Sustaining Planet Earth: Researching World Resources

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Summer, 1969: Buckminster Fuller stretches the collective mind of the New York Studio School Workshop.
Summer, 1969: Buckminster Fuller stretches the collective mind of the New York Studio School Workshop.
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World Game in action at Carbondale, Illinois Command Central.
World Game in action at Carbondale, Illinois Command Central.

Medard Gabel was speaking a bit hastefully: “We can make everybody in the world a success by 1980 and we have the proof to back it up,” he said. “So when we say that air pollution could be eliminated from Spaceship Earth by 1980, that’s exactly what we mean.”

“If your priorities are high enough, you can put a man on the moon. If your priorities are to get electrical energy to the world, you can find the money. The wealth is there.”

Gabel, a 24-year-old design science student at Southern Illinois University, was later to amend his remarks, noting that “proof” is an ambiguous term–some people won’t have anything proven to them no matter how much evidence is presented–and much of his reference material was in files and would take a couple of months to assemble.

But Gabel was neither exaggerating nor boasting in the claim that he and his associates could devise a plan to make every human being a material success within the next decade. He was speaking with the intuitive enthusiasm which characterizes a company of future oriented, inter-disciplinary technological explorers who are participating in the World Game, a unique experiment to develop a computer coordinated model of planet earth–complete with world resources, history, human attitudes and social trends–that can be used to “play the world” and develop ways of running the future for the benefit of all mankind.

Researching World Resources

  • Published on Nov 1, 1970
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