7 R. Buckminster Fuller 7transportation, and pollution; and it can solve these with a
fraction of the materials now inefficiently used. Moreover,
energy, ever more available, directed by cumulative infor-
mation stored in computers, is capable of synthesizing
raw materials, of machining and packaging commodities,
and of supplying the physical needs of the total global
population.
Fuller was a research professor at Southern Illinois
University (Carbondale) from 1959 to 1968. In 1968 he was
named university professor, in 1972 distinguished university
professor, and in 1975 university professor emeritus. Queen
Elizabeth II awarded Fuller the Royal Gold Medal for
Architecture. He also received the 1968 Gold Medal Award
of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Assessment
Fuller—architect, engineer, inventor, philosopher,
author, cartographer, geometrician, futurist, teacher,
and poet—established a reputation as one of the most
original thinkers of the second half of the 20th century.
He conceived of man as a passenger in a cosmic space-
ship—a passenger whose only wealth consists in energy
and information. Energy has two phases—associative
(as atomic and molecule structures) and dissociative (as
radiation)—and, according to the first law of thermo-
dynamics, the energy of the universe cannot be decreased.
Information, on the other hand, is negatively entropic;
as knowledge, technology, “know-how,” it constantly
increases. Research engenders research, and each techno-
logical advance multiplies the productive wealth of the
world community. Consequently, “Spaceship Earth” is a
regenerative system whose energy is progressively turned
to human advantage and whose wealth increases by geo-
metric increments.