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I Seem To Be a Verb by R. Buckminster Fuller
, 192 pages, black and white and green and white illustrations, unusual page lay out with text written to be read as usual and to be read by turning the book upside down
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1970
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3689 people want to read
About the author
R. Buckminster Fuller
131 books769 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 - 29 of 29 reviews
February 3, 2020
This little book that I found in a junkshop in Elyria Ohio blew my tiny mind. I didn't have any experience with wild graphic design and not much experience with philosophy and technology but I can truly say it expanded my consciousness in the same way people talk about psychedelic trips. I literally slept with it under my pillow.
I no longer have my copy--I can only hope I passed it on to someone who's consciousness needed expanding.
I no longer have my copy--I can only hope I passed it on to someone who's consciousness needed expanding.
May 8, 2024
I live on Earth at present and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.
I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.
I Seem To Be A Verb is a title ripped from Buckminster Fuller’s most famous quote and important idea — that there are no nouns, no objects, only processes, verbs in universe. To convey that idea, this book was formatted as a dynamic collage. The pages consist of photos, illustrations, designs, and advertisements, overlayed and interspersed with blocks of text. The text consists of quotes and passages from Fuller, quotes from others, advertisements, and slogans. Once you’ve read it front to back, flip it over and read the green text (upside down as you first read through) back to front.
The unique design seems calculated to shake readers out of their normal, comfortable head space to bring fresh eyes to the ideas it presents. Mileage may vary on that front. What is certain is that it is a fitting tribute to Buckminster Fuller who was famous for his odd looking yet effective designs, and that it is a perfect time capsule of the cutting edge of creative thought and design of its era (published 1970).
I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.
I Seem To Be A Verb is a title ripped from Buckminster Fuller’s most famous quote and important idea — that there are no nouns, no objects, only processes, verbs in universe. To convey that idea, this book was formatted as a dynamic collage. The pages consist of photos, illustrations, designs, and advertisements, overlayed and interspersed with blocks of text. The text consists of quotes and passages from Fuller, quotes from others, advertisements, and slogans. Once you’ve read it front to back, flip it over and read the green text (upside down as you first read through) back to front.
The unique design seems calculated to shake readers out of their normal, comfortable head space to bring fresh eyes to the ideas it presents. Mileage may vary on that front. What is certain is that it is a fitting tribute to Buckminster Fuller who was famous for his odd looking yet effective designs, and that it is a perfect time capsule of the cutting edge of creative thought and design of its era (published 1970).
August 7, 2014
we do all too often think of ourselves as nouns, as something fixed and permanent, rather than a system that is constantly in motion, as in blood flowing, nerve impulses shooting around, mind constantly thinking, a form of motion.
This book is a wonderful way to introduce the reader to thinking about themselves as something in motion rather than something static.
Perhaps most important is that this is the first e-book, even though it is not available that way, only as printed books. The combination of images and short groups of words is very much the model people use on social media today, even if they've never heard of this book.
This book is a wonderful way to introduce the reader to thinking about themselves as something in motion rather than something static.
Perhaps most important is that this is the first e-book, even though it is not available that way, only as printed books. The combination of images and short groups of words is very much the model people use on social media today, even if they've never heard of this book.
May 26, 2009
interesting, but the point gets lost in all the fancy formatting. drop acid for an instantaneous rosetta stone
January 15, 2023
Intellectual musings packaged as pseudo-intellectual tidbit for the acid-trip crowd. I expected a wild ride, but most every page is the same drivel: tiny bits of wisdom never explored in any depth at all or drowned in jargon meant to be deep but ultimately just a throwaway.
An example of the latter, lack of punctuation and all:
What I am trying to do. As a conscious means of hopefully competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to the individual who takes and maintains the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states I seek through comprehensively anticipatory design science and its reduction to physical practice to reform the environment instead of trying to reform man also intend thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less whereby in turn the wealth-regenerating prospects of such design-science augmentations will induce their spontaneous and economically successful production by world-around industrialization's managers all of which chain reaction-provoking events will both permit and induce all humanity to realize full lasting economic and physical success plus enjoyment of all the Earth without one individual interfering with or being advantaged at the expense of another.
Small, soundbite-style quotes haphazardly thrown in with photos and upside-down false itineraries… Yes, it’s the equivalent of avant-garde psychedelic rock in text, and it’s commendable for not following the form. But ultimately it’s incohesive, shallow crap.
An example of the latter, lack of punctuation and all:
What I am trying to do. As a conscious means of hopefully competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to the individual who takes and maintains the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states I seek through comprehensively anticipatory design science and its reduction to physical practice to reform the environment instead of trying to reform man also intend thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less whereby in turn the wealth-regenerating prospects of such design-science augmentations will induce their spontaneous and economically successful production by world-around industrialization's managers all of which chain reaction-provoking events will both permit and induce all humanity to realize full lasting economic and physical success plus enjoyment of all the Earth without one individual interfering with or being advantaged at the expense of another.
Small, soundbite-style quotes haphazardly thrown in with photos and upside-down false itineraries… Yes, it’s the equivalent of avant-garde psychedelic rock in text, and it’s commendable for not following the form. But ultimately it’s incohesive, shallow crap.
February 4, 2017
Throw the contents of a famous engineer's brain at a small paperback, and let the contents fall how they will: upside down, bizarrely set, unified by a single line of coherent thought running through pages of quotes, photography, and commentary. Gradually the reader perceives what the past and future must look like to the author - a breathtaking acceleration and transformative flowering of human potential - but instead of explicitly telling us its perspective, the book requires us to slowly back into it; to reconstruct its conclusions from its scattered raw data. A radical way of introducing a radical worldview.
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January 4, 2015'SNOT A BOOK; 'SA 'SPERIENCE
December 18, 2023
i’ve never read a book like it! i can only think to describe it as a wayward collage of history/interactions/media by way of quotes and found imagery. reading is like digging for resonant granules… so weird and disjointed and surprisingly wonderful. wisdom tucked in the unexpecting corners of a page! and so i agree: “the truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the the think of it”
i couldn’t completely understand his stance on a lot of issues—and whether his curation was moreso informative or pointed—so felt a little disconnected there. i wish the focus was less heavy-handed on politics and instead more on culture/human/emotion. i want a less outdated version i suppose!
“i live on earth at present, and i don’t know what i am. i know that i am not a category. i am not a thing—a noun. i seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”
i couldn’t completely understand his stance on a lot of issues—and whether his curation was moreso informative or pointed—so felt a little disconnected there. i wish the focus was less heavy-handed on politics and instead more on culture/human/emotion. i want a less outdated version i suppose!
“i live on earth at present, and i don’t know what i am. i know that i am not a category. i am not a thing—a noun. i seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”
August 21, 2024
So weird but so cool
March 26, 2011
A perfectly charming, cute, naive, cranky collage of jokes, clever insights, utopian plans, and futuristic predictions about technology and society. It's wacky enough that it doesn't need to take its message too seriously, but interesting enough to get you flipping pages. Unique.
October 24, 2015
Bucky was a machine.
October 2, 2019
A strange book. You can't leave it. But it is somehow so dense that reading constantly seems equally hard.
Worth a read, or skim through.
Worth a read, or skim through.
dnf
August 30, 2023The book is packed with small quotes and excerpts from other writers. He puts the excerpts in as if they are some profound piece of wisdom, but to me, at least, I find them meaningless and lacking any connection to the other excerpts in the book.
I found this book through an interview with Chris Sacca. I feel kind of let down by the recommendation, because I feel that reading this book is much like reading the social media updates of some annoying person who does nothing but post small quotes from authors and academics they follow. What is interesting is rarely the small excerpts, but the reason it resonated with the person posting them. If only Fuller told us why the excerpts he's provided are meaningful to him, this book might have been more interesting.
There are a few places where he gives actual opinions and provides some kind of narrative. One I liked is the following:
"""
Malthus: The world's population will multiply more rapidly than available food supply.
Darwin: Only the fittest will survive
Marx: The workers who produce things are the fittest because they are the only ones who know how to produce physically and therefore they ought to be the ones to survive
Fuller: Technology providing more and more goods from fewer and fewer resources could guarantee that all men would survive.
It is very logical that man should fight to the death when he thinks there's not enough to go around.
In a fire, he loses all reason, goes mad, and tramples his fellow men to death as he completes for air.
It is also very logical that man won't fight when he knows there's enough to go around It is logical. It is logical. It is logical.
"""
This book is over 50 years old, and I'm not sure of the exact impact technology has made on providing more good from fewer resources, but we have made some progresses. The main one that comes to mind is progress on engineering rice to contain vitamin A, which can raise the nutrition level of many people in the world for whom rice is a staple in their diet, mostly in places where food access is limited.
Fuller, obviously had some interesting ideas and insights, I just believe most of the book here doesn't provide them or expound on them. I gave up at some point through the book because I found myself flipping through trying to find writing that was actually by Fuller, and not just the small, disjointed, and often drivelous excerpts he packed into the book.
I found this book through an interview with Chris Sacca. I feel kind of let down by the recommendation, because I feel that reading this book is much like reading the social media updates of some annoying person who does nothing but post small quotes from authors and academics they follow. What is interesting is rarely the small excerpts, but the reason it resonated with the person posting them. If only Fuller told us why the excerpts he's provided are meaningful to him, this book might have been more interesting.
There are a few places where he gives actual opinions and provides some kind of narrative. One I liked is the following:
"""
Malthus: The world's population will multiply more rapidly than available food supply.
Darwin: Only the fittest will survive
Marx: The workers who produce things are the fittest because they are the only ones who know how to produce physically and therefore they ought to be the ones to survive
Fuller: Technology providing more and more goods from fewer and fewer resources could guarantee that all men would survive.
It is very logical that man should fight to the death when he thinks there's not enough to go around.
In a fire, he loses all reason, goes mad, and tramples his fellow men to death as he completes for air.
It is also very logical that man won't fight when he knows there's enough to go around It is logical. It is logical. It is logical.
"""
This book is over 50 years old, and I'm not sure of the exact impact technology has made on providing more good from fewer resources, but we have made some progresses. The main one that comes to mind is progress on engineering rice to contain vitamin A, which can raise the nutrition level of many people in the world for whom rice is a staple in their diet, mostly in places where food access is limited.
Fuller, obviously had some interesting ideas and insights, I just believe most of the book here doesn't provide them or expound on them. I gave up at some point through the book because I found myself flipping through trying to find writing that was actually by Fuller, and not just the small, disjointed, and often drivelous excerpts he packed into the book.
June 26, 2020
This is a pretty surprisingly strange book, one that assaults the senses by providing aphorisms in order to encourage us to meditate on the world we live in, in ways that are non-linear and connected in manners that are not standardized, and thus do not offer standardized ways to consider what it is we are doing with ourselves.
In some sense, this is an aesthetic statement about the fragmented rush of the hyperreal media world we inhabit, one in which sound-bites replace deeper aspects of meaning making. All in all I think this is worth looking into.
I agree with what someone else said the binding is terrible.
In some sense, this is an aesthetic statement about the fragmented rush of the hyperreal media world we inhabit, one in which sound-bites replace deeper aspects of meaning making. All in all I think this is worth looking into.
I agree with what someone else said the binding is terrible.
February 19, 2019
thinking on the outside
November 29, 2022
What an odd book....no title page/publishing date....NOT a biography!!
February 24, 2017
One of the most unique and thought provoking books, I have ever read. The whole time reading, I thought about the Mark Twain quote “History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes.”
Read
March 2, 2023The experience of reading the snippets and viewing the photos that comprise this careful design — reading front to back, then back to front upside down — is like hurtling through space and time. Then you get to read the ticker-tape marching across the middle of each page like a continuous ribbon of text, which acts as a sort of summary as you see glimpses of all the same ideas again, but faster. There are some great juxtapositions between the two halves, too, that become apparent when viewing the full-spread photos.
The content may seem random at first glance, but similar content is clustered together to help you arrive at the intended idea, mostly variations on Buckminster Fuller's unremitting belief that automation and good design will enable everyone on Earth to have a higher standard of living. There are great descriptions of technology that has since been invented (telephone video) and technology that hasn't been invented/is yet to come (widespread use of prefab homes, dense living in climate-controlled cities in the sky). As usual, Fuller's ideas in the 1960s were way ahead of their time, and it's a fascinating read.
The content may seem random at first glance, but similar content is clustered together to help you arrive at the intended idea, mostly variations on Buckminster Fuller's unremitting belief that automation and good design will enable everyone on Earth to have a higher standard of living. There are great descriptions of technology that has since been invented (telephone video) and technology that hasn't been invented/is yet to come (widespread use of prefab homes, dense living in climate-controlled cities in the sky). As usual, Fuller's ideas in the 1960s were way ahead of their time, and it's a fascinating read.
March 28, 2009
This was the eye opener...1968, a year of great upheaval, synergy, dymaxion, use less get more. I Seem to Be a Verb
June 22, 2015
Impressive given it was written in the late 1960's. Demonstrates how visionary Buckminster Fuller was as well as how much we've been debating/worrying/solving the same problems, issues, concerns for 100s of years.
June 18, 2010
Classic book of my childhood! a most excellent book.
I seem to be a verb... indeed.
I seem to be a verb... indeed.
December 7, 2010
One of the best books I've ever read, and one of the most fun and interesting. Not many books can get me to read them front to back right side up, back to front upside down twice.
Read
June 9, 2012This wasn't what I expected and I really don't know how to give it a rating.
Read
April 21, 2014we need more livingry and less weaponry. can't wait for that design science revolution to roll world around
September 2, 2015
Definitely a creative work. Very optimistic about technology's ability to take humanity to the next level.
January 17, 2016
Interesting look at what things were big in 1970.
September 11, 2016
review coming in future
Read
October 6, 2016best intro to Bucky's early views and work
Want to read
August 15, 2009Weird. Fascinatingly weird.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews