Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth – R. Buckminster Fuller (1969)

“Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth is a short book by R. Buckminster Fuller, first published in 1969, following an address with a similar title given to the 50th annual convention of the American Planners Association in the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., on 16 October 1967. The book relates Earth to a spaceship flying through space. Noting the lack of any user manual to help Earthians steward this ship, Fuller offers some reflections, prognostications, and guidance, based on contemporary concepts of linked relationships, that may help in the understanding, management, preservation, and sustainment of this ship. The spaceship has a finite amount of resources and cannot be resupplied. Fuller describes two epochs within modern and contemporary history. The first epoch was one run by Great Pirates or ‘great outlaws.’ The source of their power is that they are the only masters of global information in a time where people are focused locally. They were aware that resources are not evenly distributed around the world, so that items which are abundant in one area are scarce in another. This gives rise to trade which the Great Pirates exploit for their own advantage. They established sea-trade routes to connect previously-isolated populations throughout the globe. As these people took to the sea they left the local, regional laws of their original communities and entered a transitional space where they invented their own laws based on their interests in retaining special access to the Earth’s dispersed resources and to gaining power through trade. The Great Pirates had a special ability to comprehend and activate a wide range of skills and knowledges required to generalize, translate, navigate, and integrate existing systems. Fuller posits that these Great Pirates established governments in various areas and supported leaders who will defend their trade routes. … Power struggles for waterways ensue, requiring people such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to design better defenses for the Great Pirates. …”
Wikipedia
The Co-Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
8 Short Hints To Sustain Life on Earth: Notes from ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’ by R. Buckminster Fuller
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