8 Critical Path: Part Two

Chapter 8
Critical Path: Part Two

2IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER, ‘‘Critical Path: Part One,’’ I sought to forestall any hesitance on the part of humanity to go ‘‘for the works.’’ It is to be everything for everybody or oblivion.

3 While it is fairly simple to write a list of socioeconomic conditions we consider to be fundamental to omnihumanity’s sustainable physical and metaphysical success, we must remember that our grand strategy is based on producing the artifacts that will induce the right behaviors rather than depending on politically enacted and enforced reforms. What we count on is political reaction in its bipartisan tail-of-the-dragon function, now flappingly, now snappingly, yielding one way or the other to society’s vivid realization of the arrival of historically unprecedented crises and dawning awareness of the availability of possibly effective but unfamiliar techno-physical means of coping with the ever-more-frequently-occurring crises as are occasioned by the practical development and availability of hitherto nonexistent artifacts. Much of the successive emergencies will prove to be caused by society’s adoption of only a few of all the artifacts-development only of those artifacts that could be turned into the most immediate profits as fostered by the armaments appropriations.

4 The emergency-wrought political adjustment will go on until, in the stress of ever-greater emergency, society spontaneously adopts all of our critical path’s artifacts. The great emergencies may finally force political society to ‘‘do the right things’’ for the right reasons. (I found my way into so doing, half a century ago, as occasioned, however, only by total crises in my own life—why should not others do so?) If political society does decide to do the right tasks for the right reasons, it will probably find our critical-path artifacts to be both cogently and specifically essential.

5 In contradistinction to the critical path of the Apollo Project-one-half of whose two million or so tasks to be accomplished involved the development of technology that was nonexistent at the outset of Apollo—our critical path’s inventory of essential technologies consists of 100-percent already-developed technologies (see Appendix I, ’’ Chronology of Scientific Discoveries and Artifacts’’ ). Change: Add ref Most of these are in use but in the production of the wrong systems—in the ‘‘weaponry’’ systems or in the ‘‘money-making-for-the-few’’ systems instead of in ‘‘high- wealth-livingry-production-for-all’’ systems.

6 For the foregoing reasons most of the tasks that need to be attended to in such a manner as to make all humanity sustainingly successful involve only the right application of the already-developed technologies which have been funded and applied to the wrong tasks. It must be remembered that the overwhelming reason for their being applied to the wrong tasks is the assumption of those commanding the political and economic power structures that there is a fundamental inadequacy of life support on our planet—that it has to be ‘‘you or me,’’ nowhere nearly enough for both.

7 Our 1927 and thenceforth developed critical path has no as-yet-to-be accomplished technologies. It needs only the education of the world regarding the fact that invisible ephemeralization and acceleration now make what had previously seemed to be inadequate life support for all humanity to be rendered bounteously adequate.

8 The development of our omni-world-integrating electrical-energy network grid, which will realistically put all humanity on the same economic accounting system and will integrate the world’s economic interests and value systems and lead most swiftly to the realistic elimination of the 150 sovereign-nation systems, needs only a relatively few geographical interlinking operations. It does not need the invention and development of new technologies.

9 Inasmuch as society’s educational system’s conditioned reflexes are half a millennium out of gear with the discovered facts of cosmic operation, a TV-accomplished, swift reorientation of humanity’s reflexes to accord with the discovered facts is a high-priority critical path task. If humanity’s reflexes were already updated and we were as yet behaving as ineptly as we are at present, then there would be no hope. You may recall that I have scientifically demonstrated the half-millennium-out-of-gearness with facts by demonstrating the misconditioned reflexes of humanity’s leading scientists—I have tested many audiences of scientists, who all admit they are as yet seeing the Sun ‘‘go down,’’ though science has known for 500 years that this is not what is happening. Remember the wind blowing from the northwest when a low pressure to the southeast of us is drafting the wind by us. Remember we have established that there is no ‘‘up’’ or ‘‘down’’ in Universe, no ‘‘wide-wide-world,’’ no ‘‘four-corners of the Earth,’’ etc., etc.

10 It was the fact that my 1927 fifty-year critical-path technological stages had already been acceleratingly completed that made it possible for me to make public announcement ten years ago that it was feasible within a ten year design science revolution—while melting all weaponry and using those metals for livingry—to have all humanity living at a sustainably higher standard of living than any humans have ever experienced while simultaneously phasing out all further use of fossil fuels and atomic energy—because we can live comfortably and luxuriously on daily energy income from the Sun in its many derivative phases.

11 Because all the technology inventing and all the metals mining and other chemical materials necessary for developing sustainable, omniphysical, and increasingly meta-physical success for all humanity have already been accomplished, our critical path’s overall strategy of realization differs greatly from that of the Apollo Project.

12 Our critical-path realization requirement is one of an omnihumanity TV and printed-media familiarization with the retrospective inventory, by dates and items, of history’s totally known scientific discoveries and artifacts, all of which have been influential in such a manner as to induce the chain discovery of the relevant next-to-be-discovered-and-invented items, but also the social uses of them and the resultant reconditioning of human reflexes thereby brought about. The synergetic effect of all the discoveries and artifact inventions altogether plays a major part in implementing realization of the function of humans-in-Universe in support of the omni-self-regenerative scenario Universe. This whole history of already accomplished scientific discovery and technological invention is intimately relevant to our ten-year design science revolution wherein we divert all that accomplished technology from exclusively weaponry or money-making objectives to omnihumanity’s omnisustainable physical success. Realization of this physical success is enabled by the now existence of the critical-path technologies needing only to be redirected from killingry to livingry purposes. What must be accomplished is the world-around TV and printed-media reorientation of humanity by the realistic scenarioing of the peaceful uses of the already-accomplished half-century accrual of the 1927-to-1979 critical-path-artifacts developments.

13 We discover, of course, that our half-century critical-path undertaking-designed and initiated in 1927—is a class-two (or humanly contrived) evolution, which by good fortune (or by God’s guidance) has coincided, along almost all of the half-century-long way, with the Universe’s class-one evolutionary development-possibly because we undertook at outset to design our human-contrived path as closely as possible to the way our mind told us ‘‘God’’ would design it.

14 I had, in 1927, little of the experience that people have today in critical path designing. I did, however, think of it in exactly those same operational terms and stages as those employed by the Apollo Project’s conceivers: ‘‘What are the first-things-first?’’—the number-one, -two, -three, and so forth artifacts to be accomplished in order to develop the ultimate environmental controls whose artifacts would be so safely, obviously operable and economically favorable as spontaneously to persuade humanity how to behave in grave moments of emergency in order to make decisions leading expeditiously to economic and physically sustainable success for all humanity. Here follows my critical-path program of realization as first inscribed in 1927 and many times revised thereafter as Part IV of what I call: ‘‘Comprehensively Anticipatory Design Science’s Universal Requirements for Realizing Omnihumanity Advantaging Local Environment Controls, Which are Omni-considerate of Both Cosmic Evolution Potentials and Terrestrial Ecology Integrities.’’

15 Phase I, Individual

16 CRITICAL PATH TO ULTIMATE

17 IV. Realization

18 The whole program of realization is to be considered in the following order, which breaks into two primary categories or phases: (A) the initial work to be undertaken by the individual prior to engagement of the aid of associates, and (B) original and initial work to be under-taken by the first group of associates. These two phases may be organized as follows:

19 A. Research and development by initiating individual—prior to inauguration of design action and development action involving full-time employment of others. Inauguration of a general work pattern as a natural pattern coinciding with best scientific procedure, to wit:

20 Preliminary

21 Initiation of diary and notebook

22 Initiation of photographic documentation Initiation of tactical conferences

23 Comprehensive library study of accrued arts

24 Past

a.

Contemporary

a.

Theory of design-pertinent arts to be studied by the initiating individual include:

1.

Anthropological data

1.

Energetic-synergetic geometry—the philosophy of mensuration and transformation, relative size

1.

Theory of structural exploration

2.

Theory of mechanical exploration

3.

Theory of chemical exploration

1.

Energy as structure

2.

Dwelling process as an ‘‘energy exchange’’

3.

Dwelling process as an ‘‘energy

25

26balance sheet’’

4.

Theory of structural complex

1.

Theory of service complex

2.

Theory of process complex

1.

Theory of structural and mechanical logistics

3.

Theory of complex resolution

4.

Tensioning by crystalline, pneumatic,

27

28hydraulic, magnetic means

15.

Compressioning by crystalline, pneumatic, hydraulic, magnetic means

2.

Listing therefrom of authorities available for further information:

a.

Local, personal contact

a.

Remote correspondence

1.

Pursuant to information thus gained, calling at suggested local laboratories:

a.

University

a.

Industry

a.

Setting up of informative tests for first-hand knowledge in own laboratory

1.

First phase of design assumption:

a.

Consideration of novel, complex interaction unique to project

a.

Preferred apparatus from competitive field

a.

Design of appropriate flowsheets

5.

Flowsheets submitted to:

a.

Those competitive specialists who have proved helpful in steps 3b and 3c

a.

Industrial producers of similar equipment and assemblies

a.

Make informative tests for closure of gaps supporting assumed theory

1.

Submit specifications and drawings of general assembly and unique component parts for informative bids by manufacturers:

a.

Second redesign of flowsheet based on available and suggested apparatus, price information, etc.

1.

Prepare report consisting of diary of above, supported by photographic documentation and collected literature—with trial balance conclusions in indicated economic advantage (which, if positive, will inaugurate Phase II)

29 Phase II, Collective

30 B. Design and development undertaking-involving plural-authorship phase and specialization of full-time associates. Consideration of relationship of prototype to industrial complex by constant review of principles of solution initially selected as appropriate to assumptions. Adoption of assumptions for realization in design of pertinent principles and latest technology afforded.

31 Comprehensive survey of entire sequence of operations from original undertaking to clientele synchronization. Realization strategy number 1 by individual (Phase I). Realization strategy number 2 by associates (Phase II).

32 Physical tests in principle of the design assumptions’ unique inclusions not evidenced in available data

a.

General-assembly drawings (schematic) providing primary assembly drawing schedule

33 reference

c.

General-assembly assumption, small-scale models, and mock-up full size

a.

Primary assembly, subassembly,

34 and parts calculations (stress)

a.

Trial balance of probable parts weights, direct manufacturing costs (approximately three times material costs; includes labor, supervision, and inspection), forecast of overall cost magnitudes, and curve plotting-at various rates of production, ratioed to direct costs per part and ‘‘all other costs’’ -i.e., ‘‘overhead,’’ tool and plant ‘‘amortization,’’ ‘‘contingencies,’’ ‘‘profit’’

a.

‘‘Freezing’’ of general assembly and its

35 reference drawing

a.

Drawing for first full-size production prototype commences in general assembly, primary assembly, subassembly, and parts

h.

Budget of calculating and drawing time is set, with tactical deadlines for each

a.

Parts drawing and full-size

36

37lofting and offset patterns

a.

Prototype parts production on ‘‘soft tools’’ commences

a.

Subassembly and primary assemblies replace mock-up parts

I.

Physical tests of parts and subassemblies with obvious corrections and necessary replacements (not improvements or desirables, which must be deferred until second prototype is undertaken, after all-comprehensive physical tests have been applied)

38Photography of all parts and assemblies

a.

Full assembly completed and inspected-cost

a.

Static load tests

a.

Operation tests

a.

Assembly and disassembly

r.

Photography of all phases

a.

Packaging and shipping tests

a.

Estimates of savings to be effected by special powered field tools

a.

Opinion testing

a.

Final production ’’ clean-up’’ prototype placed in formal calculation and drawing with engineering budgeted deadlines

a.

Parts cost scheduled by class A tools and time

a.

Production tool layout fixed

a.

Production tools ordered

a.

Production dates set

1.

Lofting and offsets produced of full-size test ‘‘masters’’ and templates

39 b-1 Fabrication of special jigs and fixtures c-1 Production materials ordered

40 d-1 Production tool-jig-fixture tune-up e-1 Parts and assembly testing

41 f-1 Field operation scheduling g-1 Field tools ordered

42 h-1 Distribution strategy in terms of initial logic limitations

43 i-1 Field tests with special tools

44 j-1 Field tools ordered or placed in special design and fabrication

45 k-1 Test target area selected for first production

46 i-1 Production commences

47 m-1 First field assemblies with power tools

48 Maintenance service instituted and

49 complaints

50 Alleviated

51 Analyzed

1.

Change orders of parts instituted o-1 Plans for ‘‘new’’ yearly model

52 improvement run through all or previous steps-for original production

53 p-1 Cycle repeated

2.

Production and distribution velocity assumption

1.

Plotting the assumed progressive mass-production curbs to determine basic velocities

54

55of new industry

4.

Tensioning by crystalline, pneumatic, hydraulic, magnetic means

1.

Compressioning by crystalline, pneumatic, hydraulic, magnetic means

1.

Consideration of manufacturer’s basic production forms-relative to proposed design components for determination of minimum steps, minimum tools, and minimum waste in realization

1.

Establishment of priority hierarchies of effort

1.

Time-and-energy cost budgeting

1.

Assumption of industry responsibility for field practices, not only in mechanical and structural, but in economic design

10.

Designing for specific longevity of design appropriate to anticipated cycles of progressive obsolescence and replacement ability as ascertained from comprehensive economic-trend curves

1.

Designing with view to efficient screening of component chemicals for recirculated employment in later designs

1.

Maxima and minima stated and realized performance requirements per unit of invested energy and experience, and capital advantage of tools and structures employed and devised

1.

Logistics assumptions, compacted shipping considerations as original design requirement in

56Nesting

(a)

Packaging

(a)

Compounded package weight

(a)

Relationship to carriers of all types

(a)

Field delivery

(a)

Field assembly

(g)

Field service and replacement

14.

Consideration of tool techniques

1.

Consideration of materials’ availability

1.

Consideration of materials’ ratio per total design

1.

Elimination of special operator technique forming

1.

Elimination of novel soft-tool designing

1.

Numbers of

57Types

(a)

Repeat parts

(a)

Subassemblies

(b)

Primary assemblies

20.

Number of forming operations

21.

Number of manufacturing tools by types

1.

Schedule of forming operations included on parts drawings

1.

Decimal fraction man-hours per operation

1.

Designed-in overall one-man-ability at every stage of operation

1.

Schedule of design routines and disciplines

1.

Establish a ‘‘parts’’ inventory of ‘‘active’’ and ‘‘obsolete’’ drawings-from beginning

1.

Establish a ‘‘parts’’ budget of ‘‘required’’ designs of ‘‘parts’’ for assemblies and major assembly and general assembly and molds

28.

Drawing dimension standards

1.

Establish a numbering system of controlled parts

1.

Establish purchasing techniques, jig-and-fixture, lofting techniques

58

59C. Public relations-to run concurrently with all phases of IV (8)

60 Education of public

61

62Rule 1: Never show half-finished work

63 General magnitude of product, production, distribution. But no particulars that will compromise latitude of scientific design and production philosophy of IV (8)

a.

Publicize the ‘‘facts’’ -i.e., the number of steps before ‘‘consumer realization’’

a.

Understate all advantage

a.

Never seek publicity

e.

Have prepared releases for publisher requests when ‘‘facts’’ are ripe

66That my 1927 half-century critical path’s realization is seemingly two years overdue is an illusion—it took two years to design it, so it did not become effectively operative until 1929—which is just over a half-century ago.

67 My 1927 path designing was deliberately undertaken with the following first-things-first objectives:

68 I must avoid setting too short an overall consummation period for my critical path. It was of prime importance that I adopt a target date so far in the future as to avoid making uneasy any of the power structures of 1927—which might feel that their interests were threatened by what I was proposing. It was necessary that I reach so far beyond the power structures’ research-determined vision of their most forward development that my concepts would appear to be either a pleasant ‘‘pipe dream’’ or innocuous nonsense.

69 I was able to do exactly that. The most powerful people I knew found me utterly unaccreditable but ‘‘interesting’’—and to some ‘‘fascinating.’’ This induced them to invite me to their parties to entertain their guests with my ‘‘dreaming out loud.’’ For this reason the power structure’s press very frequently gave my projects prominent publicity—because they found my concepts popularly entertaining, they published them ever more frequently and prominently, hoping for advertisements—inducing, increased readership. In 1930 the author of ‘‘Buck Rogers’’ told me that he frequently used my concepts for his cartoons.

70 I will now discuss the probable order of livingry—reoriented realization of the socioeconomic results of our already-accomplished, half-century, critical-path-artifacts development. I will discuss the operationally introduced sequence of their realizations in terms of the many critical-path-relevant subjects that I also have introduced throughout this book.

71 For instance, we have pointed out that the geologist François de Chadenedes wrote for me a scenario of the technology of nature’s producing petroleum which disclosed that the amount of energy employed by nature as heat and pressure for the amount of time required to produce each gallon of petroleum, if paid for at the rate at which the public utilities now charge retail customers for electricity, must cost over a million dollars a gallon. Combine that information with the discovery that approximately 60 percent of the employed in U.S. America are working at tasks that are not producing any life support. Jobs of inspectors-of-inspectors; jobs with insurance companies that induce people to bet that their house is going to be destroyed by fire while the insurance company bets that it isn’t. All these are negative preoccupations…jobs with the underwriting of insurance underwriters by other insurance underwriters—people checking up on one another in all the different departments of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue, FBI, CIA, and in counterespionage. About 60 percent of all human activity in Amer-ica is not producing any physical life protection, life support, or development accommodation, which physical life support alone constitutes real wealth.

72 The majority of Americans reach their jobs by automobile, probably averaging four gallons a day—thereby, each is spending four million real cosmic-physical-Universe dollars a day without producing any physical Universe life-support wealth accredited in the energy-time-metabolic-accounting system eternally governing regenerative Universe. Humans are designed to learn how to survive only through trial-and-error-won knowledge.

73 Long-known errors are, however, no longer cosmicly tolerated. The 350 trillion cosmic dollars a day wasted by the 60 percent of no-wealth-producing human job-holders in the U.S.A., together with the $19 quadrillion a day wasted by the no-wealth-producing human job-holders in all other automobiles-to-work countries, also can no longer be cosmicly tolerated.

74 Today we have computers that enable us to answer some very big questions if all the relevant data is fed into the computer and all the questions are properly asked. As for instance, ‘‘Which would cost society the least: to carry on as at present, trying politically to create more no-wealth-producing jobs, or paying everybody handsome fellowships to stay at home and save all those million-dollar-each gallons of petroleum?’’ Stated ever-more succinctly the big question will be: ‘‘Which costs more-paying all present job-holders a billionaire’s lifelong $400,000-a-day fellowship to stay at home, or having them each spend $4 million a day to commute to work?’’ Every computer will declare it to be much less expensive to pay people not to go to work. The same computers will also quickly reveal that there is no way in which each and every human could each day spend $400,000 staying at the most expensive hotels and doing equally expensive things; they could rarely spend 4000 of the 1980-deflated dollars a day, which is only 1 percent of a billionaire’s daily income.

75 Why would all the people not continually buy all kinds of expensive things? Answer…because they will want to travel around the world, and they will quickly discover that while you can’t take it with you into the next world, you also can’t take it with you around this world. They will each discover for themselves that the greatest luxury in the world is to be able to live unencumbered while able to get any information you want in split seconds and any desirable environmental condition you want in a day.

76 The actuarial curve indicates an eighty-year life expectancy by 2000 A.D. This amounts to 700,800 hours per lifetime. I would like to make some assumptions regarding the future use by humans of those hours. I’m assuming the present average is a forty-hour work week and forty-nine work weeks per year. This amounts to 156,800 potential birth-to-death work hours per lifetime. If we spent only forty of our eighty years at work, that would be 78,400 life-time work hours. As of our present lifestyle, we would be giving 11 percent of our lifetime to work in producing for self or for others.

77 For instance, a four-day work week of five hours per day with a three day weekend would result in living in the same spot and clogging up the highways with local week-end to-and-froing. We now propose instead of chopping life into work-week increments that we consolidate our work service potential into a few years of continuous six-day-per-week, eight-hour per-day service as in the military or medical internship.

78 Assuming that as a result of technological advances, the machines can produce adequate life-support in half the present time. Present-day custom would adopt a three-day, five-hour-per-day work week. This means twenty hours per week is all that is necessary to tend the machines that accomplish adequate life-support production. The internship service concept is composed of an eight-hour-per-day, six-day work week, a total of forty-eight hours per week. Because of mechanical advance, we are now assuming that the forty-hour week is reducible to a twenty-hour work week. This means that our originally required lifetime work service of 78,400 hours has through technical advance been reduced to 36,200 lifetime work hours. At the constant intern service rate of 48 hours per week, the 36,200 hours of lifetime production can be accomplished in 754 weeks or fourteen and a half years.

79 We are now going to assume a college—or university—level education available to all humans—probably to be effected through a stay-at-home, video call-up procedure involving six years in all. We assume that there is great advantage to the individual of having work-years’ experience intervening between the bachelor degree and graduate work. We assume entry into bachelor work at eighteen years of age. This means that at twenty-one years of age the students can enter upon their internship production service consisting of forty-eight-hour work weeks. The students will then enter upon four years of this total fourteen and a half years of production service responsibility. This brings them to age twenty-five. They will then enter upon their three years of graduate work greatly informed by their production-work years. At twenty-eight the graduate students will enter upon their final ten years of production service. At thirty-eight they will have completed their serv-ice in direct production support of humanity. With their wisdom probably evolved, they will have more than half their lives still to live. They will be extremely well informed.

80 They will be free to initiate their own mind informed commitments to the improvement of human functioning in support of the eternally regenerative integrity of Universe.

81 It is very probable that the technological advances will be far greater than those of the foregoing assumptions.

82 At present all the great new city office buildings have fancy plumbing (with which only the typewriters sleep) while a majority of city people sleep in inferior quarters with poor plumbing. The moment we start giving everyone those handsome life fellowships, we will find almost all the great new business buildings in the cities being de-populated to such an extent that we shall, in quick order, be able to turn those buildings into great apartment houses and hotels to accommodate the free-will residential convergences of humanity in central cities. Although such skyscrapers are far less efficient than the ‘‘ultimate’’ city buildings, they will provide a satisfying step forward in accommodating humanity’s successively occurring desires and needs to deploy into wilderness country or archaeological research country or sports country or to converge to meet with other humans for conferences or other collateral developments of which there will be an ever-multiplying, exciting availability.

85Along with making it economically feasible to permit a large majority of people to remain at home in country or city, to think fearlessly and unselfishly, we will permit all children to study at home, eliminating the schoolhouse, schoolteachers, school janitors, and school-bus systems, which cost unnecessary trillions of dollars world-around each school year. At home we shall provide each child with a private room, television set, and video-education cassettes as well as world-satellite-interrelayed computer and controlled video-encyclopedia access. These will make it possible for any child anywhere to obtain lucidly, faithfully, and attractively presented authoritative information on any subject.

86 Students will be able to review the definitions and explanations of several authorities on any given subject, as there are different viewpoints of a number of great scholars on any given subject. The system will never get tired of answering the questions or even the same questions asked and answered until the child is sure that he or she has understood. To make children ever-more confident of their understanding and useful enjoyment of their thoughts, each will be given access to basic tools and direct experiences in the purposeful use of the tools.

87 Children and grown people will be able to get their continuing intellectual education…at their home terminals.

88 They will get their social experience and tool-handling education in locally organized neighborhood activities when humans wish to converge.

89 All those who have attained high scholarly capability assure us that the only real education is self-education.

90 They also say that this self-disciplining is most often inspired by great teachers who make it seem apparent that it will be excitingly worthwhile to take the trouble to bring oneself to apprehend and then comprehend variously pertinent data, phenomena, and derived principles. The intimate manuscript records of all the great self educated individuals show that they discern intuitively when and what it is that they want to learn. Thereafter they arrange to do so by four main strategies. The first is by self-conducted experiments, if they are scientists. The second is by going to those live humans who have educated themselves from direct experiences. The third is to contact through books those who have discovered and learned but are now dead. Fourth, they sometimes have recourse to the esoteric and often exquisitely valuable information contained within the word-of-mouth information system relayed almost exclusively from generation to generation by the craftsmen-artists.

91 At heart fearful of losing their jobs, the tenured professional educators of today and all those earning a living by teaching are relentlessly fighting video. Since it would damage their position to tell the truth regarding their motives, the tenured pedants rationalize, ‘‘What the children need is the personal equation.’’ What I’ve long observed in the moving picture world is millions and millions of human beings falling in love with female heroines or male heroes, though knowing only their photographic images cast upon a blank wall. All ‘‘the personal equation’’ was, and as yet is, transmitted probably a little more poignantly by electronics than would ever be feasible in ordinary, personal-contact life.

92 After beginning to receive their home-research lifetime fellowships and trying the video educational system themselves, professors and researchers won’t protest anymore about loss of the ‘‘personal equation’’ in education.

93 I am certain that none of the world’s problems—which we are all perforce thinking about today—have any hope of solution except through total democratic society’s becoming thoroughly and comprehensively self-educated. Only thereby will society be able to identify and intercommunicate the vital problems of total world society. Only thereafter may humanity effectively sort out and put those problems into order of importance for solution in respect to the most fundamental principles governing humanity’s survival and enjoyment of life on Earth.

96I find one result after another of the last half-century’s critical path of now-fulfilled, relevant artifact-inventions and developments demonstrating unexpectedly intimate inter-relatedness and unanticipated synergetic ecosocial productivity. Number one, we shall find that we do indeed have enough ‘‘good-life resources’’ to go around. The computer will continually direct us back to basics. The computer will call our attention to the many relevant new potentials of the synergetic integration of critical-path events. If we continue to use our resources—metaphysical and physical—properly, there will continue to be ample to take care of all humanity: food, energy, shelter, travel, research, cultural development, inventive initiative in all the technologies, etc.

97 Obviously the first step is to pay people the handsome fellowships to stay at home and say to themselves, ‘‘What was I thinking about before I was first told, convincingly, that I had to ‘earn a living’ by doing what someone else said I had to do?’’ Then let them discover that their fellowship income will permit them to travel objectively to search and research and engage in creative or productive endeavors anywhere around the world.

98 With complete freedom of choice, much of humanity will begin to discover that it loves to work at tasks of its own choosing—that it loves to discipline itself to demonstrate its competence to others—that it will compete with the many to demonstrate its competence to serve on one of the multitude of production teams. There would be no pay for the work. It would be like qualifying for the Olympic team to be allowed to do what you want to do. You would have to prove that you could do the job you wanted to do better than anyone else available to get onto the production teams. Permission to serve on the world’s production teams will be the greatest privilege that humanity can bestow on an individual. There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you’re doing well. It is difficult to match the gratification of not just crudely crafting a plaything for one child (which indeed can be very rewarding), but of producing exquisite somethings for a billion children. Activities of this kind are reinspirational to a mystical degree.

99 As with all humanity there would be no life-support problems whatever for those on the production teams. There would be no attempt to block automation to keep human muscle and repetitive-selection jobs operative. If any individual wants to leave a team to have other experience or to serve elsewhere, a replacement would be found on the waiting list of others who want to take on the job. There would be the continual inspiration to invent more automation—to emancipate humans from performing only sterile muscle-and-sorting functions. Those who are real craftsmen and are good at developing the tools-that-make-tools and love their work will be the heart of the production teams. There will be no need to earn more because your fellowship will always get you more than you want. You won’t be able to buy any nonconsumables—you will only be able to rent. If you are renting more than you can use, the system will call the excess back.

100 Those who love to teach and have something valuable to teach can discipline themselves to qualify for membership on the subject-scenario-writing teams or on the video-cassette or disc production teams. Great scholars will thrive—whatever their fields may be. They will be free to devote their entire time to their labors of love. Vast numbers will discover that they are earnest, capable independent-research scholars. What they have to say, if unique, can become the subject of a video-cassette, world-satellite-relayed encyclopedia entry.

101 In 1927 the only plastics we had were celluloid—a nitrocellulose development, by-product of explosive nitro-glycerine. Celluloid was hygroscopic and highly flammable. Quite clearly plastic materials of many kinds were desirable substances, as transparent and waterproof as glass but not easily breakable and of much lighter weight. We had in 1927 hard rubber fountain pens and casein (milk-derived) poker chips but nothing larger. Wanting better materials and looking at one’s own fingernails, one could say that such and such a material is ostensibly feasible, so it will be developed. You then made a comprehensive list of all the desirable materials, and you kept a dated list of the times of their actual accomplishment. With a list of all the desired technologies you also kept a chronological chart of their successive realizations. You then compounded the information these observations were providing with your list of all the successively advancing structural-strength and mechanical-workability properties of all the metals. You continually compared these development records with your list of desired materials—those that would make possible solutions of various livingry problems. Such scientific research and engineering development of prototyping technologies to ever profit the total life-support and accommodation facilities will be one of the most popular production-team tasks.

102 The critical path already accomplished in the last fifty years makes all this and much more immediately possible of development. It would not be possible to consider many of these strategies prior to the invention on this planet of certain artifacts: for example, the rocketry-accomplished satellites or recent decades’ proliferation of computers would not have been possible without the discovery of transistors, which would not have been possible without the prior discovery and development of all the discovering and inventing of all history. See Appendix I.) Change: add ref

103 It was, however, possible in 1927 to see that such only-now-in-1980-physically-possible capabilities were and would always be desirable for society. Without being able to predict the discovery of transistors, chips, optical fibers, etc., it was easily possible to dream in 1927 that anything we needed to do could be done—never mind how—and to say to oneself, ‘‘I want a device like a fairy wand, which I need only wave while stating audibly the results I wish,’’ and that this would be accomplished by subvisible, atomic behaviors. Whether this was to be done at the push of a button was of no real consequence. It is what we need and want to do that is reasonable that counts. My fifty-three-year critical path has proven that. I did not just state what was desired. I saw that it was my responsibility to undertake to design the artifacts that would best produce the desired results. Then, as first presented with new discoveries and developments by others, I must redesign my artifacts to take advantage of the now-proven additional technical capabilities.

104 For a number of reasons I felt doors that would open automatically on a human’s approach would be desirable, and so I specified such automatically opening doors in my 1927 Dymaxion House. I also specified that they should fold sidewise in accordion pleats, so that the opened door-edge would not intercept the approaching human and cause a collision. My brother was an engineer on the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, staff of General Electric. A year after I had incorporated the foregoing equipment in the design of my proposed Dymaxion House, my brother telegraphed me to let me know that a General Electric scientist had just invented the photoelectric cell which, upon interruption of a light beam focused upon it, would activate a door opening by a miniature electric motor. As a practical and very reliable engineer, my brother considered my serious inclusion, in my designing, of technology that had not as yet been invented to be ‘‘lying’’ to myself and others. The critical-path concept had not as yet been conceived and incorporated in engineering-school curricula, so his telegram read, ‘‘Thank God, the just-invented photoelectric cell has saved you from being a liar. You can get one from General Electric for seventy dollars.’’ The accordionlike foldable door also had not yet been invented in 1927. It was invented ten years later, once more saving me from ‘‘being a liar.’’ So it went with hundreds of my half-century-to-come critical-path artifact inclusions of 1927.

105 Therewith I made the working assumption that ‘‘wishes are reasonable,’’ that wishes defined the functions of not-as-yet-invented but highly desirable technology. It is, in fact, the as-yet-ungratifiable everyday needs that always inspire inventors in general. What you want for yourself may never be gratified. What you want for everybody, because you can see the total benefits that can accrue, is usually reasonable and technologically gratifiable, and to be realized possibly within your own generation.