“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.” – R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980

This confident assertion was made in 1980 by the late R. Buckminster Fuller–inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet and cosmologist. As early as 1959, Newsweek reported that Fuller predicted the conquest of poverty by the year 2000.

In 1977, almost twenty years later, the National Academy of Sciences confirmed Fuller’s prediction. Their World Food and Nutrition Study, prepared by 1,500 scientists, concluded, “If there is the political will in this country and abroad... it should be possible to overcome the worst aspects of widespread hunger and malnutrition within one generation.”

Even with tragedies like Ethiopia and Somalia, it is becoming clear that, as Fuller predicted, we have arrived at the possibility of eliminating hunger and poverty in all the world within our lifetime.

RBF, Anne and Allegra at the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago, July 1928


Richard Buckminster Fuller
born in Milton, Massachusetts, July 12,1895, son of Richard Buckminster and Caroline Wolcott (Andrews) Fuller

Buckminster Fuller had one of the most fascinating and original minds of his century. Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts, he was the latest--if not the last--of the New England Transcendentalists. Like the transcendentalists, Fuller rejected the established religious and political notions of the past and adhered to an idealistic system of thought based on the essential unity of the natural world and the use of experiment and intuition as a means of understanding it. But, departing from the pattern of his New England predecessors, he proposed that only an understanding of technology in the deepest sense would afford humans a proper guide to individual conduct and the eventual salvation of society.

This essay was wittten in 1995 on occasion of the 100th aniversary of R.B. Fuller's birth by Allegra Fuller Snyder

When I was asked to contribute to this volume I wondered where I would start. Writing about one's father is a challenging, almost overwhelming, task -- particularly if one has not confronted that presence in writing before. I have written about many other subjects, but not about Bucky.

Notes on Anne and Bucky Fuller’s deaths made by Allegra Fuller Snyder, written several years after their death, to a close friend (hence intimate language)

I would say that right to the end Mummy and Daddy’s relationship to one another continued to be very much the same. Daddy doing his own thing, doing a lot of traveling and moving around the world, and Mummy doing her own thing which meant mostly being at home and mostly in communication and involved with all of her family--of course me, and her grandchildren, but also whoever of her sisters and brothers, and in-laws, that she could be in communication with, and probably a handful of very old and dear friends that she kept in quite good touch with, always writing her wonderful letters in her beautiful handwriting. Bucky and Anne both seemed to enjoy this somewhat independent relationship.

Global Thinking


Buckminster Fuller was one of our world’s first futurists and global thinkers. His headquarters, the “Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs,” contained the findings of his extensive global research. Beginning in the 30s, Fuller correlated this data and made a number of important and accurate predictions about the future of our society. His work in this regard paved the way for contemporary trend watchers like Tom Peters, John Naisbitt, and Alvin Toffler.

THINKING DISCIPLINE

Fuller: I am going to review two or three ways in which I discipline myself to try to get myself thinking in a little more adequate manner concerning what we know of our Universe and what may be going on in a larger way, and to try to get things a little better proportioned. As for instance, I would like to have a picture of our Milky Way galaxy may I have that picture please?

Buckminster Fuller was one of our world’s first futurists and global thinkers. His 1927 decision to work always and only for all humanity led him to address the largest global problems of poverty, disease and homelessness. He realized early on that by examining global problems in the context of the whole system—the whole planet—he would have the best chance of identifying large-scale trends that would allow him to anticipate the critical needs of humanity.

an excerpt from Time Magazine, Vol.83 no.2, January 10, 1964

He has been called “the first poet of technology,” “the greatest living genius of industrial-technical realization in building,“ “an anticipator of the world to come--which is different from being a prophet,” “a seminal thinker,” and “an inspired child.” But all these encomiums are fairly recent. For most of his life, R. Buckminster Fuller was known simply as a crackpot.

He is also something more than the mere sum of his praise and criticism. He is a throwback to the classic American individualist, a mold which produced Thomas Edison and Thoreau--men with the fresh eye that sees and questions everything anew, and the crotchety mind that refuses to believe there is anything that cannot be done. What Fuller sees excites him with the vision of man's potentialities, and he has made it his mission to help man realize them. Says he: “Man knows so much and does so little.”

Interviewer: If or when we accomplish a hundred percent physically successful world, what is the next step? Can we rely on humans to progress without physical need?
RBF: I would like to come back to my earlier questions of myself of why were humans included in the Universe? I think I did discuss that earlier, didn't I?
Interviewer: Yes.

Guinea Pig B is a name Bucky gave himself, to signify that his life was an experiment.

Excerpted from "BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller's Ideas for Today" by James T. Baldwin:

His alternative to politics was radical and deeply subversive. If we are designed like other animals to be a success, then nature must have provided enough of everything needed for all to live a healthy existence. People living well would have little interest in fighting and destruction. Bucky decided that reliable information and efficient design could identify and fairly distribute the Earth's resources, bringing a good life to all. Developing that information and putting it to work would be the mission of Guinea Pig B.

Reused by permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

by Victoria Vesna, 10/2002

Thence evolved a mathematics based on the proportion of reciprocal forces, complements, and functions of a mobile, non-static TIME-world. Thus the scientist-philosopher-artist, by the teleogical mechanism of mathematics which contains in its infinite ramifications all the secrets personally contacted by the Yogi, made possible continuity of the expression of the truth beyond "the great wall" of the body and of personal death. (Fuller, 1938, p. 105)

Books written by R. Buckminster Fuller (with images)

Complete listing of Books about R. Buckminster Fuller (with images)

Book Introductions, Forewords and Contributions by R. Buckminster Fuller (with images)