A half century ago R. Buckminster Fuller - distinguished mathematician, pioneering inventor and 21st century visionary - realized that humanity's long-term success or failure would depend in large part on our ability to:

• "Find effective ways for all humanity to see total Earth"
• Gather & map an inventory of the world's resources, human trends, and needs
• Design "dramatic educational tools" to promote "World Literacy re: World Problems," including "dramatic indication of potential solution[s]"

BFI launched the EARTHscope project to extend this important aspect of Buckminster Fuller's research and vision.

Even using today's technology, the Geoscope and Fuller's concept for a "World Resources Simulation Center" is still an ambitious project in terms of hardware, modeling software, programming, and data collection/analysis. The EARTHscope was envisoined as small and simple step towards realizing this dream. Using readily available software, the goal was to produce web-friendly geo-stories; mutli media map based presentations of critical global issues with time series animations based on real data.

The development of the EARTHscope interface, and publishing framework, is seen as an important step toward transforming global and local data into more powerful, easily accessed, geo-stories about the state of the Earth, our communities, and their possible futures.

A long-term goal of the ES project is to build the team, the technology, the data resources, and - most importantly - the community that will make the Geoscope and other critically needed global viisualization tools a reality.


Click here for a complete description of the project and view several prototype presentations