\u201c<\/b>You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
R. Buckminster Fuller<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Due to their scale, complexity, interconnectedness, and the persistent lack of information which makes it difficult for us to see all of their facets and implications, wicked problems cast a large shadow on the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These include climate change, food security, poverty, politics, economics, healthcare, pandemic flu, nuclear weapons, waste, and many others. How do we even attempt to deal with issues of such epic scope? Throughout human history, we\u2019ve relied on a combination of technology and social coordination to drive our success as a species. But what technology, and what social structure?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In his groundbreaking book <\/span>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, <\/span><\/i>Thomas Kuhn originated the phrase <\/span>paradigm shift<\/span><\/i> to describe the historical progress of science and technology. Major shifts in consensus thinking do not happen easily, as novel ideas that fundamentally challenge the norm are often met with fierce resistance by the keepers of the status quo before they are commonly accepted after further study and discourse. And so it goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A key phase of technological or scientific change is the crisis period in which consensus thought or design is unable to deal with anomalies or failures within the current paradigm, thus allowing a new paradigm to gain traction and even take its place. Sometimes, crisis is simply the realization of things as they actually are. The Copernican Revolution, for example, forever changed our understanding of our place in the cosmos.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There are an increasing number of people who believe that cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain data infrastructure will inevitably launch a monetary revolution and catalyze global political and economic change. After all, the cryptocurrency paradigm was forged in the crucible of the 2008 financial crisis with the advent of Bitcoin and the promise of a financial system \u201cbased on cryptographic proof rather than trust.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, instead of revolutionary world change we got a decade plus of incredible wealth transfer vastly disproportionate to its actual social impact. Can the crypto economy mature before it repeats the sins of the past and simply becomes a stranger breed of central banking? Will it be co-opted and cannibalized by the establishment?<\/span><\/p>\n World-changing for the better requires solving wicked problems, but blockchain technology isn\u2019t an island; it will require a commitment to change that is undeniable and irresistible.<\/span><\/p>\n A humanitarian technologist from the 20th century who embarked on his own scientific revolution to help steer humanity towards a better future embodies some of the lessons for the blockchain industry. He provides a compelling narrative for an industry seeking to create meaningful systemic change; he developed a unique methodology that could benefit blockchain development and implementation; and yet his story is a cautionary tale for a self-identifying tech revolution which believes in its own inevitability.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Born in 1895, Buckminster Fuller was an inventor, architect, engineer, systems thinker, futurist, and self-proclaimed \u201ccomprehensive anticipatory design scientist\u201d who worked tirelessly over the course of his career to build the systems necessary to relieve human suffering and provide for the basic survival needs of everyone in the world. Wicked problems, indeed. His hope was to set in motion a globally coordinated effort to make the world work for everyone in it within a new technological paradigm which he called a \u201cdesign science revolution.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTechnologically we now have four billion billionaires on board Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune. Unbeknownst to them their legacy is being held in probate by general ignorance, fear, selfishness, and a myriad of paralyzing professional, licensing, zoning, building laws and the like, as bureaucratically maintained by the incumbent power structures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n R. Buckminster Fuller, <\/span>Critical Path<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n After a 1927 awakening experience, Fuller fully committed himself to designing alternative systems for meaningful world change using a first principles approach to tackling wicked problems such as resource scarcity, shelter, transportation, and energy poverty. Fuller understood that in order to solve these problems, we must first be able to <\/span>see <\/span><\/i>them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fuller\u2019s obsession with data and facts, to see things as they really are, pervades his work. From the age of 12 to his death at age 88, he maintained what may be the most documented record of an individual\u2019s life which he dubbed the \u201cChronofile.\u201d Every letter, reference, and thought painstakingly rendered in an archive of 737 volumes of 300-400 pages each. To Fuller, the devil (and perhaps God) was in the details.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Early in his journey, Fuller realized that much of the conflict throughout human history was rooted in the mismanagement of scarcity. He rejected the economist Thomas Malthus\u2019s influential idea that human growth will inevitably exceed the productive capacity of the earth, resulting in atrocities such as war and famine if strict population controls aren\u2019t implemented.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He was also critical of the enduring strain of Social Darwinism that arose when everyone from business magnates to world leaders misconstrued Darwin’s original theory of evolution to mean that only the strong will survive, with competition prevailing over cooperation at all turns. Fuller saw both of these world views as false justifications for endless cycles of violence and other zero-sum games.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fuller saw all this as a fundamental design problem. A thorough reengineering of society with precise knowledge and allocation of the world\u2019s resources could allow us to achieve equilibrium on this pale blue dot and allow us to reclaim our \u201cplanetary equity\u201d \u2014 an ultimate egalitarian vision of the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of Fuller\u2019s mental models was to view our planet as an exploratory space vessel with billions of crew members working with limited resources, which he called <\/span>Starship Earth<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nThe world is beset by wicked problems.\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
The Leonardo Da Vinci of the 20th Century<\/span><\/h3>\n