Some future directions and scenarios we touched upon were the possibilities of a world guaranteed annual income; the potential of fluidics as a source of energy; information and automation; the use of heat pollution from thermal electric plants to heat soil to improve crop output; the efficiency-gain by using gasoline or alcohol to run electric power plants and electricity to run cars; the production of alcohol from algae, farm wastes, or garbage and its substitution for gasoline in present-day combustion engines; the laser beam transmission of power and information; the amount of reinvestable time that will be available to mankind as a result of freeing him from the drudgery of having to earn a living (by bringing man to the bare maximum food and energy levels by the year 2000 we will have trillion more hours per year to reinvest into metaphysical regenerative functions); the increase of efficiency rates for power production and consumption, communication, transportation, etc., and the possible surplus and increase of efficiency through the stabilization of the population...

— Buckminster Fuller

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Some future directions and scenarios we touched upon were the possibilities of a world guaranteed annual income; the potential of fluidics as a source of energy; information and automation; the use of heat pollution from thermal electric plants to heat soil to improve crop output; the efficiency-gain by using gasoline or alcohol to run electric power plants and electricity to run cars; the production of alcohol from algae, farm wastes, or garbage and its substitution for gasoline in present-day combustion engines; the laser beam transmission of power and information; the amount of reinvestable time that will be available to mankind as a result of freeing him from the drudgery of having to earn a living (by bringing man to the bare maximum food and energy levels by the year 2000 we will have trillion more hours per year to reinvest into metaphysical regenerative functions); the increase of efficiency rates for power production and consumption, communication, transportation, etc., and the possible surplus and increase of efficiency through the stabilization of the population..." in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Buckminster Fuller

About Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller (12 July 1895 – 1 July 1983) was an American philosopher, systems theorist, architect, and inventor, known to many of his friends and fans as "Bucky" Fuller. He created and popularized the terms "Spaceship Earth", "ephemeralization", and "synergetics", and developed numerous inventions, the most famous of which is the geodesic dome.