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Education Automation: Freeing the scholar to return to his studies
In a perceptive and penetrating essay devoted ot a definition of the modern world as he sees it, the world-reknowned inventor of the Geodesic dome discusses the place of education in that world. In applying his dymaxion principles to educational planning Mr. Fuller makes a strong case for technological aids in teaching and for comprehensive planning of campuses of the future
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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About the author
R. Buckminster Fuller
132 books772 followersRichard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor.
Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.
Buckminster Fuller was the second president of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.
Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.
Buckminster Fuller was the second president of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 24, 2018
A brilliant visionary book. Still relevant today, as we've not fully absorbed the brilliant recommendation:
1) Find the best ways to present a topic
2) Find the best person to present the topic
3) Record the presentation
4) Show it to all the students
Why should crappy teachers have to figure out a way to present a topic, and then stumble through the presentation, repeat the lesson several times in a day, and repeat the performance every year?
Do what the book recommends, and everyone will be better off!
1) Find the best ways to present a topic
2) Find the best person to present the topic
3) Record the presentation
4) Show it to all the students
Why should crappy teachers have to figure out a way to present a topic, and then stumble through the presentation, repeat the lesson several times in a day, and repeat the performance every year?
Do what the book recommends, and everyone will be better off!
September 21, 2019
He's not a "social reformer" he says, but a "new former". What this means is that he swore at some point in the 1920s that he would do some thing practical instead of taking what he saw as a theoretical political position. This book is his homage to his avoidance strategy.
He imagines in this short work that if all people are educated then no one would do the wrong thing. We would do the right thing, the technically and scientifically correct thing, because we would know what to do. He endeavours to posit this as his answer to socialism, Marxism and Communism.
You have to step back and realize this is the cold war when he is writing. To be safe, mentioning communism or socialism meant in the USA you had to condemn it. This safety though stood in the way of making some technical progress just in case it seemed too socialist, which for a practical guy such as Fuller he had to find a way around the ideological blockade on progressively scientific and technical advanced development.
So he dispenses with ideology, planning and anything that seems to say we need to work together instead of being rugged individualists. So he says we will naturally want to do the right thing with each other if we had a good education. No particular ideology would be necessary.
If you have heard the argument before its not surprising. Dickens made the argument almost exactly the same in his numerous sentimental novels. If people were just nicer to each other, more considerate and understood each other better, then we wouldn't need any more social reform than that.
All the good will and education in the world will not make Fuller's argument hold water. We need to be better organized and recognize that some advanced planning processes on a mass even global scale are necessary to modern life. Call it what you will it is more than mere good will and education can provide.
Still Fuller was a genius and his visions of technical advance and the future possibilities of science are both poetic and practical. Its hard not to find his optimism charming.
He imagines in this short work that if all people are educated then no one would do the wrong thing. We would do the right thing, the technically and scientifically correct thing, because we would know what to do. He endeavours to posit this as his answer to socialism, Marxism and Communism.
You have to step back and realize this is the cold war when he is writing. To be safe, mentioning communism or socialism meant in the USA you had to condemn it. This safety though stood in the way of making some technical progress just in case it seemed too socialist, which for a practical guy such as Fuller he had to find a way around the ideological blockade on progressively scientific and technical advanced development.
So he dispenses with ideology, planning and anything that seems to say we need to work together instead of being rugged individualists. So he says we will naturally want to do the right thing with each other if we had a good education. No particular ideology would be necessary.
If you have heard the argument before its not surprising. Dickens made the argument almost exactly the same in his numerous sentimental novels. If people were just nicer to each other, more considerate and understood each other better, then we wouldn't need any more social reform than that.
All the good will and education in the world will not make Fuller's argument hold water. We need to be better organized and recognize that some advanced planning processes on a mass even global scale are necessary to modern life. Call it what you will it is more than mere good will and education can provide.
Still Fuller was a genius and his visions of technical advance and the future possibilities of science are both poetic and practical. Its hard not to find his optimism charming.
March 14, 2017
This book was created from the transcript of Buckminster Fuller's presentation to the Southern Illinois University's planning committee in 1961, after being invited as part of a group of experienced professionals called on as consultants for future development of the university.
Reading anything by Fuller can be a heady, almost trippy experience; Fuller was an inventor and innovator whose work was always immersed in his unyielding optimism for mankind's potential and future evolution, and any project undertaken by him always pointed towards this Utopian inevitability. Education Automation is no different, as it's main focus is on Fuller's wide-eyed predictions of how education would eventually become the country's (and world's) foremost business venture, with fully-funded advanced (and even lifetime) education to fulfill society's needs as the global labor-based economy gives way to a idea-based economy.
It's easy enough to dismiss some of Fuller's predictions and theories as wishful thinking or delusional prognostication, if for no other reason than the real world's inability - or unwillingness - to follow the trail laid out by him. However, his prescient ability to lay out an archaic version of today's internet, and accurately describe mankind's evolutionary path to the present (complete with historically accurate examples) that leads him to believe in the brightness of it's future, are strokes of genius that cannot be ignored, even if they do feel as if seen through rose-colored glasses.
If you are new to Buckminster Fuller, this is a great introduction to the man's thought process and vision, although even in this slim volume his explanations can be occasionally dense and convoluted. Be prepared to be more depressed than inspired, however, as comparing his hopeful vision of yesterday's tomorrow still bares little resemblance to the unflinching reality of today.
Reading anything by Fuller can be a heady, almost trippy experience; Fuller was an inventor and innovator whose work was always immersed in his unyielding optimism for mankind's potential and future evolution, and any project undertaken by him always pointed towards this Utopian inevitability. Education Automation is no different, as it's main focus is on Fuller's wide-eyed predictions of how education would eventually become the country's (and world's) foremost business venture, with fully-funded advanced (and even lifetime) education to fulfill society's needs as the global labor-based economy gives way to a idea-based economy.
It's easy enough to dismiss some of Fuller's predictions and theories as wishful thinking or delusional prognostication, if for no other reason than the real world's inability - or unwillingness - to follow the trail laid out by him. However, his prescient ability to lay out an archaic version of today's internet, and accurately describe mankind's evolutionary path to the present (complete with historically accurate examples) that leads him to believe in the brightness of it's future, are strokes of genius that cannot be ignored, even if they do feel as if seen through rose-colored glasses.
If you are new to Buckminster Fuller, this is a great introduction to the man's thought process and vision, although even in this slim volume his explanations can be occasionally dense and convoluted. Be prepared to be more depressed than inspired, however, as comparing his hopeful vision of yesterday's tomorrow still bares little resemblance to the unflinching reality of today.
November 13, 2017
Just completed the last chapter of this book and it led me to the next book "Synergetic" to find out more about how the mind work. It made me realize what a big stage "Bucky" was really looking at. That we humans are all bickering with each other on this "seemingly limited space with scarce resources" place called Spaceship Earth, while we are not even a speck in this huge universe. So we need to be a Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist and see the big picture of how the world works. We are at this juncture where we need to wake up and start to work together to make the world work for 100% humanity. When that happens, our world may expand even beyond Earth.
It also taught me a lot of my children. That our children are actually here to teach us, not the other way round. They are born genius but are being "de-geniused" by us adults. And we (also genuises) might have sacrificed our abilities in the process of growing up. so now we need to provide them a safe space and make it ok for them to make lots of mistakes and encourage them to learn and correct themselves without invalidation (Mistake Mystique). We are also a role model in our words, tone, emotions for our kids, so we need to be responsible. Our children have the ability to absorb and learn a tremendous amount of information from the TV, but there's now too much toxic on the TV and not enough comprehensive learning content. Also, school may not be the ideal environment for study and comprehensive learning, but a place for social experience.
All the above and more, made me reflect on how I have played my role as a father, and how true it is about my kids being a genius. It created an awareness for me, and I want to find out more about how to do better. Let us provide a conducive environment for our kids to have comprehensive learning so they will one day create a better place for everyone.
It also taught me a lot of my children. That our children are actually here to teach us, not the other way round. They are born genius but are being "de-geniused" by us adults. And we (also genuises) might have sacrificed our abilities in the process of growing up. so now we need to provide them a safe space and make it ok for them to make lots of mistakes and encourage them to learn and correct themselves without invalidation (Mistake Mystique). We are also a role model in our words, tone, emotions for our kids, so we need to be responsible. Our children have the ability to absorb and learn a tremendous amount of information from the TV, but there's now too much toxic on the TV and not enough comprehensive learning content. Also, school may not be the ideal environment for study and comprehensive learning, but a place for social experience.
All the above and more, made me reflect on how I have played my role as a father, and how true it is about my kids being a genius. It created an awareness for me, and I want to find out more about how to do better. Let us provide a conducive environment for our kids to have comprehensive learning so they will one day create a better place for everyone.
August 30, 2021
I reference this book every time I wish to envision the world of the future I want to live in.
The time in Bucky's life when he wrote this was when he had the greatest access to his creative powers and was working closely with teams of people who intended on implementing his vision.
Due to this presence of not only his genius and vision but a feeling of support and capacity, the words in this book ring not as a theoretical tantrum or logistical description of principles (as is often the case with his writing), but as a blueprint for the reaching of his technologically sane society.
If only we had listened.
A great book to read for inspiration.
The time in Bucky's life when he wrote this was when he had the greatest access to his creative powers and was working closely with teams of people who intended on implementing his vision.
Due to this presence of not only his genius and vision but a feeling of support and capacity, the words in this book ring not as a theoretical tantrum or logistical description of principles (as is often the case with his writing), but as a blueprint for the reaching of his technologically sane society.
If only we had listened.
A great book to read for inspiration.
March 21, 2020
It’s very interesting and very, very dated. Fuller spends maybe 20 pages of the 85-page manuscript actually talking about education, and everything else is weird tangents and him showing off his Big Beefy Brain. His ideas on remote learning are very prescient, but too much of this lecture is heresay, personal opinion and just Fuller using big words. Still, there are some good ideas lodged in it.
July 23, 2017
Buckminister was for sure greate teacher. So he decided to write a little piece on education. Could be written more about education, but after understood his thinking, it's asking for impossible. He is often freestyling even in his books.
August 13, 2017
Fuller gives the reader a chance to see how systemic design and an overarching vision can help add dimensions to one's perception and problem-solving ability, in the class, and in one's daily life. I appreciate the chance to view learning from Fuller's vantage.
November 3, 2017
Read this on openlibrary.org, A visionary document, some of the things have actually come true ...
November 12, 2015
This book was first published in December 1962 when I was 16 and doing 'O' level studies at a comprehensive school in Wolverhampton. However, I did not read it until August 1996 when I was 49 and doing doctoral studies at the OU.
Why did a book I had not read change me?
Briefly, because, in August 1967, when I was studying architecture, I received a copy of Cedric Price's Potteries Thinkbelt study, but something I did not know then was that it was a response to the challenge originated by Buckminster Fuller in Education Automation, namely, that the world's universities should invest in the problem of how to make the world work for 100% of humanity. This challenge had been ignored in the UK, prompting Price, famous for Joan Littlewood's Fun Palace, to design another early entry project, this time in the field of social policy. Further, in August 1996, I learned that Price's proposal that advanced education should become the new prime industry was a re-think of Fuller's original conception. Thus Education Automation is a book that changed Cedric Price before it changed me. Why? Ultimately, because it frees us all to return to our studies.
Why did a book I had not read change me?
Briefly, because, in August 1967, when I was studying architecture, I received a copy of Cedric Price's Potteries Thinkbelt study, but something I did not know then was that it was a response to the challenge originated by Buckminster Fuller in Education Automation, namely, that the world's universities should invest in the problem of how to make the world work for 100% of humanity. This challenge had been ignored in the UK, prompting Price, famous for Joan Littlewood's Fun Palace, to design another early entry project, this time in the field of social policy. Further, in August 1996, I learned that Price's proposal that advanced education should become the new prime industry was a re-think of Fuller's original conception. Thus Education Automation is a book that changed Cedric Price before it changed me. Why? Ultimately, because it frees us all to return to our studies.
November 19, 2015
This is my second of many of Fuller's books I'll be reading. I continue to be impressed at his vision, and what he was able to articulate in the early sixties regarding education and technology is notable. He was optimistic in his timelines, and that much of what he envisioned took longer to be realized.
September 7, 2011
Absolutely amazing!!
September 7, 2015
Like most of Fullers books, it was a great read. He was a visionary, full of great ideas and concepts that turned out to be true before they were accepted as such.
August 12, 2016
A rambling but lucid presentation to the folks creating SIU's new campus. Insightful on a broad range of education topics, including an appeal for more comprehensive anticipatory design folks.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews