saved
Everything I Know, Section 9
gist
After about twenty-six hours of unscripted talk, R. Buckminster Fuller backfills what he hurried. Accounting still writes know-how off the books even as Rockefeller and Japan treat it as the real commodity. Building remains the last non-mass-production industry. Marines fly geodesic domes; the Dymaxion House and Car stories show a little individual acting as an agent of information rather than an owner of things.
ideas
- Know-how is off the books. Patents and metaphysical skill are written off at once, yet David Rockefeller now names know-how as what banks export.
- Building is the last craft industry. Vehicles and clocks mass-produce under control; buildings still assemble outdoors in weather.
- Geodesics become air-deliverable. Marines assemble a magnesium dome in 135 man-minutes and fly it from a carrier when no other air-droppable shelter works.
- Be an agent of information. Human beings receive information; Fuller treats himself as a responsible custodian of it, not as Mr. Big.
quotes
“the metaphysical was not on the books”
“the building industry was the last of the “one of” industries”
“a group of Marines assembled it in 135 man minutes”
“I look at myself really very much as an agent”