Slim Novel 2 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage
80, Resident Genius
80, Resident Genius
Sol slips west, poised to plunge below the horizon as the limo rides with rumbling sounds over the Palm Beach Causeway and minutes later we pass under a porte cochere into an underground garage.
A black-suited butler – from accent, British – ushers us into an elevator that smoothly takes us one flight up and its doors slide open to reveal a large plushly decorated room. Things here are outsize – at far end is an arched baroque doorway to fit a 10-foot (c.3m.) person, with paintings on walls dominated by an 8-foot (c.2.5m.) highAda Van Allen
A black-suited butler – from accent, British – ushers us into an elevator that smoothly takes us one flight up and its doors slide open to reveal a large plushly decorated room. Things here are outsize – at far end is an arched baroque doorway to fit a 10-foot (c.3m.) person, with paintings on walls dominated by an 8-foot (c.2.5m.) high
After briefly freshening up, I am introduced to Richard Fuller, a short, slim man. Mrs Van Allen takes us each by hand to side room with conference table and chair. “Richard, my d’yah! Mr. Kimura comes well recommended from Philip and Frederica. He is a Japanese gentleman of aristocratic family – a writer and also as I am told by Philip, a futurist. I am going to leave you two together and I want you to give him your brilliant idyas.” She seats me across table from Richard and leaves.
81. Bucky Bounces
Richard starts on comprehensivization versus specialization. His argument is: If civilization is to continue, it will need to educate every citizen in all-encompassing knowledge. This is opposite to now where specialists occupy the positions of power and the woman or man in the street is an ignorant slave to machines she or he does not understand.
I ask: “Do you mean to create a race of Renaissance men and women in which the ordinary person will be a wide ranging generalist, a jack of all trades, and there will be no need of specialists?”
He replies: “No specialists, Yes! Everybody an expert on anything, Yes! For instance, take me. Yesterday I worked my design for a toilet that runs a medical check-up as one sits; today I continue my planning the ideal people’s car – fuel efficient, nonpolluting, maximally safe, and tomorrow I work on architecture – my ‘Geodesic Dome'.”
According to Richard, today’s specialization arose because of those he calls “The Great Pirates” – political strongmen of the middle ages who developed today's nation-state by plunder and murder –, men like the Medici of Florence who had a selfish interest in keeping the intellectuals from comprehensively comprehending the World as a whole and, in return for allowing a local genius to keep his head, and by rewarding him with rich patronage, the Great Pirates forced the genius into narrow specializations to invent better methods of murder in order for the Pirates to control the World.
He says: “Today’s specialist is like a horse with blinders, he is programmed to provide power to political bosses, business magnates, dictators, and other demagogic types. Moreover, the dominance of the specialist is favored by a limitation on the man-in-the-street’s ability to access, to store and to retrieve the huge amount of data needed to understand and control the technology. And even if one man could manage that feat; still, he must contend with his limited living time.
Next he speaks of "ephemeralization", typical of his at-first seemingly weird phraseology. By it he means doing more with less. "At first this seems contradictory," he says. "But that is because you have been mis-educated to believe what received opinion and higher authority teaches you in school. Actually, the history of the industrial revolution shows a triumph of ephemeralization. No one could have predicted in 1500 that a new energy source would be harnessed from the parlor trick then known as electricity. But by the 1800s already electric power had multiplied human productivity hundreds of times so that one worker on an electric loom could produce 100 sweaters that in year 1500 needed 100 workers to produce. That is ephemeralization and it is the reason we should never run out of resources for our civilization as long as we follow what nature and history shows we are capable of."
"Now we are entering a New Age. Professor Norbert Wiener with whom I spoke last month, is developing the computer that Mr. Charles Babbage in the previous century conceived but could not construct because he lacked the technology. And it will give the average man the capacity of genius by the capability to accumulate, store and retrieve unlimited amounts of data outside of the mortal body so every man will have at fingertips the expertise of an immortal stable of specialists. Using a computer, every man will be able to write like friend Hemingway, or invent like friend Edison, or be a virtual Einstein and so on.”
Next he speaks of "ephemeralization", typical of his at-first seemingly weird phraseology. By it he means doing more with less. "At first this seems contradictory," he says. "But that is because you have been mis-educated to believe what received opinion and higher authority teaches you in school. Actually, the history of the industrial revolution shows a triumph of ephemeralization. No one could have predicted in 1500 that a new energy source would be harnessed from the parlor trick then known as electricity. But by the 1800s already electric power had multiplied human productivity hundreds of times so that one worker on an electric loom could produce 100 sweaters that in year 1500 needed 100 workers to produce. That is ephemeralization and it is the reason we should never run out of resources for our civilization as long as we follow what nature and history shows we are capable of."
"Now we are entering a New Age. Professor Norbert Wiener with whom I spoke last month, is developing the computer that Mr. Charles Babbage in the previous century conceived but could not construct because he lacked the technology. And it will give the average man the capacity of genius by the capability to accumulate, store and retrieve unlimited amounts of data outside of the mortal body so every man will have at fingertips the expertise of an immortal stable of specialists. Using a computer, every man will be able to write like friend Hemingway, or invent like friend Edison, or be a virtual Einstein and so on.”
As Richard goes on I find his ideas seductive. But are they practical? He is not a talker one debates; he delivers like Moses from a Mount. But his message – that man plus machine can transcend all – is hard not to enthuse on.
He says: “Computers will make the so called professional obsolete, will leave the New Comprehensivist Man free to exercise that intuitional generalizing capacity which is the highest function of Mind.”
Talk of seductive talk, here it is with an S, not sexual but synergetical. At one daring swoop Richard has put all the narrow specialists and would-be authority figures that run the political, scientific and economic establishments to the wall, readied for extermination and replacement by a comprehensivist with computer and he raises a curtain on a future that will see the full flowering of today’s thwarted genius that is in each of us.
Talk of seductive talk, here it is with an S, not sexual but synergetical. At one daring swoop Richard has put all the narrow specialists and would-be authority figures that run the political, scientific and economic establishments to the wall, readied for extermination and replacement by a comprehensivist with computer and he raises a curtain on a future that will see the full flowering of today’s thwarted genius that is in each of us.
This uncharismatic little man has ideas to seed a Science Civilization. And to this I say, Hear!
Next, Richard goes into his concept of Synergy, using the law of gravity for an example. Speaking of 2 bodies that attract each other, he says: "There is no property of either body that allows an observer to predict that a body is going to attract or be attracted mutually when placed within a finite distance of another body. This is Synergy – the behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of any of its parts." The problem with our society’s mindset is the intellectuals not realizing there are behaviors of wholes unpredicted by the behaviors of any of their parts. Thus our overspecialized society by attempting to deal with wholes as nothing more than the sum of parts blinds itself to the synergetic property of systems.
Earth is his example of a system whose whole is greater than its parts. He says: "Earth should be seen as an enclosed ecology with a finite supply of air, food and minerals powered by an open-ended fuel supply – our sun Sol. Concerning human survival, Earth and Sol are a single energy unit with power coming from Sol. Fossil fuels are one means of impounding Sol’s energy but inefficient. Mankind’s coming crisis will be due to mismanagement of energy resources and poor prioritization of energy-generating technology.
“Fossil fuels should have been treated as the strictly limited fuel for the donkey engine start-up motor of Spaceship Earth, and the twentieth century ought to see a crash program to achieve reliance on the unlimited, solar, lunar and Earth energy sources. Instead we are becoming hostage to reliance on fossil fuels that will run out within the next hundred years, a time for which we ought to be preparing.”
He paints a picture of the Earth, if man will achieve political unity and harness solar energy: "A world economy of superabundance with supply of energy for all practical purposes being free and eternal – yes, eternal, since the six billion more years before Sol leaves the main sequence is for us humans virtually eternal."
Richard looks at his watch and I realize my too few minutes are ended. What is not to be lost here is a man who has got the world figured out. Richard radiates a light of blinding intelligence. Inside his mind is a dazzling work of art and his program for Spaceship Earth is a scaffolding for us futurists who have an interest in survival of this green globe and its many life forms for the longest, most pleasurable time possible, and who will dedicate our former selfish selves to set free homo sapiens and other potentially intelligent life forms from the fragile environment. Of importance in that aim is the perfecting of the mind and the achieving of personal excellence.
Richard stands and offers hand. “What did you say your name? Kimura? Well, you orientals from the great Han culture have my admiration because your language is synergetic. Each stroke and picture-graph has a meaning but the combinations are greater than the sum of the parts. I predict you orientals will inherit the Earth. Allow me to extend my friendship.” He shakes hands firmly and adds, “My middle name is Buckminster and my few friends call me ‘Bucky’. Include yourself.”
End of Slim Novel 2.
Continue in Slim Novel 3 to witness Educating Kimi. To start, click 3.(0-1)
Slim Novel 3 - Education of Kimi - Begins...
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