Jacque Fresco - Global Sustainability

This program is brought to you by the University of Michigan. For more information visit www.umich.edu Born on March 3rd 1916, Jacque Fresco has been called many things: designer, architect, inventor, author, and futurist. His sensibilities stem from firsthand experience of the Great Depression a detailed understanding of the effects of a scarcity-based economy and the conflicts it produces. Primarily self-taught, Jacque advocates for a society that pursues science and technology as a means of continually educating itself believing that such a society neither wants nor needs to be controlled. Proclaimed a visionary, Jacque offers bold and complete reformation of the world's social constructs to promise a brighter tomorrow if we can unite as humans in its pursuit today. Jacque Fresco represents not only the sincerest belief of artists and designers to affect positive change in a society but a pure conviction, if not responsibility to absolve failing systems. In a 1974 interview with Larry King Jacque Fresco can best be quoted with the following: "There are no Negro problems or Polish problems or Jewish problems or Greek problems or women's problems. There are only human problems." Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Jacque Fresco. [Applause] Thank you Eric. I don't know if anybody's here, but can you hear me back there? [Yes!] OK. I want to tell you little bit about this film we're about to see. We were invited to Saudi Arabia to present some of our concepts. They wanted us to design a new city [and] a theme park in Saudi Arabia. We made this film only to show them conceptual ideas of what the future can be not what it will be. We don't know only what it can be. At this time, I'm going to present that film so you've got some idea of what it is that we do at the Venus Project. Thank you for your time. [Applause] [uplifting score with trumpets]♫ A nation without a vision of what the future can be is bound to repeat past errors over and over again. This brief video will outline a vision designed to avoid old mistakes. A vision of efficiency, sustainability and intelligent planning can lead us into a marvelous new world of unlimited human potential. Designing the Future This vision could be a showcase of what the world can be in our cybernated age. Science and technology could be used for human betterment and the restoration and protection of the environment serving as an example of the intelligent application of a Systems Approach. While some people advocate the restoration of existing, worn-out cities these efforts fall short of the potentials of modern technology. Repairing outmoded cities results in higher costs of operation and maintenance. It is actually less expensive in the long run to build newer cities from the ground up than to restore and maintain old ones. A total city system approach requires overall planning to attain a higher standard of living for all the city's occupants. The circular arrangement efficiently permits the most sophisticated use of available resources and construction techniques with a minimum expenditure of energy. This can make available to all people, the most advanced amenities that modern science and technology can provide. It could be the hub and learning center where people from all over the world visit and hopefully emulate this design approach in other parts of the world. Design considerations for these new cities include its overall functioning, its ease of assembly the reduction of maintenance, efficient transportation and its simplicity and durability. This will include the flexibility to permit ongoing and later changes. The city would function as an evolving, integrated organism rather than a static structure. This systems approach envisions assembling entire cities by standardizing basic, structural elements which are prefabricated in automated plants and assembled on site. Many of these buildings would be comprised of standard units that can be arranged to meet many different requirements. This approach means that these cities can be extremely cost-efficient because only one sector needs to be designed which can be duplicated repeatedly for the completion of an entire city. Our approach makes it possible to sell or license these building methods and designs as totally integrated city systems anywhere in the world. The outer perimeter will be part of the recreational area with golf courses, hiking and biking trails and opportunities for water sports. Inside this area, a waterway surrounds an agricultural belt with indoor and outdoor agriculture. Continuing toward the city center eight green sectors provide clean, renewable resources of energy using wind, solar and heat concentrators. Waste-recycling and other services are located beneath the city. The plan utilizes the best of clean technology in harmony with the surrounding environment. The residential district features beautiful landscaping with lakes and winding streams. A wide range of creative, innovative apartment buildings and individual unique homes will provide many options for the occupants. New and innovative methods of fast mass-construction for housing and building systems will inject composite materials into a mold and then extrude the form upward. In some cases, multiple city apartments can be produced as continuous extrusions which are then separated into individual units. Cranes transport these prefabricated dwellings to site locations. They are then lifted and inserted into a support structure. The apartments are light-weight and high-strength. All of the dwellings are designed as self-contained residences. The outer surface of these efficient structures serve as photovoltaic generators converting solar radiation directly into electricity for heating, cooling and other needs. The thermocouple effect will also be used for generating electricity. The wide range of individual homes are prefabricated and relatively maintenance-free fire-resistant, and impervious to weather. With this type of construction there would be little or no damage from floods, earthquakes or hurricanes. Their thin-shell construction can be mass-produced efficiently and economically. New energy efficient systems can be installed to supply enough power to operate the entire household. Adjacent to the residential district are planning, science and research centers. Eight domes surrounding the central dome, house art, music exhibition, entertainment and conference centers. Lovely parks, lakes, streams and waterfalls are located throughout the entire city. The central dome or theme center contains schools, healthcare shopping, communications networking and child care. It is also the core for most transportation services which move people by transveyors horizontally, vertically and radially, anywhere in the city. This minimizes the need for automobile transportation except for emergency vehicles. Transportation between cities would be by monorail. The central dome will eventually house a cybernated complex which serves as the brain and nervous system of the entire city. It projects a 3D virtual image of Earth using satellite communication systems which display information on weather, agriculture, transportation and the operation of the whole city. This cybernated system will use environmental sensors to help maintain a balanced-load economy which avoids overruns and shortages. For example, in the agricultural belt electronic probes monitor and maintain the soil conditions water table, nutrients and more. This method of electronic feedback can be applied to the entire city complex. With computers now able to process trillions of bits of information per second they are vital for arriving at correct decisions for the management of these innovative cities. Some of the cities may be total enclosure systems which are self-sufficient. These massive structures would contain residences, parks, recreation, entertainment health care, educational facilities and more. Everything built in these cities would be as near to a self-contained system as conditions allow. In these total enclosure arrangements, the skyscraper assures that more land is available for parks and wilderness preserves while at the same time eliminating urban sprawl. Wherever possible, geothermal energy can be harnessed. Geothermal power offers the possibility of an abundant source of clean energy. This source alone could provide enough energy for the next 1000 years. National transportation systems would include a network of waterways and canals. These bodies of water could minimize the threat of floods and droughts by diverting flood waters to storage basins. In addition, these canals could supply water for irrigation fish farms and recreation. The canals can also be used for desalinization using a method of evaporative condensation. A network of tunnels could facilitate transportation of passengers and freight across the Sahara Desert to all the Arab nations free of the effects of sandstorms. These tunnels will be located 30 to 40 feet below the desert surface with ventilators every 1000 feet. Water could be pumped from below the surface of the Sahara and transported to all the Arab nations. In some instances, ships could serve as floating automated plants capable of processing raw materials into finished products while in route to their destinations. Huge ships and submarines with many removable and interchangeable compartments will carry freight across the oceans. Rather than separate containers an entire freight section can be automatically disengaged at the port. Bridge designs would be greatly simplified and bridges can be made corrosion-resistant. They would be prefabricated and transported to the site by twin-hulled catamarans. On some bridges, trains could be suspended beneath traffic lanes. Colonization of the oceans is one of the last frontiers remaining on Earth. Prodigious oceanic city communities will evolve as artificial islands floating structures, undersea observatories and more. These large marine structures are designed to explore the relatively untapped riches of the oceans and provide improved mariculture fresh water production, energy and mining. This could offset land-based shortages. They could also provide almost unlimited riches in pharmaceuticals chemicals, fertilizers, minerals, oil and natural gas. Ocean cities would be resistant to earthquakes and greatly relieve land-based population pressures. The population would vary from several hundred to many thousand. Underwater oceanic viewing and research facilities provide expensive panoramic observations of the undersea world in its natural habitat, without disturbing the ocean environment. Unsinkable floating sea domes will attract those who prefer unique offshore or island living. In the event of inclement weather, they could easily be towed ashore mounted, and anchored to elevated support structures. Mariculture and sea farming systems are used to cultivate and raise fish and other forms of marine life to help meet nutritional needs. These marine enclosures are designed as non-contaminating integral parts of the ocean environment. A true world's fair of the future will emphasize the contributions made by all nations toward advancing humanity. Although this fair will provide entertainment its main function is to deepen understanding of the world we live in and the people who inhabit it. The architectural structures themselves will be jewels of future possibilities with a wide variety of exhibition buildings. Many of the displays will depict not what the future will be but what it can be, if we use science and technology with human and environmental concerns. It could be a vivid future showcase of the human potential. Videos, 3-dimensional displays and full-size dioramas will depict the fabulous advantages for all nations when working together to preserve the greatest gift we have: the resources and beauty of our planet Earth. In the final analysis, we are one people and share one planet. If you desire more information on any of the systems seen in this video visit our website at: www.TheVenusProject.com [dreamy space music]♫ No one can really predict the future. There are too many unforeseen variables. In the future a city should be self-contained: electric generating systems on all the rooftops and roadways. It should contain shopping centers, medical care, childcare, schools everything that a city needs. If you build suburbia (you designers that are going to go out there in the future and develop all these new communities) [in such a] community you have to drive that way to school (taking kids to school) that way for shopping that way for the dentist, the other way for a doctor. When cities of the future are designed, they have to be self-contained and contain everything that people would need. Of course, the city of the future would have to be part of a global, integrated system where there are no longer separate nations and all of the Earth's resources would be declared the common heritage of all the world's people. That's if you don't want war, if you don't want depressions economic boom and bust, you have to redesign the culture based on scientific scales of performance. That means instead of people sitting around designing the future you have to base it upon a global survey. The first thing that has to be done is to invite all nations to participate in a global system. After all when you think about it where do you think we got this country from? We stole it from the Indians, New Mexico, the Spaniards and this is true of all nations. I'm sorry to say this, but they're all basically corrupt; all nations today, there's no way out. [applause] I just want to tell you potential soldiers who are going to enlist in the army or have already enlisted: All wars are phony! It represents the supreme failure of nations to bridge the difference between one another. When they conscript your lives... [applause] When they conscript you to serve, to give your life for this country they should conscript all the war industries so no one makes a buck out of war. Then it's real. Do you understand what I'm saying? They make billions out of war! Shooting Japanese in World War II on all the Pacific Islands: that's the wrong thing to do. They don't even know how to fight a war. What they should have done was arrange long range bombers to knock out the power projects in Germany and Japan: the electric generators, the dams. You don't need to shoot soldiers on the islands. When you do that, as long as the generators can operate the factories they will turn out weapons of war. War is big business. People make lots of money on it. It's not to bring democracy to undeveloped countries. We have never had a democracy in this country, at any time! Democracy is an illusion and I'll try to give you an idea... [applause] I'll try to give you an idea of what democracy would really be like. Our president would criticize a country for about an hour, hour and a half. When he's through, we would invite the prime minister of that country on the air to give his point of view. Then we would invite the prime minister of Sweden. He says "They're both wrong! This is how we see it..." That's a democracy: all points of view on the air every religion, non-religion, agnosticism, and you turn it on or off. We've never had that, at any time. And all these people say "Let's take back our democracy!" You can't have a democracy unless all kids have good, healthy, nutritious food and all people have medical care from birth to death and you get rid of the money system. As long as you've got a money system, you're going to have corruption: people pay off other people, take advantage of people... We have enough resources to build hospitals all over the world. The cost of World War II could have housed everybody on Earth wiped out the slums all over the world and built a brotherhood of man. The Christians and the Mohammedans and all the other religious groups give 'lip service' to the teachings of Christ. What we have to do is translate all religious teachings into a way of life, not paper proclamations. Do you follow me? In other words... [applause] What I'm saying is a very bold and different approach to life. Actually, the big question is: How do we get from here to there? Years ago I asked myself the same question. Different countries have belief systems that are different than ours. They have many wives, different concepts of God... How do you bridge the difference? This is what we needed in Washington not a military group or a Pentagon. We need sociologists, social scientists who are capable of bridging the difference between nations, and this is how you do it: You don't criticize their social customs or their religious beliefs. You talk about things we have in common. All the world's people need clean air, clean water, arable land and a relevant education, which you do not get today. Education teaches you nothing. It's more propaganda than information. [hoots, applause] In real education you study our relationship to the environment and to one another. I just want to say this, which is a little harder to accept: that all people, wherever they're coming from are perfectly well-adjusted. Again, where they're coming from. If you men were brought up by the headhunters of the Amazon if I walked into your thatched hut and said "Doesn't it bother you to have 10 shrunken heads?" you'd say "Yes it does bother me. My brother has 20!" [soft chuckles] To that culture, that would be normal. If you were brought up in deep South by uneducated people you would speak with a southern accent; nothing you can do about it. Environment shapes your facial expressions, your manners, your values. You might even talk like this: "I’m gonna get me a nigger, I'm gonna kick his ass, ha!" Even that is learned! There's no such thing as good or bad people. People come from different environments that impress them with a different set of values. If you're brought up in Nazi Germany as a baby and all you see is 'Heil Hitler!', 'Deutschland uber alles!' (Germany above all) you'd be a Nazi unless you've read or seen movies or have been influenced by other people. I'm trying to tell you something: Everybody is perfectly well-adjusted, where they're coming from. I want to say this about psychologists: Any psychologist, or psychiatrist that would try to adjust you to this system has got to be extremely stupid. [laughter and applause] In real, applied science we would do away with the conditions that generate aberrant behavior. We now know enough about human behavior to know that there is no such thing as gifted people. All the crap that you get in most schools is artificial. What is creativity? I don't know. They think it's a gift. It's not. Creativity is taking known elements and putting them together in unique ways and anyone can become creative. Sometimes they say "Well, I guess they're born that way" instead of saying "I really don't know what it is, that generates creativity." Creativity is not inventions that come from outer space and into the human mind from the gods. People haven't learned how to say "I don't know" and that's the most difficult thing to learn. When the government approached scientists and said "Can you put a man on the moon?" they said "We don't know." "What you mean, you don't know?" They said "We have to put a man in a centrifuge and whirl him around to see what he can stand. We don't know what humans can stand! If it's 9 x gravity that's the speed that a spaceship would takeoff at. You can't just take off at any speed, people would die. And they can't drink a glass of water in space. They have to put it into a tube and squeeze it into the mouth. So that's what I mean by 'I don't know'." There are many people that say "We'll never get to the moon. We'll never get to Mars..." Just say "I don't know enough about it to give you my answers in that area." When you give everybody the right to their own opinion you are hurting the world. If a young lady lived across the street from me and I see 10 guys coming out of her apartment I could have all kinds of opinions. She could be a language instructor a ballet instructor, an art instructor... but when you can give everybody the right to their own opinion their opinion should be: "I don't know enough about that person" [or] "I don't know, I'm not technical. I don't know whether we'll ever get to Mars" but people, as long as they learn not to talk that way... Don't forget: Our language was designed hundreds of years ago thousands of years ago in other instances. We really can't talk 'to' each other, we talk 'at' each other and this is very unfortunate. In the future people will learn how to say "I don't know where the world came from. I don't know how life began" or "This is what I've read." They've got so many different opinions they jam everything in the culture. So your school is dependent on financial support and if you attack the financial structure they really don't want you speaking at schools because they need those endowments. Your motion pictures, your soap operas are all designed to fit the established culture. All cultures in the world today are established. What we need is something else: an emergent culture. An emergent culture means, there are no final frontiers no Utopias, that we keep going on and the word 'intelligence' has no meaning. In other words an intelligent electrical engineer of 75 years ago couldn't get a job today. The word 'intelligence' is a ridiculous term because it's an ongoing process. There is no such thing as civilization as long as you have militarism, prisons, police and conflict resolution which doesn't work at all, otherwise you'd have no war. In other words, if you bring up people with an appropriate language that is not subject to interpretation. Remember, the Bible is subject to interpretation. When you read it, you say "I think Jesus meant this." So and so says "Oh no, he meant that!" You've got the Lutheran, the Seventh Day Adventist, the Catholic: all the different variations but the language of science is not subject to interpretation. When an engineer writes a formula down it's understood all over the world. When you ask me "Is it possible to develop a language that isn't subject to interpretation?" [my answer is] "Mathematics, physics, engineering terminology is not subject to interpretation." If it was, you couldn't build bridges or airplanes so it is possible to develop [such] a language. If the future is to survive we must change our language, our habits, customs, our values because they were designed a long time ago and really are inappropriate. They tell you to write to your congressman. Well, what kind of a dummy is he that you have to write to? All of your politicians should have been at the forefront of technology and knowledge. Instead of having a military group in Washington called the Pentagon you should have a group of social engineers, social psychologists people that can bridge the difference between nations. War is the supreme failure and stupidity of nations that don't understand these fundamental principles. I'm not your enemy. I'm only trying to supply a method. We don't hate anybody. We don't want to kill anybody capitalists or communists. I got all these ideas during the last depression. 15 million people were unemployed and they'd bought cars and houses and the banks failed, and they couldn't pay them off. There were 15 million people sleeping in every empty lot when I was a kid. Then we had the Veterans march on Washington because the government had told them they were going to give them $600 to start a life anew. They marched on Washington because they wanted that $600 but the government didn't have the money, so they gave IOUs. You can't eat that or pay your rent with that. And the congressmen didn't like all the Veterans sleeping all around every empty lot in Washington. Douglas MacArthur (I believe he was a Captain at the time): They told him to get those veterans out of there and their wheelchairs, their tents and their crutches and they threw tear gas at them. This is Douglas MacArthur, your great hero! There was a book called 'The New American History' which covers this. A lot of wonderful books have been taken off the market because the smarter [ones], they didn't want you to know these things. They don't want to you to know these things because they can't control free people: people that are free, that can think freely, you can't control them. You try to make them uniform, patriotic. I think it was Albert Einstein who said that "Patriotism is a disease." We should have royalties for people all over the world because they came here and brought all the wonderful ideas... Not everything is American as you've been told. In other words, we must build a universal language and we must invite all the nations in the world to share the resources of the Earth. When people have free access to the necessities of life without the need for money, that will be the beginning of a scientific age. I'm sorry I don't have time to go into all kinds of detail that I'd like to go into. I just would like to tell you where I got these ideas from: I got them from the human body. If your brain said "I do all the thinking. I want all the nutrients" the lungs would say "If I don't oxygenate the blood you would die as a brain." So the brain asks "What do you need?" Lungs: "Everything you need!" Then the liver would say "If I don't filter the blood both of you guys would die." So the liver and all the organs of the body get whatever they need. It's neither communism, free enterprise or fascism. When you go to work for any company today, it's a dictatorship. The minute you punch that time clock you're under the dictates of that company. They say to you "You don't want to live in a dictatorship." What do you think you live in? When you work for department store and you stand behind a counter particularly a young lady in the best years of her life selling cosmetics, that isn't using her brain. When you work in the factory and you drill holes in things that isn't using your brain. We want to phase out most work that's repetitive and we can easily do that today. We've got more than enough resources to wipe out the slums all over the world build hospitals all over the world. This is what I mean by social change not this patchwork that you see now. Politicians, by the way, can offer nothing! Our problems are technical, not political. Politicians don't know how to stop automobile accidents. They don't know how to stop war. I don't care who you vote for: They just don't know what to do! What they're doing now will not work. In other words, this is the end of the old Free Enterprise System. It's going to crash, and when it crashes we hope that we're able to make a motion picture of how we get from here to the future. Since we are not being sponsored we make these short television runs just to get our foot in the door in Saudi Arabia. All they want to know is how to make money so we make this type of film. Once we get to Saudi Arabia we work with them and turn them around into a global point of view. This is what has to be done. There's going to be question period in another area. Thank you for your time. I deeply appreciate the opportunity of talking to you. [Applause] [Upbeat rhythm begins to play]♫