Buckminster Fuller as Captain of Spaceship Earth
Peder Anker's 2007 essay reading Fuller's global vision through his naval background.
"Buckminster Fuller as Captain of Spaceship Earth" is a scholarly article by historian Peder Anker of the University of Oslo, published in the journal Minerva (vol. 45, pp. 417–434) in 2007. It examines the intellectual roots of Fuller's ecological design and his proposals for the global management of "Spaceship Earth."
Anker's thesis is that Fuller's experiences in the U.S. Navy became a model for his later ecological design projects and his ideas about steering the planet. Drawing on the technocratic thought of the 1930s, Fuller envisioned — by the 1970s — an elitist world without conventional politics, in which designers, rather than politicians, would be at the helm guiding the planet out of its environmental crises. The paper connects Fuller's naval, hierarchical metaphors (the captained ship) to concepts such as the World Game and world planning, offering a critical historical reading of the politics implicit in his global vision.
The article has been cited widely in scholarship on Fuller, environmental history, and the rhetoric of "Spaceship Earth."
See Also
- R. Buckminster Fuller (R. Buckminster Fuller) — the central figure
- Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth) — Fuller's book articulating the Spaceship Earth idea
- World Game (World Game Institute) — the planning simulation the paper analyzes
Sources
- Buckminster Fuller as Captain of Spaceship Earth (Peder Anker, Minerva 2007)