Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Very Good in Good dust jacket. 1969. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Very Good in Good DJ: The Book shows a very small, faint area of dampstaining at the bottom of the front hinge; the spine leans ever so slightly; faint tanning to the outside edges of the text block; the binding is secure; the text is clean. Free of any creased or dog-eared pages in the text, though three pages late in the text were not cut cleanly by the printer and protrude very slightly at the fore-edge. Free of underlining, hi-lighting or marks in the text. Free of any ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, plates, or labels. A handsome copy, if no longer 'fresh', structurally sound and tighly bound, minor, unobtrusive imperfections. The DJ shows considerable rubbing to the panels; a couple of closed tears to the lower edge of the rear panel and tiny nicks and snags to the top edge of same, which also shows faint soiling to the white background field; the price ($4.25) in intact; mylar-protected. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (8.15 x 5.3 x 0.75 inches) . Index. Sparsely illustrated in black & white. Language: English. Weight: 9.5 ounces. White quarter cloth with blue boards and black & red titles at the backstrip. Hardback with DJ. R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He published more than 30 books and coined or popularized such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" (Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map) , "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity". Fuller 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. In 1977, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He also received numerous other awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented to him by President Ronald Reagan. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, published in 1969, imagines our species as a crew, united by a shared fate, on a tiny spaceship traveling through infinity. It can be read even today as the most intelligent metaphor for thinking about humankind on this planet. Fuller accepted the challenge presented by this metaphor, using his inventions & writings to contribute to the safe operations of Spaceship Earth. Fuller was also an early environmental activist, aware of Earth's finite resources, and promoted a principle he termed "ephemeralization", which, according to futurist and Fuller disciple Stewart Brand, was defined as "doing more with less". [42] Resources and waste from crude, inefficient products could be recycled into making more valuable products, thus increasing the efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also coined the word synergetics, a catch-all term used broadly for communicating experiences using geometric concepts, and more specifically, the empirical study of systems in transformation; his focus was on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components. Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally, and explored energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design. [ ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 143 pages .