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LINKS | Noah Brier

Dymaxion Man

June 17, 2008 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 3 COMMENTS

I don't often write about things I haven't finished reading, but this New Yorker profile of Buckminster Fuller included a nugget I just couldn't help but share: "Following this string of disappointments, Fuller might have decided that his “experiment” had run its course. Instead, he kept right on going. Turning his attention to mathematics, he concluded that the Cartesian coördinate system had got things all wrong and invented his own system, which he called Synergetic Geometry. Synergetic Geometry was based on sixty-degree (rather than ninety-degree) angles, took the tetrahedron to be the basic building block of the universe, and avoided the use of pi, a number that Fuller found deeply distasteful." (Emphasis mine.)

He found pi "deeply distasteful" ... Amazing.

Tags: architecture, history

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COMMENTS

1Randall

I say pew to Pi annually, but for less lofty reasons

June 17, 2008

2Mac

Timely link, thanks Noah! In the last couple of days my train reading has been a mindblowing piece "Stewart Brand Meets The Cybernetic Counterculture" http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/turner06/turner06_index.html

It looks at the culture of the internet as it relates to the early beat culture of McLuhan, Cage, Tom Wolfe, The Merry Pranksters, the Haight-Ashbury era, acid and the whole bit. Buckminster Fuller gets a big look-in a major inspiration to Steward Brand and the Whole Earth network at the time.

Lots of interesting things about and his link to the thinking of the hippy-technologist-artists of the time, but one that I thought was especially interesting was his vision of "the Comprehensive Designer" who was not a specialist but who instead stood outside of the specialist roles as "harvester of the potentials", able to see the whole picture. It's a concept that we've seen recycled in recent years as "the T shaped person".

It's a pretty amazing way to look at cyberculture and I made lots of circles and scribbles all over it to follow up. So timely to see Buckminster's (unforgettable) name.

=) Marc

June 18, 2008

3Marc

Oh... just for the sake of bizarre linkage...

I recently read an article that had expanded the concept of the T-shaped creative to the Pi-Shaped creative (broad across the top, deep in client relationship and deep in skills).

Conspiracy or coincidence? You decide **bwaahaha** >;-/

=) M

June 18, 2008