The Compression Islands
In Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969) he refined his Great Pirates narrative to account for what he considered a chief element of the human predicament -- overspecialization. At one time, the story goes, the grand strategist pirates had instituted strict compartmentalization as a way of keeping their own grip on power, keeping those under them partly in the dark and informed only on a "need to know" basis. The big picture was only for an elite inner circle. But as legions of specialists pioneered technologies operating in hitherto unsuspected regions of the frequency spectrum, the strategic frontier moved outside the scope directly accessible to the naked human senses. The once-comprehensivist bosses lost experiential contact with the new realities and with their passing came a loss of any anchoring comprehensivist viewpoint in a curriculum now continuing on "auto pilot" to further subdivide and overspecialize.
Synergetics and Synergetics 2 (1975, 1979) subtitled 'explorations in the geometry of thinking' encapsulated Fuller's attempt to restore the possibility of a comprehensivist viewpoint within a dangerously overspecializing curriculum -- the kind of thing any would-be great pirates of the future would need to read. Synergetics, short for synergetic-energetic geometry, systematizes its concepts around a core polarity variously labeled as:
synergy vs. energy
growth vs. decay
tension vs. compression
syntropy vs. entropy
gravity vs. radiation.
These paired tendencies 'always and only co-occur' and do not come across as moral catagories in any primary sense, nor should Synergetics be regarded as a theological work, despite its transcendentalist proclivities. The ethical direction in synergetics is towards "omnieconomical design" with nature's "technologies" setting the standard. Our humanly contrived inventions work to approach nature's ideals and as we become more adept at using basic principles to best advantage, our designs accomplish more with less physical time/energy expenditures -- a long term trend Fuller labeled "ephemeralization" (historian Arnold Toynbee used "etherealization" to mean the same thing).
The implosive or structuring tendency (e.g. syntropy) has an edge in the grand scheme of things, however, as it operates "circumferentially" in an embracing, constrictive capacity, whereas the explosive or destructuring tendency (e.g. radiation) broadcasts outwardly in all directions from some center. The same amount of force organized circumferentially is more effective, because the network collaborates with itself, with all members drawing towards the same focus. Radial energies seek individual freedoms without regard for a whole and in physical terms reach a top speed en vacuo of 186,000 miles per second, the normal state for unfettered energy of zero rest mass.
'Tensegrity' or 'tensional integrity' provides a unifying context for this central polarity. In tensegrity structures, all the compression elements become islanded entities, not touching one another, yet contributing to the overall shape. Tension wires, which tend towards increasing invisibility with slenderness, run between the compression elements, playing the role of an implosive, syntropic, gravitational force.
In the language of synergetics, the compression islands are the linear semi-metaphorical verities, local and partial attempts to capture truth, with a sense of the whole emerging thanks to the invisible cohering power of the mind, which is attuned to the exceptionless principles running through all the brain-sorted special case events (1005.50-56).
It was over this concept of 'tensegrity' that early divisions over the issue of Fuller's character and integrity came to the foreground. Ken Snelson, a star pupil at Black Mountain College (1948), at first enchanted by Bucky's spell, became highly disillusioned when it appeared that Fuller planned to abscond with the "tensegrity" idea without properly crediting his student.
http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bio.html
Synergetics and Synergetics 2 (1975, 1979) subtitled 'explorations in the geometry of thinking' encapsulated Fuller's attempt to restore the possibility of a comprehensivist viewpoint within a dangerously overspecializing curriculum -- the kind of thing any would-be great pirates of the future would need to read. Synergetics, short for synergetic-energetic geometry, systematizes its concepts around a core polarity variously labeled as:
synergy vs. energy
growth vs. decay
tension vs. compression
syntropy vs. entropy
gravity vs. radiation.
These paired tendencies 'always and only co-occur' and do not come across as moral catagories in any primary sense, nor should Synergetics be regarded as a theological work, despite its transcendentalist proclivities. The ethical direction in synergetics is towards "omnieconomical design" with nature's "technologies" setting the standard. Our humanly contrived inventions work to approach nature's ideals and as we become more adept at using basic principles to best advantage, our designs accomplish more with less physical time/energy expenditures -- a long term trend Fuller labeled "ephemeralization" (historian Arnold Toynbee used "etherealization" to mean the same thing).
The implosive or structuring tendency (e.g. syntropy) has an edge in the grand scheme of things, however, as it operates "circumferentially" in an embracing, constrictive capacity, whereas the explosive or destructuring tendency (e.g. radiation) broadcasts outwardly in all directions from some center. The same amount of force organized circumferentially is more effective, because the network collaborates with itself, with all members drawing towards the same focus. Radial energies seek individual freedoms without regard for a whole and in physical terms reach a top speed en vacuo of 186,000 miles per second, the normal state for unfettered energy of zero rest mass.
'Tensegrity' or 'tensional integrity' provides a unifying context for this central polarity. In tensegrity structures, all the compression elements become islanded entities, not touching one another, yet contributing to the overall shape. Tension wires, which tend towards increasing invisibility with slenderness, run between the compression elements, playing the role of an implosive, syntropic, gravitational force.
In the language of synergetics, the compression islands are the linear semi-metaphorical verities, local and partial attempts to capture truth, with a sense of the whole emerging thanks to the invisible cohering power of the mind, which is attuned to the exceptionless principles running through all the brain-sorted special case events (1005.50-56).
It was over this concept of 'tensegrity' that early divisions over the issue of Fuller's character and integrity came to the foreground. Ken Snelson, a star pupil at Black Mountain College (1948), at first enchanted by Bucky's spell, became highly disillusioned when it appeared that Fuller planned to abscond with the "tensegrity" idea without properly crediting his student.
http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bio.html
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