“The stories we tell, are the stories we may well live into”
Considering the context I’ll start this part of my story in 1979 arriving back after circumnavigating the earth over four months with my friends, Eileen and her kids. I boarded my first flight with R. Buckminster Fuller’s book ‘Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth’ tucked in my pocket as we ventured out into the world.
Little did I realize that over 40 years ago I would be BEAMcasting to sphere and now, the forty year anniversary of the Buckminister Fuller Institute, BFI. Yet, there was a hint of it, a thread I’ve held onto since. That #senseof liminality collapsing from whence to wherefore…
I had reconnected with BFI after my first encounter in 1982, again in 1991 and now again herein which also led to BEAM(ing) with the Design Science Studio started during the inauguration of the Design Science Decade 2020-2030.
Steven Leavitt and I met in one of the 2022 Trimtab Space Camps hosted by BFI. Steven’s mission was to start a podcast series called Spaceship Earth Mission Log where he would interview participants of the Space Camps to share their missions. I was one of his guests… here’s the above video clip’s full episode.
Actually my first encounter with the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, without knowing it, was when I was 14 years old while on a school trip in Japan at Expo’70. It happened to be the middle of the 1st Design Science Decade Bucky launched in 1965. There was a pavilion created as a giant dome made popular by Bucky.
Then in 1977 I met a mentor who had helped produce the 1976 World Game in Philadelphia with Bucky. Bob would also host Fuller at the community college he taught at. Thereafter we lived and worked together with some friends creating a communications design firm called The Dolphin Farm. Bucky was ever present in our thinking and approaches to comprehensive anticipatory design science.
In 1979 I was working on a design project to illustrate the Electromagnetic Spectrum and how important tuning into the spectrum has proven for humanity. I was building upon the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller who said…
“Throughout history we have made our judgements upon visible, tangible, sensorially demonstrated criteria. We may safely say that the world is keeping its eye on the unimportant visible 0.1% of the historical transformations while missing the significance of the 99.9% overall unseen changes. What we usually speak of as our everyday world is a stage set with visible props which are easily manipulated by ignorant people to exploit the equal ignorance of others.”
While researching this project I spent a solid week in the library letting my mind wander as I went from book to book, taking notes, and making connections to ideas that originally seemed unrelated. Yes, a library as the internet and networking as we know it did not yet exist. Although at that time we were designing and creating a touring “Special Exhibit” of the first examples of local area networking to be showcased in trade show environments.
It was at the end of the week, while at my drawing board (yes again, a drawing board because computer graphics didn’t yet exist either) trying to figure out how to weave this all together I lost my mind and the eleprocon epiphany struck me. It was as if all of humanity throughout time were sitting in my head telling me their stories.
Soon my notes and scribbles about electrons, protons and consciousness morphed me into an Eleprocon. Suddenly I was gifted this new word, an idea to sum up who we were becoming and how it may affect our evolution.
We are magical creatures with the capacity to blend art and science to illuminate what previously was out of sight to bring it out of mind. We are made up of the physical and metaphysical elements of the universe with the capacity to elect between the pro and the con.
This idea was built upon the foundation and stories of others throughout time who I had discovered in the library. As the words and drawings started to flow I became overwhelmed. It blew my mind and seemed an incredible responsibility to be given this gift. The next thing I knew I was wandering in the Noosphere, our collective sense of mind that envelops us all yet belongs to no one.
It was while pondering the noosphere I met Erik who quickly became a co-conspirator and the story took off to new conceptual and visual levels of exploration. He also appeared in the 1995 documentary ‘CyberCity San Francisco.’
“Erik’s thesis about the eleprocon is like a masterclass you never knew you needed”
This is the thread that’s led me and my 2birds here, to be beaming the eleprocon chronicles to you right now. To be sharing these scenes from the last fairytale, an emergent mythOS… our mythic operating systems.
P.S. I almost forgot to mention these artifacts from the original 1979 journal of the eleprocon chronicles. Herein lies the genesis of the metaphysical equation our eleprocon elders also presented us with… E=Mc∞ which spelled out translates to Evolution = Mind x omnidirectional communication.
The Eleprocon Chronicles
Eleprocon mythOS 2birds BEAMing noosphere
Omni-Directionally BEAM(ing)