“Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?” That’s the question posed by R. Buckminster Fuller in Critical Path. Like most people, I would answer with a hearty “yes”. But like most “haves”, I get a little nervous if it looks like providing for others is going to cost me some of my comforts. When that happens, I remind myself that more for today’s “have-nots” doesn’t have to mean less for me.
Rather than taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots, we can achieve equality by making more efficient use of the resources we already have. Our earth and sun provide us with all the resources we need for all of us to live well, if only we are willing and able to steward them properly.
As Fuller observed, “. . . humanity now—for the first time in history—has the realistic opportunity to help evolution do what it is inexorably intent on doing—converting all humanity into one harmonious world family and making that family sustainingly, economically successful.”
I often wonder if nanotechnology and biotechnology could be the keys that open a new world so rich in wisely utilized resources that we can all live well. And apparently, I’m not alone. The week of June 11, 2007, thirteen of the world’s leading scientists gathered in Ilulissat, Greenland for the Kavli Futures Symposium, “The Merging of Bio and Nano: Towards Cyborg Cells.” They felt so strongly that nano and bio will have such a profound effect on humanity that they issued a statement unanimously stating their position in The Ilulissat Statement, “Synthesizing the Future: a Vision for the Convergence of Synthetic Biology and Nanotechnology.” Among their conclusions:
“The construction of arbitrary genetic sequences comparable to the genome size of simple organisms is now possible. Turning these artificial genomes into functioning single-cell factories is probably only a matter of time. On the hardware side of synthetic biology, the train is leaving the station. All we need to do is stoke the engine (by supporting foundational research in synthetic biology technology) and tell the train where to go.”
So, all we need to do is tell the nano-bio train where to go! They make it sound so easy! But many people believe that the tracks these technologies must follow have already been laid, their direction already determined by political or corporate interests.
Bucky Fuller was not one of these people. He believed the critical path technology and humanity will follow will be determined, not by politicians or corporations, but by individuals working together to create a critical mass powerful enough to direct and, as necessary, redirect the train. The discipline required to steer it? Not political or financial clout, but “the design science revolution.”
In other words, technology itself isn’t enough. It must be guided by design principles. The Ilulissat Statement is very much in harmony with ecological design principles, as are Fuller’s principles. That’s the vision of Green Technology Forum as well, to encourage the use of ecological design principles in the application of nanotechnology and biotechnology. It’s a strategy that can benefit business and consumers, and can help us build the kind of world envisioned by luminaries like Fuller and the Ilulissat group.
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“Are you spontaneously enthusiastic about everyone having everything you can have?” That’s the question posed by R. Buckminster Fuller in Critical Path. Like most people, I would answer with a hearty “yes”. But like most “haves”, I get a little nervous if it looks like providing for others is going to cost me some of my comforts. When that happens, I remind myself that more for today’s “have-nots” doesn’t have to mean less for me.