work of Fuller Snyder is herself a pioneer in the field of dance ethnol- visionary ideas of education in BuckminsterFuller. ogy and a professor emeritus at the University of California, the future. Would you speak Los Angeles. She is dedicated to promoting her father's work about your own experience with and to the documentation of it accessible. She is making par- Allegra Fuller Snyder (dance scholar, educator), ticularly excited about the possibilities offered by the World Buckminster Fuller Institute, 2040 Alaineda Padre Serra, Suite 224, Santa Barbara,CA 93105, U.S.A. E-mail:<[email protected]>. Wide Web in this respect. What follows is a brief interview Victoria Vesna (artist, educator), University of California at Santa Balrbara,Departlment centering around Fuller Snyder's education by her father and of Art Studio, Electronic Art and Theory Lab, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. E-mail: how her father's philosophy influenced her life and work. <[email protected]>. Victoria Vesna: Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962 that This article is part of the Leonardospecial project entitled "Planetary Collegium: To- wards the Radical Reconstruction of Art Education," guest-edited by Roy Ascott. This Buckminster Fuller "provides us all with a foretaste of the project features writings that address the present and fututre needs and nature of art Extension of Consciousness that is near in the Electric Age" education in light of contemporary developments in technology, science and the arts. Fig. 1. R. BuckminsterFuller, circa 1980s. BuckminsterFuller was a visionarywho expressed his ideas in disorganized frag- ments and marathon lectures. He possessed a magnetic per- sonality that was mesmerizing and inspirational to those he had contact with, even if they did not understand all he was saying. ? 1998 ISAST ILEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 289-292, 1998 289 your father, as a child having direct ac- cess to him? Allegra Fuller Snyder: My father felt that the highest priority in education is revolution based on synergy, which means that the behavior of a whole sys- tem cannot be predicted by the behav- ior of any of its parts taken separately. Thinking synergistically requires the complete reversal of our present system of the compartmentalization of knowl- edge, which goes from the particular to the even more specific. My father called himself a "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist"-a strange and diffi- cult label to live with, but after spend- ing a great deal of my own life trying to arrive at a simpler and more accessible label, I have recognized that this is the only term that really is right. Further- more, he wanted us all to remain such comprehensivists-that was the first step in my educational process. He completely honored who I was and my inherent self-education process. He found schools that supported that pro- cess. I loved my schooling and experi- enced myself constantly growing in and through the educational process. I as- sumed all students felt that way. It was only years later, when I myself was a teacher, that I learned that the great majority of my students had very, very different experiences. My father wrote that "Life, as born, is inherently comprehensive in its appre- hending, comprehending, and coordi- child is inter- nating capabilities. Every more than lectures ested in the universe. The child's Fig. 2. R. Buckminster Fuller lecturing, circa 1980s. Invited to give 2,000 at 500 universities and colleges, and making 48 trips around the world, Buckminster Fuller are universal" [3] 2). But questions (Fig. was a tireless performer. Famous for his non-stop "talkathons," he put his ideas to test in ar- educa- what is referred to as "elementary chitectural designs, in 18 books and, toward the end of his career, in the World Games. tion" consists of bits and pieces; it tries in every way to destroy comprehensive un- derstanding. He found the goal of edu- Einstein would disagree, so Lippincott, for me, I would understand. I became cation was to "de-genius" the child, for, the publishers, sent the material to Goldilocks, but instead of doing what as he said, "everychild is born a genius." Einstein, and he was very interested. My Goldilocks used to do in Grimm's fairy The mind of a child is an exquisite tool father went to Princeton and had a won- tales, in my father's stories I went out ready to explore the universe. All the derful meeting with Einstein. Very and had all these adventures in the uni- child lacks is experience. The challenge shortly thereafter he wanted to share verse. I cannot tell you how much of is to find the way to present the most some of this with me. He often re- Einstein's theory I really understood, complex ideas in relation to children's hearsed his thinking with me, as he felt but my father brought me into the con- existing levels of experience. In that the best communicators were able text of his thinking in a way that is still Tetrascroll[4], his intent was to share with to say the most complex ideas in ways valid to me today. When I was 6 or 7 me his most critical thinking. I remem- that a child could understand. He was years old, I participated in the experi- ber, for instance, that he wanted me, at particularlyexcited about the great para- ence of the emergence of the Dymaxion the age 4 years, to have some experience digm shift he felt would affect all of us as car (Fig. 3) [6], visiting the plant in of his own explorations into Einstein's we move from static Newtonian thinking Bridgeport, Connecticut, as his vision theory of relativity.He wanted to include to the Einsteinian understanding that came to life, riding with him as he tested three chapters about Einstein's theory in change is constant, change is normal. So first the chassis and then the whole car his first book Nine Chainsto theMoon [5], he would explain these things to me, us- and its many marvels. published in 1938. The publisher said, ing the Goldilocks story as a link to my I was 12 or 13 years old when he be- 'You're not on the list of people who un- experience. I was Goldy. gan to work on synergetics, his new sys- derstand Einstein, so we can't publish it." Bucky loved to do freehand sketches. tem of geometry [7], and he involved My father said he thought that Mr. He knew that if he could visualize things me in his process. Our apartment in 290 Fuller Snyde- with lVesna, Education Automation on Spaceship Earth New York at that time was very small and universe's most elaborate local technolo- If a child very early on is given access to we had an all-purpose table-dining gies. By his definition, "technology is the the thing that his or her mental appetite table some of the time, working table integrity of interoperativeness of prin- desires in the way of accurate informa- most of the time-so he would spread ciples which make possible an eternally tion, this will lead to the ideal way that out on it all the things he was working regenerative Universe" [10].