Leonardo da Vinci was a self-taught renaissance man. As a scientist, artist and inventor da Vinci's genius led to an unprecedented body of work. The drawings he left behind remain as testaments to his innovation and originality. One of da Vinci's main inhibitions was the lack of materials he needed to transform his concepts into reality. Jacque Fresco is also a self-taught scientist, architect and inventor. For his entire life he has been deeply committed to investigation insight and innovation. A prolific creator and builder Jacque has been redesigning our entire culture for most of his life. While da Vinci needed advanced materials Fresco has lacked access to the social and political resources needed to realize his most far-reaching ideas. AUGUST, 1974 My guest is an extraordinary Miamian, Dr. Jacque Fresco. I could go through all the things that Dr. Fresco has done. He's a social engineer, industrial engineer, designer, inventor was a consultant for Rotorcraft Helicopter director of Scientific Research Laboratories, Los Angeles designed and copyrighted various items ranging from drafting instruments to X-ray units has had works published in Architectural Records Popular Mechanics, Saturday Review and has been a technical and psychological consultant of the motion picture industry member of the air force design development unit at Wright Field developed the electrostatic anti-icing systems designed prefabricated aluminum houses. What does it say in your driver's license? What is the occupation? - Industrial Designer - Jacque, do you -social engineer - - Does it bug you that people when they talk about Jacque Fresco in Miami, say that he's someone who's too far ahead of this time? His thinking, is.... We're not ready for advanced kind of thinking. Not that type. Does it bug you? - I imagine every creative person in every field encounters that sort of problem. No, it doesn't. I can't afford it. There's too many things that are important. Jacque Fresco is a futurist. A futurist is someone for whom all thoughts and actions are based upon what tomorrow could be. He has been planning for the future since the 1920s. Not only is he a philosopher and theorist but an engineer, industrial designer and social planner. As a multi-disciplinarian, he has studied everything from theology to behaviorism and from biology to the material sciences. Jacque Fresco, doesn't want to just talk about what today will be like, tomorrow. He has a plan to build an entire new world from the ground up. (Gazecki) I'd like to go from the time you first started conceiving of drawings. - Started drawing? Well, that's very early. Eight, nine... eight or nine years old. - About the future? - Yes. I was always interested in the future as far back as I can remember. There was a motion picture called Metropolis. It was different; it took my attention. It was the first out-of-the-box type movie. It depicted the future as a regimented system which was totally unacceptable but the architecture was interesting and the robotics in that film were interesting. I drew airplanes and cities of the future underwater cities, floating cities and skyscrapers with landing platforms on them. I drew my idea of what a post office ought to be. Since the airport was so far from the post office they had a truck deliver that, I figured, here's these long post offices but why couldn't we land on top, pick up the mail directly and fly onward? So, I would draw landing platforms on the rooftops of the buildings slightly angular, so the airplane didn't have trouble landing. It couldn't be as long, but It'd be slowed up by the incline but then on take off they would go in reverse. Then I tried ships, drawings of passenger/freighter ships then aircraft carriers. And I showed it to my principal and he said "Have you ever heard of Bucky Fuller?" I said "No." So, he said "Would you like to meet him?" I said "Yeah, sure. Is he... what is he?" He says "He's an inventor like you. He thinks up a lot of new things." But Mr. Fuller was one of the 20th century's most renown futurists. Known primarily as the inventor of the Geodesic dome Fuller was a proponent of using technology with a humanistic approach. (Fresco) And there was Bucky Fuller. He was seated there with his car called the Dymaxium. And I said "What does that mean?" And he says "It is the highest form that can be attained in shape". I talked to him about social things. I said "What about changing society to some other form whereby all people can benefit from the works of industry?" He said "What do you mean?" I said "Well "if instead of working people going out on strike give them a piece of the action. And so if business improved they all got automatic pay. If it went down, they got less pay." So, he sat back and he said: "What are you, some kind of social planner? Is that what you want to be?" I said "I don't know what the name is but I think that would work. It would give people more incentive." He says "Let me tell you something. It's tough enough just getting a new automobile out there. If you're trying to change society..." This was years before he even lectured on things. (Gazecki) Albert Einstein once said "The problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." - Did you meet Einstein, Albert Einstein? - Yes. - Where did you get the idea to meet Albert Einstein? - I was outside a theater called Radio City and I saw a woman come out with gray hair sticking up. I said "It looks like Einstein's sister" to my friends! And then Einstein came out. And I think it was his sister. I was just kidding about that. And I walked over and I said "Is it possible to meet with you?" He said "Why?" I said "I have thousands of questions I want to ask." But, he says, uhm "I live in Princeton, New Jersey." - So tell me about the day you went and met him. - Well, I went to his home. And it was modest. I said that there seems to be harmony in nature. "How do you feel about that?" He says "Yes, the universe is lawful, but 'harmony', I don't know what you mean by that." I said "Well when a rat eats insects it may be supporting the rat system but what about the insect system?" What he did is he used some water from the backyard swamp water and he put it under a microscope and he said "Look everything is fighting everything else. In the human body, everything is fighting everything else. In the ocean, big fish eat little fish". I didn't really have enough time to sit there with Einstein and go through all kinds of things because he didn't seem to be in that area. He did (imitating Einstein) "Are you interested in mathematics?" (still mocking) Mathematics... are you interested... "What boolean geometry means to you?" You know. I didn't wanted to get off into that because, to me, that would be a sidetrack. Mathematics is a tool, just like sociology and anthropology. These are all instruments to go into making up the future. (Gazecki) When the stock market crashed in 1929, Jacque was only 13 years old. Coming of age during in The Great Depression prompted many questions for the curious and inquisitive young man. Living in New York City, he found the squalor and suffering around him difficult to understand. The confusion, contradictions and struggles he saw left a significant impact on his character. (Fresco) Things were so bad that I had no way of looking at it; and I thought the rules of the game were somehow screwed up. I went to many different meetings: communist meetings socialist meetings, fascist meetings Mankind United, technocracy to see what the world was teaching, including Eastern philosophy. And I wanted to know what people thought, what they wanted why they gelled on one system. And that each time a society arrived at a system they tend to keep that system. They didn't even try to go beyond that but in technology, whenever we made anything, we try to surpass it. The history of civilization, to me then, was the history of change social change, human arrangements homes, boats, planes, trains; all of them were in the process of social evolution including our language, our outlook, our values, our behavior. (Gazecki) As the Depression wore on, Jacque left New York and started hitchhiking around the country. In his travels he met many interesting and different people most of whom were like himself searching for a way of life that was fair and equitable. Eventually, he ended up traveling to the warm waters and primitive islands of Tahiti. (Fresco) I wanted to go to the south seas because I liked the idea of the natives sharing things; I've read about that. Now, the chief, if he had six wives, and you were strange he said "Here's my best wife. Maybe she will please you?" They felt their wives gave them so much joy; perhaps they'd give a visitor some joy. They're thinking about it was different. And that upset... It caused me to ponder "gee, that's not the way I saw things. Was that the way I saw things, or was that the way I was indoctrinated?" That's when I began to ask those questions. How do you know that anything you like makes sense, Jacque? What about your own values? Think about them; maybe they are senseless. [Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941] (Gazecki) Concerned that Tahiti would be invaded, Jacque returned to the US and joined the army air corps. When the war was over thousands of factories stood idle. Their manufacturing capacity no longer needed for wartime production. Capitalizing on the tremendous capacity available for aluminum fabrication Jacque designed and built a house made entirely from aluminum extrusions. The result was an innovative and extremely efficient use of time and materials. (Fresco)The windows, for example, were put in and then extrusions snapped in and sit with a seal. And so it was very rapid. It took something like twelve minutes to put up all the windows. Eight hours to put up the building. 1948, it was unveiled at Warner Bros and there were lines all around the studio. Thousands of people had come to see it. And airplanes... smoke... written in through the sky. "Visit The Trend Home at Warner Bros. Studio." It was publicized in newspapers. I think the Architectural Record... as one of the first mass-produced type homes. (Gazecki) Jacque appreciated the challenges of innovative problem solving. As he honed his skills he became a competent inventor. He always had a research lab and was constantly inventing new products. While much of his time was spent pursuing his own interests he was also hired by entrepreneurs to design and fabricate specific inventions, working in a very broad array of technologies. He invented everything from medical and dental devices to 3D motion picture projection systems. (Fresco) A guy named Jack Morse was a film producer at the time. I met him at Warner Bros. Studios. He came to see the Trend Home. And he was awed by everything fitting together so sensibly. And he said "How do you guys think of these things?" So, I began to describe how I thought about things then he found me interesting. And he said "Come on out to the house." And he had a big estate. And he said "Do you think you can make a movie projector that projects 3D images without glasses?" So I said, "Yes." He said, "How do you know you can do it? You've never done it." And I said "That's right." But if it's a physical phenomenon I think I can work it out." "How are you gonna' do it?" I said "I don't know yet." What I did is, I had many different applications which I'd rather not describe in detail. But I got 3D imaging different ways. And the simplest way was projecting the right and left eye image from behind the screen at the right eye and the left eye. If you moved over to the side you lost your image. And Jack wanted Technicolor to go the rest of the way. He got them to come out and look at it. "How do you do that? It's very interesting." I said "We're not at liberty to disclose that unless you back the next stage". I said "Well, how do you maintain visual isolation?" I said "I still can't discuss that with you." They looked at it and it was super clear, no lines. They said "That's the best I've seen up to now, but it fades at thirty degrees." I said" -Yes, it does." "And, at a distance it fades, too, as you move back." They said "Can you do anything about that?" I said "Yes. That's why you're here to take it to the next stage." So, they said, "Look, Jacque, you get rid of the fade and you get rid of the distance problem. Then call us." That died... like the Trend Home died. Then I read in the books on inventions how Alexander Graham Bell had to make the telephone before they backed it. The Xerox machine had to be made, completely. Edison had to make the electric lamp. Nobody backed him on the way up...until after he was known. (Gazecki) What are these for? What were these all about? - These are surgical instruments, aren't they? - Yes, various types, but those are only some of them. You know what a retractor is? - No - It holds the skin open while you're operating. These are various types of retractors. The purpose of that was to rotate the bone so it's in line before you put the prosthesis in. It rotates the femur, the upper region of the femur. Those are tweezers with holes in them... If look at the holes in the front... to put the sutures through to guide you through the muscle. You put it over the muscle and the holes are right through the middle of the muscle. You didn't have to eyeball it. - So these are things that you designed...- Long time ago. - Under contract? - Oh, yeah. - You contracted to design these things? - Yes. I did thousands of different things. But this doctor took the patents out in his name. But that's all right. I didn't know what was out there. I didn't know what I wanted to be. Since I looked at all things and tried to change all things. Wheelchairs, everything. Make them better... you know. I found it easy to invent. But, then, inventions cost money and I didn't have money for patents. I used to make thousands of different inventions and just filed them away, because I had no money. I used to spend my savings, whatever I earned on what equipment that I needed. And if I was working on an artificial leg and I was $200 behind. I would take my last $200 and work on that. I'd solve that problem, but then the rent would be due and the electric bills. I couldn't pay them. The auctioneers would be sent in to auction off everything in my lab. I had to sit back...I couldn't adjust to say "Well, I got $25 for rent $200 for this, for a machine..." I couldn't do that, because I was very near the answers and the type of problems I worked on were outside of the frame of reference of most science. In the fluorescent tube you have high voltage moving along and you have a transformer that generates it and you put a phosphor material that glows. But the tube is round and the phosphor on that back side does nothing. It's only the phosphor on the front side. I want to extrude the tube, so it's elliptical. You have more light surface in an elliptical tube. Then I wanted to mirror back, the back of the tube. Instead of putting a big reflector outside there put the mirror inside the tube. I didn't have the money to make that tube. Then I said "What a hell you are making a tube for?" Why don't you work on a flat sheet of glass that phosphors, that glows? Make glass that's electrically conductive. Well, how do you make a non-conductive electrically conductive? By putting metallic particles in the glass and phosphors. What would happen? The electric current would flow through the glass and animate the phosphors. You had a flat sheet. You don't want a lamp. A lamp is only giving light on one side. I wanted the whole surface to glow. (Gazecki) Over time, Jacque's ideas about the future became more well-organized and focused. Gradually, he began to combine his technological expertise with what he had learned about human behavior sociology and social structure. (Fresco) I spent so many years improving area by area, I said "Look, the whole society is aberrated the way we do things. Why not redesign society? It'd be easier than making all these thousands of products-- (Gazecki) You really decided to re-design the culture... -Because I couldn't get... patchwork didn't work. It wasn't sufficient. They thought I was a communist. After all, the guy wanted to redesign society. What else? "The Larry King Show" - August,1974 (Larry King) What is a socio-cybernering? - Socio-cybernering is a new organization and it represents the application of the most sofisticated forms of science and technology toward problem solving so that we can reclaim the environment which we loused up over the years; and to build a way of life worthy of man, to humanize society to break away from the artificiality, the regimentation that dominates our society today. Our society seem torn apart and pulled in many directions. Socio-cyberneering is an approach at the restructuring of society in humanistic terms. - Humanistic terms, yes. (Gazecki) The mission of socio-cyberneering was to build a residential research center, developing and demonstrating new technologies and innovative social concepts within a community setting. On a barren scrap of land in central Florida Jacque and a few friends began to build what is now known as The Venus Project, named after the tiny nearby village of Venus, Florida. Occupying some 25 acres, 10 buildings have been constructed. Each utilizes both design, construction and lifestyle concepts integral to developing a working model of harmony and high productivity integrating both nature and advanced technology. Jacque's objective of conducting a complete reassessment and redesign of our entire culture remains the central focus of his work. With The Venus Project he has created an environment conducive to creativity and innovation. (R. Meadows) When people come here they're amazed to hear that this was just a flat tomato patch. We've dug out streams and ponds and planted hundreds of palm trees and trees We built this land to show what the outskirts of the city would be like. We have many buildings here, but you can't see one building when you're in another. We really wanted to show how high-tech and nature could coexist within this environment. (Gazecki) Jacque and Roxanne have been living on the property and building The Venus Project since the late 1970s. The entire time has been a constant process of developing and implementing new ideas. Jacque begins with a drawing, then produces a scale model and then videotapes his models in order to demonstrate his concepts for the future. Although Venus, Florida is relatively isolated visitors often make the journey to see The Venus Project and to meet Jacque. -Joan. - I'm Margaret. - Hi, Margaret. I'm not going to remember your names, but... I'm Jacque. Hi, how are you? Good to see you. How are you? Have a seat, and then we'll go on with what this is about. Is everybody here? So, there was a time when most people believe that the decisions of the majority were very close to reality. But there was also a time when the majority of people believed the Earth was flat. And if you asked them whether they were sincere, they said "Of course! You can see it's flat!" So, they break a sincerity meter. But it isn't sincerity that the world needs. It needs the intelligent management of the Earth's resources. It's what we don't have. The major contribution... The Future by Design would like to provide is a method of coping with problems. Now, you're brought up to believe, I believe this that everyone should have a right to their own opinion. Isn't that the way you were brought up? - Yes, sir. - Okay. When you got everybody going around and giving their opinion "I'll tell you what's wrong with Jim!" They've got all kinds of opinions. But when engineers talk to each other they don't say "Believe me." They say "See this new metal? It can hold up 4,000 pounds per square inch." He puts it in a machine and pulls it apart and he says "You're right!" I would say that the majority of the people of the world today are unsane. Not insane, unsane meaning: having been exposed to methods of evaluation that are long rendered obsolete. Our language in the future will change to a saner language where we have no argument in it. I said "Can there be such a language?" There is! When engineers talk to each other it's not subject to interpretation. They use math; they use descriptive systems. If I interpreted what another engineer said in the way I think he meant it you couldn't build bridges. You couldn't build dams or power transmission lines. The language has to have meaning. That's why when a doctor writes a prescription, if he prints it. It's the same all over the world. The world I'm talking about is different. (Meadows) There aren't too many people that have seen everything that he's gone through in the past and come out of it with a certain direction. And the interesting thing is, too, is that he's not a philosopher that talks about how the world should be. His point of view. He's a technician that understands how it can be built and has worked with people and understands what it takes to change them and understands what it was that made them that way. So it's really based on hands-on learning and not reading something in a book. He went through the experiences himself and came out with the conclusions he did because it was based on actually learning-experience and experiments. (Fresco) When an engineer has an idea he talks to the computer about his idea. While they're talking about it the integrated computerized system will take the elements that they're speaking about convert the language into imagery and the image will turn and be exposed to all of the people watching at the exhibit and presentation. They will question the presentation but the image system will answer the questions how the buildings are fabricated, how water is supplied how it handles earthquakes, or any other question. Instead of people sitting around asking individual questions the answers are demonstrated inside of what appears to be a transparent dome. Ideas are not just verbal, because when you talk verbally it does not deliver enough information to people. A more comprehensive system of communication is 3-dimensional imaging always showing people what you've got in mind not what they think you've got in mind. - Designed with a holographic computer and built from prefabricated materials the home of the future will be far more than just a residence. It will be an element of lifestyle and will facilitate learning, inspiration and communication. (Fresco) One of the most interesting aspects of tomorrow's civilization will be the fact that if you knew anyone fairly well and went to visit them in a period of time of just a few years their houses will change, because the people living in them change. Their needs and dimension of knowledge grows considerably and so will the environment that they live in. There's no such thing as a fixed home that a person lives in all their lives. It changes with their values, with their outlook with their acquired knowledge. - You had said one thing about how the buildings were designed according to function. -Yes - The curvature, and the materials, and the... -Yes Compare it to natural physiology an animal's shape is not designed from the outside in; It evolves from the inside out. Whatever you request, the exterior will express a cover over the shape that you'd prefer to live in. Some of the buildings that are dome-shaped can be laid like eggs continuously by a machine that carries a dome shape. And in that dome the exterior and the interior fabricate at the same time. Not everyone will choose to live in a dome. They will choose to live in whatever architectural shape would meet their needs. The reason why we suggest a dome is it uses the minimum amount of materials and covers the maximum areas and offers maximum strength. The dome shape is included in almost all of nature. Your brain is in a dome. The cranial case is in a dome. When a person says "Yeah, I don't think I'd want to live in a dome"; you've been living in a dome most of your life. The interior of the building will have no source of light. You won't be able to see a lamp or source of light. All the walls would have even illumination. You can also specify the color of the illumination. Either, the entire inner surface or local areas of different color; if this is your request. This will be the simplest type of bathroom shower, sink, toilet bowl, molded into one system. Actually, there's no hardware on here. but there's a slot and the water comes out as a ribbon and that'll cut the soap off the hand and use about 1/6th the amount of water. Now, the waste water from the sink goes down into a pipe around here and fills the water closet and we flush the john with that water. Instead of telling people to save water, build a system in. This is what it's all about, if you wish to conserve water. The bathrooms may vary from that simple style to slightly more complex, but all one piece. There may be as many as fifty variations on a bathroom. You pick what you want and then it's installed. When you leave the building, the entire building is clean. We also have a slight increase in air pressure in the building; so no dust comes in your house from the outside. If there's any contaminants in the air it increases the electrostatic charge, which removes contaminants. It would be a smart house, because the house has its own nervous system. This is what I'm saying. In the future houses will have many sensory devices to detect fire, toxic materials anything that may threaten the life of a human being. If you walked into the house of the future you might say "Can I use your phone?" I'd say "Well, what's a phone?" You'd just say "I'd like to talk to Sam in Arabia". "What part of Arabia?" You just announce what you want and the sound would be focused and at some point you stand it right at your ear. So, you can hear Sam in Arabia. In southern Florida, millions of dollars in buildings were destroyed by the big hurricane there and they'd put up buildings that look just about the same. If you don't want hurricane damage... an inverted cone...it's almost impossible for a whirlwind to pick up an inverted cone. We would have these shelters built in the West Indies or wherever hurricanes occur. Inside would be pull-down bedding food storage and emergency water. This is the kind of form that no vortex or wind can pick up. Try to pick this up with greasy fingers and that's similar to the wind whirling around it. (Gazecki) For apartment buildings and other large structures Jacque has devised a cybernated construction system. Computer-controlled robots will handle 90% of the movement and placement of prefabricated components. Special advanced materials are to be developed eliminating waste and minimizing the need for manual labor. Guided by satellite and using a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, the buildings will construct themselves; a technique Jacque has named "self-erecting structures". This represents a relatively complex aluminum extrusion. If you were to take a toothpaste tube cut the letter "T" in the opening and squeeze the toothpaste it would come out like the letter "T"; and this is how extrusions are made. However, in the future it may be possible to extrude complete apartment houses apartment building units or modules. This extruder can be faced with different dies to mold different shapes. Almost an infinite variety of shapes can be extruded. So, it would be the apartment of your preference that's extruded. So, any shape, or almost any extruded shape can be designed to fit many different architectural arrangements. This is a transitional type structure which utilizes cranes to lift the components of the building. Eventually, the building itself will be part of the self-erecting structure. Don't forget all the models that I do are only transitional. They don't represent the best that man can turn out because no one knows what the future will bring. There's just so many variables that can alter things. So the models that I make are all transitional. And many of them are only conceptual; they're not necessarily what the future might look like. Let's say they're extrapolations of taking the present and extrapolating forward. But we can't go too far forward because we don't know what new things will come into being. This looks like a train station. We hope to phase out the airplane by designing transportation units that can move up to 2000 miles an hour floating on a magnetic repulsive field or an air cushion. In those huge trains of tomorrow there'll be television radio, amusement, art centers, classrooms; not a group of seats lined up as your trains are today. If forty or fifty people have to leave the train we slow up to a hundred miles an hour lift off the passenger section or slide it off and slide on a section with the passengers getting on. You don't have to stop the whole plane, or the train. In the future we will just shove off those passengers getting off and that freight leaving. This is part of the linear acceleration train that can take you anywhere in the world in just a few hours; safely, without snow, rain, being lost at sea... (Fresco) A monorail is one of the methods of transportation. Some of them can be suspended by magnetic levitation. Others can use wheels and ride the rails. This is an aerial perspective of a monorail station with entrance and exits on the side of the highway. This is actually a true monorail because it is one rail system that supports two trains. Most monorails aren't really monorail; they consist of two tracks. This is accomplished on one track. The vehicles of the future will be highly aerodynamic in shape. Their shape will permit the minimum amount of skin resistance giving you the maximum distance for minimum fuel consumption. The front end of the car will be equipped with radar or sonar or other sensory devices that can detect the distance you are from other vehicles and maintain that separation automatically. In other words, on a highway or anywhere where two cars might hit each other, the electronic sensors would sense the distance automatically and keep the cars from side-swiping or making contact at all. Even if they did and then pinched a slight dent in the car the car would be made up of the memory materials; shape-memory alloys that go back to their original shape even when dented. I'm going to take this metal called nitinol. This wire, or spring, is wound around a mandrill and heated to a specific temperature and held until it cools. Then, when you pull it out beyond its elastic limit so it's not about to return to the spring shape and then you form it in many different ways. If it's heated... I'll put it on this form so it won't drift away and I'm going to heat that metal you can watch it return to its original shape. It's called "shape-memory alloys". It could be done in plastics, metals or any other materials in the future. Watch how it returns. Even if there's an area of the car we removed they can be rebuilt, in other words, automatically by the car having a memory system of its configuration just, like the human body, just like, perhaps in lizards and salamanders and certain types of organisms today can regenerate parts of their body. The technology of the future will enable our automotive vehicles to repair and regenerate damaged areas. This is a transport unit, or air-suspended unit. It will travel five or four feet above the ground and not requiring highways or bridges. You can turn around by electrodynamic means discharging air from the right or the left side not by tunneled air paths, but just by attracting or repelling air. I did this about 65 years ago. This is what an automobile will look like in the future. It'll have sensors on it. So, if I got mad at you and, when I get within a certain distance, the breaks go on. If I'm backing up and there's a child crossing, the car stops. No one drowns in a swimming pool, because a net comes up when you're not home. Is that clear? If somebody falls in the pool and you're busy cooking... the child sinks to the bottom, a tight net comes up right away. What do you want? What kind of world do you want? What you see here is just glimpses of the future. So, we'll go and look the place over so you've got a better idea. That area over there, across the water we will build a very large dome like a center for dialogue to invite different people out here. This is a freighter with separate sections. This freighter can deliver this to the Philippines drop this off in Hawaii... And so when all of the freight bays are released they are propelled automatically to the loading docks. And then the forward portion of the ship and the rear portion which is the propulsion unit, are joined together. So you always travel at a balanced load; you never travel with an empty hull back. Using energy that way conserves millions of gallons of fuel if you use fuel in a conventional sense. This is a possible propulsion method. In this instance water is drawn toward the surface of the ship electrodynamically. And, in turn, the ship's reaction is forward away from the pressure toward the rear. It's like holding a peach pit, and squeezing it, and it moves forward. It has far less wake less water turbulence and very little energy consumed. What you see here is an illustration of underwater transportation for the future. At the very leading edge air bubbles will be emitted very rapidly in front of the unit and that will cut down the resistance considerably. If you were to release thousands of air bubbles underneath the ship, it would sink because the water is less buoyant with the air bubbles in it. The air bubbles will be a system in the future for reducing the forward resistance. Transporting things underwater is much more economical and offers much less resistance. When traveling on the surface, you're confronted with waves and wave motion. Underwater you don't have that problem at all. We talk about civilization as though it's a static state. There are no civilized people yet. It's a process that's constantly going on. We're not civilized. It's an ongoing process; and so we never become fully civilized. We'd have to know quite a bit in order to behave in the most constructive manner. And that goes for intelligence. I don't know if I've talked to you about an electrical engineer of 75 years ago, an intelligent one, couldn't get a job today. When you're talking about intelligence, what are you talking about? It's an ongoing process. That's why there's no such thing as an intelligent person. There are people that are fairly well-informed in area A and B not informed in area C. When you go on with a word like civilization it sounds like something that was attained. As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime you're in the early stages of civilization; what they call civilization. This type of helicopter, or aircraft would have its propulsion unit at the tip of the blades. They'd be relatively small, high thrust. The center of the disc, or the passenger compartment would remain stationary while the blades spun around. In the event of engine failure the blades can automatically gyrate and bring the craft down not only vertically but can travel forward by tilting. You will notice that there are no ailerons or elevators on this plane. It's operated in a different manner, also by ion propulsion. Electron discharge is much lighter, much cheaper, much safer much faster and less energy consumed. In the future, by controlling the airflow over wings and the direction of it the need for a rudder will be rendered obsolete. For individual transportation of small groups you have the vertical landing and take-off VTOL aircraft of the future. They are called "lift fuselage". The body itself generates the lift for this type of aircraft. It is propelled electronically meaning particles are electrified and discharged from the rear of the craft; which propel the craft forward. For hovering, we then eject the same propellant downward and generate a ring vortex, a whirling vortex beneath the craft. The control of that vortex determines the speed downward. We're going over to the model dome where we have models of future type buildings and how they go together. Here you have the city system. I put domes here, but there'll be many variations. In other words... - What are those? - These are research centers. - Okay. -This is medicine agronomy, population designing improvement of products, energy systems. Energy in the future will be geothermal, most of it. You can get that from the earth. There's enough geothermal energy for thousands of years without worrying about anything. I'm not talking about solar, wind power or wave power or tidal power. All that is extra. There's no shortage of anything except brains in Washington. - You can't make money from the sun. - What's that? - You can't make money from the sun! - No, you can't. Exactly that. All these buildings can come apart and be recycled. Now if you follow me we'll go to the future. All right, let's explore the thinking of Jacque Fresco and the society he'd like to see. We'll start with this, and you tell me... - I'll try to point it out. - Yeah, you can point right at it. - Most of the cities are based on natural configurations basic designs in nature. The center of the city the nucleus, will house an electronic computer which only controls water purification, the atmospheric conditions that is, it controls air contamination systems they maintain safety, they oversee the environment maintain ecological balance between animal life and plant life. The center of the city is a university. A university that covers all subjects related to man. There's no courses that are used to exploit or abuse any other human being. All repetitious jobs will be phased out. We feel that machines ought to do the filthy or the repetitious, or the boring jobs that man has to be free to pursue the higher things the higher possibilities of man. (Gazecki) You came up with this idea for a round city. - A round city. A round governmental branch. Extending out of it would be the department of agriculture education, oceanography, the disciplines. The circular scheme, or plan, brings each district closer to the central dome, which contains the medical food, shopping, everything else that people need. The circular arrangement makes it easier to operate using far less energy than any other system. If you start at one end of the city and go through the city you'll always return to the same place. Whereas, in a linear city, you go to one end you have to backtrack to get to the same point. The circular scheme is, by far, the most efficient. When cities are contracted in the future they will be contracted as a whole, as an entire system. In that way, all of the parts and components would be delivered in stages, like sequence one will be the underground: the heating system the electric generators, the piping systems, the recycling systems. After that, the next layer, which would serve as the first layer that contains the architecture the foundations for all the buildings. After that, the erection of structures up from the foundations starting with the central portion of the city working its way out to the different radial sectors and then out to the final housing sectors and then to the agricultural belt, and then to the recreation areas. The cities themselves are prefabricated. Most of the elements that comprise the structures of the cities are interchangeable, interlocking. They are designed so they can be disassembled just as they were assembled. The new cities will be updated continuously. As the waters are piped into the cities they are checked. To whatever extent contamination exists the water processing plants evaporate the water recondense it and cleanse it. All waters piped into the city will be monitored constantly not by a monitoring system, but several monitoring systems. The same is true of the air above and around the city: it's constantly monitored. All of the rooftops are photovoltaic. All of the skin, outer skin of the building convert solar radiation into electrical energy. As we move beyond the third sector we come to tennis courts, parks. Beyond that is the residential district, which consists of lakes waterfalls, all kinds of beautiful plants throughout the area. Each house is concealed by plants so you can't see another building. Some people prefer as in the next sector, to live in apartment houses. The apartments have drama groups, recreation, swimming pools discussion groups and so many other facilities. The disadvantage of living in a private home is you would have to go to the various places to access the same things. Instead of motor vehicles in the city all transportation is carried on by circular conveyors that we call transveyors. They move radially, circumferentially and vertically. They serve the function of elevators, buses, conveyors. If you wish to go to another city, you can take an elevator down beneath the central dome, which has Maglev trains, etc. that will transport you to the center of any other city or any other region. There will be no waste products, just as in nature there are no waste products. All materials that we would formerly called waste would be recycled and converted into new products. When the city hits a certain number of people we stop the development and let everything go back to nature between this and the next city. It doesn't mean that we can solve all the problems. We can just design and build a far better environment to advance all human beings. Not everybody will live in a dome. This is different types of architecture; this may be a vacation house. I don't know what people will choose to live in but that would be up to each individual. What we want to do is build cities in the sea. You pick the city you want to live in. Some of these cities are for ocean mining. The oceans have tungsten, manganese phosphorous; all kinds of chemical stuff we may need. They're made available to all people. You don't have to worry about being blind in the future. We design cities so you can hear an open door and you can sense a table, because you have built-in sensors. We work on making artificial methods for visual for everybody, because anybody can lose their eyesight. There's no more nickels and dimes for medical research. This is what the army of the future is all about. There's usually an alligator sleeping down here. (King) Are you betting that people will not declare war on each other, so that you can get at building all of this? -We don't have much choice. We're going to destroy each other, or we're going to make it. -This looks like some sort of submerged stadium with something... - We might build circular cities in the sea where the water is about 30-35 feet deep. Most of the apartment houses will open out into the sea. You can observe marine life and fish swimming by. There will be no zoos, no seaquariums. Everything will be observed in natural conditions. There will be boating, scuba diving, recreation, universities built in the sea. - Are these drawings all made by you? - Yes. (Fresco) This represents a blueprint of the basic structure of the city in the sea. There are helicopter landing areas on the upper section. There are cranes that travel around the entire upper portion of the structure. The legs are designed to move up and down to the support the structure and rests on the sea bed. What are these cities in the sea for? Some of them represent hospitals that can be towed off the coast of Africa or India. Instead of sending building materials out there and building a hospital, then shipping the equipment out there. It's much easier to build a floating hospital tow it off the coast of Africa, use it and by the time the new hospitals are assembled there you can then move this to another region float it to another region. Most of the cities will be constructed in dry-docks by automated systems. After it's complete and the flood-locks are open and it fills with water and there are units that looks like tugboats that deliver the cities to their site where they will be located. Some will house as many as a million people; a series of cities in close proximity, joined together by transport systems, that is, tunnels either under the water or above-the-water bridges. This is an aerial view of one of the many variations of cities in the sea. The towers are used for residential occupation. The docks surrounding the cities are used for marine exploration and redevelopment. In other words, to restore the reefs, the damaged reefs. The unit in the center is used for hydroponic gardens; growing of food without soil. Many of the cities in the sea will have docking facilities for marine vehicles. That means it'll be like an underwater bus that would take people around to visit the different areas. You'll be able get a very good picture of the ocean and how we harness it and use it and preserve it and protect it so that future generations might enjoy the oceans, also. This projects above one of the cities under the sea with an observation platform and a landing platform on the upper deck. At the sea level there'll be a floating dock system that moves with the tide, up and down so boats can dock. Then you enter an elevator shaft, which goes to an airlock. It takes you to the bottom of the sea, or the sea bed. The sea bed is used for observation of reefs and marine life. Not only do they monitor the reefs, they restore the reefs and change them, rebuild them or redesign them. Some day we will be able to control the shape, configuration of reefs so they can support more marine life. I think humans can add to nature and improve it considerably. What will that mean? It'll mean a higher standard of living for all people. (Meadows) When he draws these buildings and designs he thinks about how they go together, how they're manufactured. Some of the drawings I have seen have gone back about 60 years and they're just beginning to talk about some of these things now as being a possibility. You know, in the past people would say: "You'd never be able to get to the moon, not in a thousand years!" And they'd look up the next day and they're going to the moon. You know, when I first met Jacque 25 years ago and he would talk to some people about certain inventions they'd say, "You won't see that... not in a thousand years!" And, ten years later, they'd come out with it on the cover of Popular Science. The whole basis of the technology is to maintain a high standard of living. Technology is not worth anything unless it improves people's lives. Today, people are afraid of science and technology because it's so abusive today in so many ways. But it's not science and it's not the technology we should be wary of, it's the abuse and the misuse of science. You can take a rocket and you can shoot it into space and explore outer space or you can take it and use it as a bomb and destroy another country. It's really the inanimate object really, is in our hands, and what we do with it. Science is really the ability to predict the next most probable. That's what the real meaning of science is: gaining the ability to predict the next most probable. When we talk about science, we're talking about a method of looking at a situation, a method of evaluation that differs from the opinionated system. "If you ask me, I'll tell you!" The scientific method has no special connection to truth. It really has a better way of looking at things than the earlier systems where everything was attributed to gods or demons. (Gazecki) This is where we get into applying the scientific method to society. -Yes. This is not in a book yet. The scientific method applied to society is something people don't think about much. But if you want to know about where the answers may lie it is in the application of the methods of science with human concern and environmental concern. The Future by Design refers to the application of the methods of science. Not scientists the methods of science to the social system. Naturally, even the methods of science undergo change. As they change, so would the future. If we use the scientific method throughout the world the probability of war drops to zero. The probability of human suffering disappears. Deprivation, poverty, crime... all those things tend to disappear, because there's no basis for it. (Meadows) Jacque spent a lot of time...before studying people he started studying how animals behave and how to change or predict the behavior of animals and came to the conclusion that it's really the environment that changes behavior and enables us to behave the way we do. We're not born with prejudice and bigotry and anger and greed. It's really generated and nurtured by the environment that we live in. That's why we feel that unless you change your environment and change the experiences, we'll get the same aberrant behavior within people, unless the environment is changed. (Fresco) Any culture in the world today tries to educate people so they'll serve a function in that particular culture. In other words, if you're brought up in a Nazi culture the flag waving and the swastika are the kinds of things they put forth. If you're brought up in a primitive tribe handling the javelin and the bow and arrow will be the kind of thing that you will be exposed to. People are conditioned to serve the interests of an established culture. Who does that to us? The owners of the institutions: The establishment. They give us a value system that would support existing structures whether it be religious, non-religious, industrial, military... When children say, you know, "Daddy, what's the greatest country in the world?" "Of course our country is the greatest country in the world." "Which god is the right god, Daddy?" "Our god. All the other gods are false gods." Picture this: a Roman family taking its kids to see the Christians being fed to the lions. And the kids are watching "Dad, can we come next week to see Christians being fed to lions?" Are these kids sick? No! Their value system is distorted. So, I'm strictly concerned with the environment that people are reared in, raised in. And if that environment is altered, so will behavior be altered. You reorient the environment and that in turn reorients people. But if you reorient people without touching the environment, it'll slip back. So, when you try to think about the future, remember this: the process with which you think about things is based upon indoctrination, what you're given by your society. Your range of thought is limited by the dominant values of your society. Learning to be flexible in values takes a long time. In talking to kids, when I was very young I had to be very patient with them if I were to make any progress. I talked about the concept of god: your concept of god, my concept of god, and his concept of god. So different... I wonder what god is really like? Or, if there is a god, for that matter. And why would god permit war and disease if he's all-loving? It didn't make sense to me...too many clashes. I questioned that. Of course, I felt a little uncomfortable during questioning the concept of god. But then, reading about the history and evolution of gods. There were many different gods: the god of war, the god of peace, the god of love... Which was more like the people that invented them. They behaved, they got angry, they made sacrifices they created floods when they didn't like the way things were going. And this did not come through as superior intelligence. Primitive people, going back in time, when they saw lightning they thought that the deity was angry. Why else would it not occur? When a hurricane swept the land, they got rid of certain people in their tribe as a sacrifice, hoping that the gods would not produce a second hurricane. However, if it did occur again then they sacrificed some of the younger people. Rarely would the chief sacrifice himself but he's always got a line of people, ready to sacrifice. So, you have that problem with human beings. Anything that occurs beyond their comprehension they have to invent an excuse for. They have to create gods and demons to account for things, because people come to the leadership of that community. No matter how primitive the tribe, they say: "How come bad wind blow people off island?" The guy says "You not behave good! You not make not enough contribution to volcano! Throw your brother-in-law into volcano, maybe it doesn't erupt then." So, if you throw your brother-in-law into the volcano and it still erupts, you have to throw your sister-in-law in. So you get metaphysics. You get religion. You get superstition "Knock wood". Or you wear a rabbit's foot. Just remember that the rabbit had four of them; didn't do him any good. So, on the down the line, superstition prevails wherever ignorance prevails. Myth is a way of saying to the little guy working out there in the field when he says "What does all this amount to? I never seem to be getting anywhere." "When you kick the bucket everything is there for you. If you don't get it in this life you'll get it in the next if you remain good." The amount of superstition that a culture can absorb would be directly proportionate to the amount of information people have. So, in the future, with adequate supply of information more than that which is given today considerably more, you don't have "knock wood. Today's my lucky day. When you're number's up, it's up." All that will disappear in the future. I look at this as everything he's doing as being the utmost in spirituality. Instead of looking for a better world later after you die. It's really building the types of things that all religious teachings talk about here on Earth. We don't have to wait until we die for that. We can confront our problems today and not wait for the Messiah to come with the white robe and change things or not wait until we all go to heaven at a certain time or those believers that go to heaven at a certain time. We can deal with the problems today. For instance, in a religion they put things on the will of god. If there's an accident it's the will of god. And it stops you from thinking. It stops you from being innovative. It stops you from thinking about "Well, how do we redesign the transportation system so we don't have those problems anymore?" So, he's worked with priests, and he's worked with religious people and kind of expanded their horizons a bit so they can be more creative. They look at the environment that shapes people's behavior and they don't call them "good" or "bad" anymore, they think about shaping the environment to get more constructive behavior. (Fresco) If people were to ask me to redesign the world and the way people live. First thing I would have to do is to conduct a survey to find what we have how much water we have how much people we have, how much arable land area. After I know that, then I can base the parameters of design on what we have. What you really need is an understanding of the Earth's resources by agronomists, geologists, geophysicists; people who study the Earth. They don't give you their opinion. They say "There's more life in the Antarctic." That's not an opinion. That's a finding. So, in the future, no more opinions. "Do you have information in this area?" "No, I don't." "Good! Here's where you might get it." Or "Here's how you might go about finding out." So I'm saying, "All people need clean air clean water, arable land and a good relationship of language." So, I'm not superimposing Fresco's concepts. I'm using the Earth as the measure. In other words, we have to live in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth. Does that make sense? - Yes, sir, it does. I keep wondering about how drastic a social change this is and how totally different our world would be - And, yeah, how do you get - from here to there? - people to accept it, yeah. - Okay, here's how we do it. Eventually, all decision-making will be transferred to machines. First, people say "Well, now, I don't know that I'd like machines making decisions." First of all, that's what a scale does. If you go to a butcher shop the butcher says "The chicken weighs six pounds." Since you're buying it, you say: "that doesn't look like six pounds to me!" So you grab it and say "I think it weighs about four" because you're tense to think to weigh less. Then the scale came in and we assigned decision making to the scale. Is that right? - Yes, sir. - So, so do pilots. When they fly, "I think I'm a mile and a half high." They look at an instrument, and it tells them they're 4,203 feet off the ground. So, that is decision made by machine because the decision-making by the machine is far more accurate. Now, the question normal people ask is "Yes, but can machine be smarter than the designer?" Well, I know a little guy that designed a machine to pick up a freight train and empty it. Now, he can't do that. Machines are always faster than the designer. You ever see a coke bottle machine move on the line? The designer, he can't move those bottles. What is happening in our societies? We are automating more and more decision-making and assigning it to machines. Picture a department of agriculture as a setup of computers with electrical wiring into the soil. So, if the water table drops, that pumps water out there. If the nutrients change it pumps nutrients. You don't need a guy out there saying "Mr. President, we have a drought out here!" And the President says "How bad is it?" "Well, there are 5,000 homeless, and in the next three days there'll be 15,000 homeless." So, the President says, "Hmm." So he flies over and he says "Yes, you do have a drought." So what? When you connect up the country, all the computers to production, distribution, agriculture you have a nervous system which maintains dynamic equilibrium in production and distribution of goods and services, without money. The government is right above your head there if you can turn around to see it. It looks like the globe. That globe there makes all the decisions, because it's connected! We have satellites around the Earth that project a hologram a virtual image of the Earth. So you're looking at the real Earth, in real time. So you walk over to the image screens and you talk. You say "How many planes are in the air at this instant?" The computer will hit a laser spot all over the world and tell you: "7320". Every plane in the air, every hurricane all the conditions all over the Earth... plant diseases... No human can do that. So we don't need people in government. We need electronics in the field, production, distribution, weather... So we can look, come at home and find out anything we want to know without opinions based on folk-say, or folksy ways. (Gazecki) The Future by Design is a self-regulated society governed by a cybernated system of supply and demand. Political systems are replaced by tabulating the input of information from the general population and delivering goods and services accordingly. The economic system is similarly based upon the use of all available resources in meeting the needs of the entire culture. (Meadows) When there's a depression or a dip in the economy and a lot of people don't have money to buy things there are still goods out there. There's still the ability to produce them. There's still the resources, there's the farms and people want to work and make things but they don't have the money, they can't buy things. So there's something terribly wrong out there, we have a great deal of the Earth's population starving and suffering and the resources are there. Our ability to produce is there. Our ingenuity is there. Yet, some people have a lot and others don't have anything. Today, that's really shameful with our technology. It's really very, very abusive and absurd because we have all the technology today to produce abundance all over the world for everyone. People always ask, "How much will it cost to put up these new cities?" Do we have the resources to do it? That's the question, not, "How much does it cost?" That's the old question during a monetary system. Money is an invention of convenience for purchasing goods and services in a scarcity environment. If there's a scarcity say, of water, it is prized, and its price is high. If we find an abundant suddenly the earth opens up and an abundant supply of fresh water fills every ravine then nobody cares. There's only a policeman in front of something that people have need for and don't have access to, so you put a guard there. But if lemon trees or orange trees and apple trees grew all over the place, you couldn't sell it. Imagine, if you will, if you can, an island of 10,000 people with $10 billion on the island available. No resources, no arable land, no water no fish, you have nothing. So what is the real value in the future? Resources. Now, in a non-monetary based society, a resource-based society people have access to anything that they need somewhat like the public library. They can go down and access a camera, or a bicycle, or a wristwatch. Anything that they need is available, without a price tag. That would mean we must achieve a level of production that's so high that scarcity no longer exists. Many people wonder what would drive people if they have access to all their needs. What would happen to incentive? What will motivate people? Or, something gained, what's the gain? Although the gain is that materials are available what will motivate them on to do better than what they have? Need. We will always lack. And the fact that we will always lack meaning that we cannot achieve perfection we cannot achieve truly dynamic equilibrium we will always be in some form of disequilibrium. With the elimination of scarcity the essential incentives change toward problem solving, in general. When nations or groups of people do not have access to resources their behavior is difficult to manage. It becomes aberrant, they lose their mental equilibrium they cannot arrive at appropriate conclusions. Once people are free, mentally of debt, obligation, servitude then they can seek new horizons that they've never even dreamt possible before. -The core mechanism of democratic process in the Future by Design is the use of public exhibition halls. With the exhibition hall, everyone has the opportunity to participate in establishing the priorities with which the society is governed. -So, just like a world fair, to show you what's new, what is available you look around and say, "I'd like one of those" or, "I can use that sort of thing in my kitchen." Whatever it is. And then they always invite comment, or something new comes up "What do you think about it? Do you feel it's efficient? Do you feel there's shortcomings? Enter into your computer your point of view regarding this, so you have a built-in democracy. You have a participatory culture where all people participate and that is in a constant process, so that people will know up to the minute what is coming out what exists, what is available, what is not available. In other words, there'll be many bulletins and many publications and visualizations of what is needed. So, all the world's people will be informed constantly of what we don't know, what is needed badly and asking for suggestions and papers and ideas from everybody. I just want to say this to you, that all the marvels and wonders of technology can amount to nothing unless it elevates humans to their highest potential. This is the aim of the Future by Design. (Meadows) Jacque continues to invent everyday, to invent, to write, to work. He has a zest for life that keeps him going and keeps him working. And he's interested in things. He's interested in what happens out there and how this will play out and how it'll turn out, while very much wanting to introduce this direction to the world. So that's his prime focus. And he does that in every way he can by actually showing it's not enough to just tell what the future will be like, but just to show what people are missing. He keeps coming up with new ideas, new inventions new designs, improves what he has represents them better, makes more models, makes more videos. He's relentless at trying to get these ideas out. I think he fears where society is now. It's not acceptable to him. But, instead of just complaining, he wants to propose an alternative. When people say "Are you trying to build a perfect society?" I have no notions of a perfect society. I don't know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we've got. I'm no Utopian. I'm not a humanist who would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony. I know that, if we don't live that way, we'll kill each other and destroy the Earth. We're a crude form of life right now in the evolutionary stages. Our civilization... really we're not even civilized yet. So, after the world joins together and we are through with military systems, prisons, torture hunger, poverty, deprivation. When that is gone that'll be the beginning of the civilized world. We are not there yet.