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Wednesday, 02 August 2006 03:15 |
| John North
Editor & Publisher |
To me, the very notion of Buckminster Fuller Intitute??s Asheville Design Science Lab sounded unpleasantly abstract and hopelessly utopian ?? nonethless, curiosity got the better of me, so I attended one of the lectures in the recent series anyway.
The program I attended, titled ?®Southern Appalachian Region in the Global Context: Energy, Economics and Sustainability,?∆ was held July 21 in UNC Asheville??s Humanities Lecture Hall. It featured five guest lecturers, some of whom mumbled nearly unintelligibly. Others were lively and glib.
About
100 people were in attendance when it began. The program continued for
more than three hours, with much of the time consumed by the supposed
question-and-answer period that followed.
To my chagrin, a
lone microphone was passed among the audience members, resulting in a
scenario where, too often, instead of being asked questions, the guest
lecturers were the targets of rambling monologues. When they chose to
respond, the lecturers had to go to much trouble to get the microphone
back. Again, the lack of a strong moderator was evident.
While I left
shaking my head over the chaotic ?? and sometimes disturbing ?? aspects
of the session that bordered on anarchy, some of the points made by the
guest speakers and a few audience members stuck with me. I also liked
that the idealism was leavened with a healthy heaping of real-world
practicality.
What??s more, in
a society where style is emphasized over substance so often, I found it
quite refreshing that style was almost totally ignored ?? at least at
the lecture I attended ?? with ?®substance?∆ getting the spotlight.
Because of the lack of a strong moderator, I wasn??t always sure who was speaking, but among the highlights were the following:
?ÿ The so-called
Design Science Decade, which spanned 1965-75, was ?®kicked off?∆ by Bucky
?? the nickname of Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), who is considered an
American visionary, designer, architect, author and inventor. (Fuller,
the inventor of the geodesic dome, wrote ?®Operating Manual for
Spaceship Earth?∆ and many similar works, focusing on whether humanity
has a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on this planet ?? and
if so, how? BFI??s Design Science Lab examines that issue.)
?ÿ The United
States uses about four times the world average of natural resources,
which an unidentified speaker said constitutes ?®the very definition of
unsustainability.?∆
?ÿ ?®Good things
are happening all over,?∆ one speaker said. ?®On the other hand, bad
things are happening. We tend to think of these things separately ??
that may be wrong ... On almost all scales, unsustainability is
increasing on all fronts.?∆
?ÿ On energy
conservation, ?®Europe is going great guns ?? it??s way ahead of us, even
though there??s a lot less sun over there,?∆ another lecturer pointed out.
A Nigerian noted
he felt a disconnect ?? and questioned whether the five American
lecturers could even fathom how far apart developing countries like his
were from the U.S., technologically, where a large American city
commands more electrical capacity than his large and populous country.
A woman pointed
out the irony of holding a program on energy, economics and
sustainability in a room in which the air-conditioning was
unnecessarily frigid.
Despite flaws in
this first-year effort in Asheville, I applaud the local organizers for
their efforts to present this program series on perhaps the most
relevant of subjects ?? the survival of humanity and the planet.
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