Re: [ox-en] venus project
- From: "Michel Bauwens" <michelsub2004 gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:27:42 +0700
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from
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-venus-project-as-old-futurism/2008/10/23
see also http://p2pfoundation.net/Venus_Project
An assessment by Eric Hunting:
"*The Venus Project <http://www.thevenusproject.com/>was founded by
futurist, architect, and inventor Jacque Fresco sometime in the 1960s but
only started publishing media in the 1980s. It is named for Venus Florida,
the home of Fresco and the location of his 'research compound'. It's quite a
lovely place from what the images suggest, featuring some of Fresco's less
ambitious ferro-cement based organic/Modernist architecture set in an
idyllic tropical landscape -with huge numbers of raccoons!*
*The core premise of the Venus Project vision of the future is the idea of
Cybernation; a society based on the creation of a centralized supercomputer
which 'scientifically' manages all world resources in response to human
demand moderated by environmental sustainability. This massive expert system
manages all resource extraction/collection, distribution, and production
through advanced Total Automation and a scientifically rational urban
architecture. Thus it arrives at a post-industrial culture -though Fresco
had no specific concept for such a culture other than the idea of a
'scientifically rational culture'- where people can have anything they want
within reason for free and pursue whatever vocations they find personally
rewarding without being paid for it. This, of course, is not an original
idea. What's interesting with Fresco's version of it is how elaborately and
compellingly -yet frankly naively- he has illustrated it in diverse media.
He's a brilliant illustrator, designer, and modelmaker -even though his
style tends to be anachronistic.*
*Fresco is a 'classic' mid-century futurist in the sense that he presents a
vision of the future without any evolution. It springs fully-formed from a
vacuum with no explanation of where it came from. The future as concept car
design. And like futurists of that era his models of technology are very
Industrial Age in style; gigantic machines, gigantic infrastructures,
gigantic vehicles, gigantic master-planned cities, and everything is sleek,
streamlined, shiny, spotless, and suburban. His concepts of
industrialization are definitely from the mass production Total Automation
notions typical of the 1950-60s -whopping-great Santa Claus machines as big
as a city by themselves. He also sometimes gets into very fuzzy physics with
some of his proposed technologies and got stuck in some completely wrong
interpretations of more contemporary technology ideas. His descriptions and
depictions of nanotechnology, for instance, make absolutely no sense and, in
a decade, no one has ever corrected him on this. Yet despite all this he's
often spot-on in underlying premises and a few of his designs remain
relevantly advanced despite their great age. His car designs, for instance,
could compete with anything contemporary concept cars offer as well as
inform some open source car projects. Looking at his work is very much like
comparing Werner von Braun's depictions of the future of space to current
space capability and planned missions. He was pretty spot-on even if the
form and style were largely off and there really wasn't anything you could
say was implausible. It's just that the specific technologies evolved to
produce a slightly different look to everything. For instance, Fresco is
quite right about the significance of the sea as a source of renewable
energy and resources. It's just very unlikely that any settlements we
actually build there will be the big monocoque donuts on stilts he
envisioned -although a surprising number of his designs for such things were
directly lifted by Disney Corp. in their creation of the 1980s Horizons
futurist exhibit and ride.*
*The lack of depth to Fresco's model of the future has left his Venus
Project a bit lost in implementation. His attitude tends to be; "I'm the
visionary. It's other people's job to figure out how to make this stuff
happen." This attitude is mirrored in his view on the role of inventors, who
he feels should never be burdened with the additional task of being
industrialist or entrepreneur. How he's made a living remains something of a
mystery, though he did sell a number of inventions for medical equipment. So
for 40 years the Venus Project has been marketing this vision and a proposal
for a model Cybernated city with no concrete plan for how to implement
anything. It's as though his plan has been to just get enough people to
desire what he's depicted in images, to convince them of what is possible,
that it compels the civilization to spontaneously manifest it. If only it
were so simple… This sort of notion seems common among other
architect/futurists*."
On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Paul Cockshott <wpc dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
Do people on either of these lists know anything about the Venus Project?
http://www.thevenusproject.com/intro_main/essay.htm
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