The metals are deposited very unevenly around the whole earth. In effect man goes half way around the world and takes ore out of the ground, and starts separating it. And as he goes along sometimes leaves things behind, he separates it and has the residues, and keeps forwarding. And finally he gets highly concentrated metals at various centers around the world. And as there is finally a maximum degree to which he separates these metals out from everything else, the chemical elements. Then he starts reassociating them in preferred manner. As alloys. And, after that we get to the point where things get to be made into special parts of special engines and so forth. And we begin to then, we start assembling again in preferred ways.

In other words, Nature has "come-apart-ability," she has reassociability, and you are simply participating in that in a big way. So I find that the total operation going half way around the world to get the right metals, to bring them to certain concentrated places while concentrating them themselves, separating them out into a lot of assorted, very valuable materials, and then start reassociating them in preferred ways whether it is going to be some kind of an engine, or it's going to be some kind of a building, or some other kind of tool. And, then having gone into this very great complex undertaking, which is going to take months, it's going to take years to get those mines operating, or ships. It's a very big complex thing, taking a lot of time; and I got to then to demonstrate all the time that has been invested by man and all the energies invested by man are going to be worthwhile having invested that way, and so what I have to do then, is arrange to get what you produced available to the most people around the world.

So, in effect, I now have produced something that has been assembled from all over the world. And now I must arrange to get what I have to all the world again. To make it most available to the most people. This gets to be the optimum big pattern that you are concerned with. I find, then, if I do get it available to the most people, then we find out very quickly, "Was this really worthwhile doing, and how do you improve on it if it wasn't quite if it was pretty good?" In the end humanity ought to be gaining advantage humanity ought to be gaining advantage of greater health, and more time, a little greater longevity more freedom, to undertake more things. We're continually trying to free up humanity from being locally preoccupied as a local machine. And to get freer to use more and more of it's head , to look at more and more of the patterns, to be able then to be more and more effective with its mind understanding principles and realizing how much more it could do with the energies that are available in Universe on the ends of levers to do the physical work that we're really here to do the mental work.

So, my total pattern is, then, half way around the world inbound, half way around the world outbound, which sum totally is once around the world. These are a whole lot of energies that are involved. I find then that this makes it possible for me to get into very discreet patterns.

Next thing, I can really understand my totality and have a way of judging whether what you're doing is worth the doing. Such patterns as I have just spoken to you about really are, then, highly documentable. What the data is involved, and make some very good calculations in advance whether this is going to turn out to be worthwhile to humanity. I do not look on these projects in the terms about whether the people like the looks of what I am doing for the moment. I am always concerned with how it works, and it usually looks alright, because I am concerned with not only how do you get it there, but how do you maintain it? And how do you in the end recover it and take it away when that becomes obsolete cause you've got something better. So you get that into recirculation.

So I see a total responsibility in design, getting things to people, not trying to sell it to people, but trying to make it available to people. I'm very glad to be doing this program under the Bell Service because I, one of the examples I use in industrialization I consider by far the best example operating in the whole history of industrialization, is the telephone service. That is, you don't try to sell people telephones! What you do, you're selling service. You're making it possible for people to communicate, and the easier you make it to communicate and the more accurate they can communicate, the more people are going to use the service. So, it is a very interesting matter. People used to think that you've got to sell things to people, because in order to get it improved you've got to people are going to demand a very good product.

The telephone company learned that they didn't wait until the people said "I don't know whether I can afford a new telephone." They didn't sell the telephone to people, if they'd have sold the people telephones, then they would have had telephone architects and they would have had to develop "Napoleonic" and "Voodoo" and "Georgian" telephones and nobody could possibly sell the telephones to anyone else anyway. So the telephone company simply sold the service, and they found that every time they found a little better way, that they could really afford to scrap enormous systems because they could give so much more service, that the number of people who used the service would go up that fast. And, so the telephone has continually been improved.

So when I'm thinking about big systems, and world systems I find this a very good field to work in to take working examples. I also then spoke about recirculating and using materials. The telephone company when I was young we lived just outside of Boston, and our telephone number was number l0, so it was early in the experience of telephones. And, it was not long a few years before they began learning to get more messages over the same cross section of copper wire. First it was just one, and then they began to get more we got up to 28. And then there was an increase, I think we went up to over 200. The next increase if I remember it, went up to over ll00. Then it went up into some thousands. By l930 the chief engineer of the Bell Labs said that, at that time the telephone service was being employed by about 10% of humanity. He said they'd be able to increase the telephone service so that the whole world would be furnished with telephone service, and that during that time the telephone companies would not have to mine or buy another pound of copper! That during that whole time they would be copper sellers, because they found the rate at which they were learning how to get more messages per cross section of copper was so, so vast that there actually was a gain. There would be the amount of copper they already had was a copper mine, and it would be adequate. That has turned out to be the fact!

We have now one communications satellite weighing a quarter of a ton, outperforming the transoceanic communications capability and fidelity of l75,000 tons of copper cable one quarter of a ton! This is the rate which is suddenly an enormous step up, doing more with less. And my whole hope of how we are going to get all of humanity at a higher standard of living starts in looking out for the young life you don't have to quarrel with. Because you give them something that really works, and that child, that's what he's going to use. And his reflexes are going to be conditioned to that which works, and what is intelligent, and he won't have anything else from there on. And I said, "It's a long pull job we're doing here, we have to start with the children, and we have to get a whole lot understood before we get anywhere."

Because I found that at the time I started what I was doing that people were thinking about architecture and buildings in such a powerfully conditioned reflex that it was just incredible. In 1920, when I in a first presenting the Dymaxion House to people, where I developed a machine for living. It really is a machine and using the most advanced technology we had, and I was able to devise a three ton house, that I was out performing a two hundred ton conventional residence. People, you know, they were so taken up with Georgian and so forth, it was amazing, the conditioned reflexes. And how much is really in there, almost on a fear basis, because we get, it goes back to the power structure, and the castles, and what the strong man has. The man down the street with his high dazzle that's what he has, what do you have? The people their eyes were just powerfully conditioned this way.

So, in all the things that I talk to you about, I want you to realize that I never allow myself to say what they're going to look like. I'm perfectly confident that if you're doing it the right way it's going to look strange, but in due course people discover that that is the way things really work and they begin to like it, because they can understand it and feel it.

As we begin to get into the space programs, the devices you see going off into space look very strange to people. And they didn't mind about that going off into space, but if it is something you're going to have around the house, that you're going to have to live with, they've been very, very sticky about it.