1.2.1 Definitions of Buckminster Fuller are as myriad as the fields he traversed. On different occasions he was referred to as an architect, inventor, scientist, engineer, mathematician, educator, philosopher, poet, speaker, author, consultant, economist, futurist, transcendentalist, designer, and the list could go on. Each field with which he made contact had something to learn from his comprehensive outlook, and there is still a wealth of ideas he left behind waiting to be examined.

1.2.2 Buckminster Fuller's persona allows for many interpretations, and for networked art, it is his performative aspect that is most compelling to examine. He made his life a performance and left behind an enormous amount of data documenting this effort. A modern day shaman who expressed his ideas in disorganised fragments and marathon lectures, his persona was magnetic, mesmerising, and inspirational to those he made contact with, even if they did not understand him. Invited to over two thousand lectures at five hundred universities and colleges and making forty eight trips around the world, he was a tireless performer. Famous for his non-stop "talkathons," he put his ideas to test in architectural forms, eighteen books, and, towards the end of his career, in World Games. [1]

1.2.3 Most of his work is unapologetically utopian and sometimes over-the-top enthusiastic about technological developments, such as calling television the "Holy Ghost." (1938, pg. 221) During his lifetime he rarely ventured to criticise the world around him or take the time to expose the darker side of technological shifts. This tendency changes only towards the end of his life when, perhaps disillusioned by the tenacity and solidity of the existing infrastructures, he wrote a biting critique of corporate greed in the Grunch of the Giants: Gross Universal Heist (1983), a book now out of print. [2]

1.2.4 In all his complexity, one theme recurs throughout Fuller's life that could ultimately be seen as the thread that keeps it all together: machine and mechanisation. Fuller went so far as to refer to the physical universe as a machine: "In fact, the universe is the minimum and only perpetual motion machine." (Fuller, 1938, pg. #) He likened the earth to a spaceship, a machine in which we human machines are guided by our "Phantom Captains." Fuller considered the machine inseparable from the spiritual principle operating in the universe. [top]