5 Hybrid Assignment 10

Marisa Chung
Hybrid Assignment 10
11/17/15

This week’s reading caught my attention as soon as the story began with a little preview of what Stewart Brand wrote on his diary about the way he felt on his expectations if the Soviets invaded the United States. The short passage was extremely powerful to me and I was able to feel the fear with each word he chose to describe his terror. Along with the simple but descriptive language used in his diary, I can understand why the environment and era he grew up in effected his relationship and views of technology – as well as continuously living with a fear of one day, potentially being invaded. I was able to see that his childhood memories make an impact on the kind of person he becomes as an adult. The environment and exposure of his early years made a difference in Brand’s life, especially the way he viewed the world as a fight to become a stronger individual rather than as a society in whole.

Later, Buckminister Fuller became an inspiration to Stewart Brand with the idea of the comprehensive designer, and the vision of the world espoused by Fuller because of the way he was able to take advantage of technology rather than go against it. As Turner mentions, Fuller’s idea of comprehensive designer requires balance and current deployment of its resources. From my understanding of the reading, the comprehensive designer would have to gather all the necessary information, and then re-distribute it in ways that can be useful. However, in order for this to be successfully done, the designer basically needs to be trained, but at the same time think as an outsider. Through Fuller’s work, Brand is able to re-visit the way society can utilize technology in a way everyone can gather information in a more ‘positive’ way.

Angeline Henriquez

November 17, 2015

Digital media and Society

The Comprehensive Designer

In the chapter titled “Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture” Turner further immerses us in the sociopolitical and economic environment that shaped the views of the new communalists, emphasizing how their relationship to information technology came about. In doing so, Turner introduces us to the technocratic doctrine of “architect, designer, and traveling speechmaker” Buckminster Fuller, who became an inspiration to Brand and his movement. What Fuller proposed was a view of the material world “imagined as a series of corresponding forms, each linked to every other according to invisible but omnipresent principles” (p.55) that also included the industrial production world which he advocated, influences the patterns of our natural world. To achieve this imagined world, Fuller deemed necessary an individual that was able to view the full scope, the “Comprehensive Designer” an individual who could “recognize the universal patterns inherent in nature, design new technologies in accord with these patterns and the industrial resources already created by corporations” (p.56). The purpose and ideals that the Comprehensive Designer evoked were very appealing to Brand for several reasons.

First, Fuller’s Comprehensive Designer and its ability to view the full scope satisfied Brand’s need to escape the limited scope of the fragmented “specialist” forged by the Soviet Union’s terror during the cold war. The collaboration and interdisciplinary aspect of Fuller’s doctrine offered Brand a new way to model the world in which an individual’s learning was not mandated by hierarchies, nor the state of war and politics but promoted a type of learning that required the individual to become a more wholesome and “learning participant”.

Furthermore, for Brand, growing up during the cold war meant growing up with the threat of human annihilation. Fuller’s ideology starves this fear by stating that “the proper deployment if information and technology could literally save the human species from annihilation” (p. 57) presenting the use of technology and other disciplines as vital for the evolution of humans. This aligns with Brand’s thoughts on the concept of evolution where he explains that “the responsibility of evolution is on each individual man, as fir no other species. Since the business of evolution for man has gone over to the mental and psychological phase, each person may contribute and influence heritage of the species” (p.45). In this way, for Brand, the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspect of Fuller’s ideas were not only vital to become a wholesome individual but vital for the human species as a whole.

To finalize, Fuller’s emphasize on the use of technology as a resource provided Brand with a way to think about alternative forms of communal organization. Through his work and communal living with USCO, Brand made use of technology, networking and collaboration to produce art. Tapping into the communal living and the communal production of art was in itself then, a counter move for Brand as it contradicted the rigid organizational structures of the cold war environment.

According to Fuller, the “Comprehensive Designer” would stand outside of industry and science, and would process information they produced, observing technologies and translating it into tools for happiness. This “Comprehensive Designer” was meant to restore what bureaucracy took away from society, i.e. equality. Fuller came to believe in this designer when he noticed how the world’s resources had been unevenly distributed during the Second World War. While some nations were prospering, others were stricken with poverty and Fuller believed that this “Comprehensive Designer” would be the solution to the world’s problems due to his objectivity. While corporations would always seek their interest, the “Comprehensive Designer” would seek the interest of all.

This was appealing to Brand because he too believed in a society of equality, one in which resources could be distributed equally and all people could benefit. He viewed the Native Americans as people that society should strive to be like, stating “If the White collar man of the 1950’s had become detached from the land and from his own emotions, the Native American could show him how to be home again, physically and psychologically. If the large corporations and governments of the twentieth century were organized in psychologically and socially divisive hierarchies, the world of the Native American was organized into tribes.” Brand believed that Native Americans held the key to a non-hierarchal world and he admired the way that they held a deep sense of community living. Brand’s use of psychedelic drugs mirrored the Native American way of life, where they often took various substances to achieve an altered state of mind.

I think that Brand overlooked the fact that even within the Native American community, there was still a hierarchal system in place. Tribal chiefs were often given the final say in matters affecting the community, however, they did not profit off of the community in the way that bureaucratic organizations profit off of those beneath them. In every community and society, there is usually a leader because it would be almost impossible to have a successful structure-less society. Brand came to love the idea of the “Comprehensive Designer” because he believed this person would be objective and would get rid of hierarchies. To him, the Native Americans were the closest he had come to a non-hierarchal society

Stewart Brand from a young age was fearful of living in a hyperrationalized world and becoming a cold war inspired drone, an unthinking cog in the machine of a society that would not allow him to be an individual. His own experiences in collegiate life, then the military, left him dissatisfied with bureaucratic structures in which individualism was not encouraged, though through those life experiences at Stanford, as a draftee in the army, and later exploring the art scenes of New York and San Francisco inspired promotion of cross-genre social collaboration and communal experiences. Brands ideas that were formed by these experiences were in many ways supported by Buckminster Fuller’s comprehensive designer model as Brand’s own ideal for an individualistic society.

Brand adopted the ideas that societal evolution was dependant on each person as an individual in order to contribute and influence as a mass population. In addition to reading about such biological social structures, Brand read Buckminster Fuller’s ideas that offered Brand a worldview in which the technology and information developed in military and industrial society could be embraced in a way to avoid the annihilation of our species, rather than race toward it. Fuller believed that those technologies could and should be used for the benefit of society rather than for its end. Furthermore, Fuller explained that one did not have to turn away from the current media technologies developed by “adult society” to show disapproval of bureaucratic society, rather they could still be enjoyed and ultimately used in ways to transform society and build new communities. Fuller’s vision of a “comprehensive designer,” an outsider who objectively observes, interprets and applies information from various sources for the ultimate benefit of society, a person who, like a computer can process information, was inspired by military research culture that utilized intellectual social networking. This greatly inspired Brand and is reflected in his involvement with the USCO and the New Communalists, the ultimate goals were to utilize technology to connect information -connect people- and continue to find new ways to improve society in a way in which hierarchy and politics are irrelevant.

This weeks reading was rather interesting, after having gotten the understanding from last week’s class discussion.  That insight helped me to grasp the concept relating to Brand & Fuller.  The idea of the comprehensive designer by Fuller, represents the idea of the symbiotic relationship of technology and the human capacity for creativity.  Fuller describes the “Comprehensive Designer” as people with the technological knowledge to utilize the various products of science, technology, big business, etc – but, who is not a total adherent to just one discipline, but rather someone with the ability to see, understand and imagine new and beneficial ways of translating these concepts into useful applications for the benefit of humanity in diverse ways.

For Brand, a proponent of the New Communal Movement of the 60’s counterculture, which was evidenced by his involvement with the USCO, Fuller’s concept of the “Comprehensive Designer” helped shape his work, tempered by his group’s creative and technical knowledge.  Brand was whole-heartedly against growing up to be an adult stuck in mediocrity and becoming a mindless drown of the bureaucratic hierarchy.  The freedom and almost nomadic concept of the Comprehensive Designer, represented the all encompassing aspect of embracing technology and the products it produced, with the freedom to bend and shape these tools to creating useful and beneficial expressions for humanity.  This meant that, he was free to collaborate with people of diverse knowledge and backgrounds, to achieve new ways to implement and utilize everything that was available.  Looking at these products and concepts from new and different viewpoints, could/would allow for visionaries to collaborate and imagine/design advances yet thought of; and, ultimately to share these new and innovative advances for the betterment of humanity.

To Brand, whose idealized vision of human society was a harmonious, nonhierarchical world – the idea of interdisciplinary collaboration would have seemed a natural fit to his world and way of thinking.  The abilities to process vast amounts of information, while being removed enough to see/imagine ways in which this technological information and industrial/military tools can be used, amazing benefits and ground breaking advances can be achieved.  Brand was captivated by and looked to the Native American Indians as his ideal for the “authentic and alternative community.  Brand’s ultimate goal was a de-institutionalized freedom from the constraints of government and to create a way of living that encompassed the totality of knowledge towards a “cosmic consciousness” equally and freely shared by the communal whole.

Due by midnight Tuesday, November 17th (350-400 words).

Turner (2006:56) references Buckminster’s Fuller’s idea of the “Comprehensive Designer,” described in Fuller’s book Ideas and Integrities (1963). As Turner (2006:56) explains, “[a]ccording to Fuller, the Comprehensive Designer would not be another specialist, but would instead stand outside the halls of industry and science, processing the information they produced, observing the technologies they developed, and translating both into tools for human happiness.” Elaborating on the idea of the comprehensive designer, describe the vision of the world espoused by Fuller. Why do you think this vision was so appealing to Stewart Brand? If you are unsure, take a guess.