I stumbled upon Fuller while doing research for a college class. His story stuck with me.

From Wikipedia:

At 32 his daughter died, he became bankrupt, and almost gave up. Instead he By age 32, Fuller was bankrupt and jobless, living in public, low-income housing in Chicago, Illinois. In 1922, Fuller's young daughter Alexandra died from complications from polio and spinal meningitis. Allegedly, he felt responsible and this caused him to drink frequently and to contemplate suicide for a while. He finally chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

A long time ago in a galaxy far away I was in a first year of university. I soon discovered some library computers were connected with something called Gopher. Soon I was visiting the library not for the books or magazines but for traversing gopher links. Only one other person did the same for hours sometimes until closing time. When I asked this older guy what he was looking up on Gopher he mentioned he was on a mailing-l discussing Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics and an in my view weird but fascinating mathematical philosophical system. Now much older and much more acquinted with philosophy, science, alternative (dymaxion) sleeping patterns and spirituality I still wonder on occasion what this guy's pythagoraeic fascination entailed exactly. Can anyone of my fellow hackers explain more?

Deus - The Architect (about Buckminster Fuller) http://youtu.be/k2CFDsG_oxg

You do not belong to you, you belong to the universe... -- Buckminster Fuller

If anyone is interested, I took the time to download all the MP4 files, and made a torrent: http://cl.ly/3v3R2G111u1X/download/Everything%20I%20Know.tor... I'll seed when I get time (including overnight), so please seed if you find it valuable :)

I have not watched them all, but they all seem to be working. There is a gap in the numbers in part 11, but that's consistent with the site.

Fuller is the best example I can think of (with the single possible exception of Tesla) that supports my theory that genius is composed almost, but not quite, entirely of crazy.

I'm not going to research this, but I've seen stats that show the extreme high iq people tend to have a much lower tendency toward real (diagnosed) mental illness. Eccentricity, otoh...

Latent inhibition (being easily distracted) is correlated with IQ some mental illness. Depression is another one.

On the other hand, other mental illnesses could be negatively correlated either because they inhibit high IQ (too crazy to do the test / go to school), or IQ helps deal with them (outsmarting the illness), or they don't get diagnosed because the person is otherwise able to cope with life (to smart to be diagnosed).

That may very well be the case, but there certainly have been some high profile exceptions. Howard Hughes anyone?

Nietzsche, Robert Schumann (composer) and Tesla are also notable.

If we factor in brilliant writers who shot themselves. Well, that list is quite long.

John Nash too. Not sure how he slipped my mind.

Dylan Thomas hypothesis?

Hughes was pretty normal until his later years. That may have been garden-variety senility.

Or do they simply seem to be functioning well enough (ie, being productive) that they don't care to get tested?

The entire first session on Youtube: http://youtu.be/o6yaSLipeWg

I saw a biographical film about Buckminster Fuller a few years ago. There was a story about his kindergarten teacher expressing concern to his parents about Bucky being "different". One deviant thing she mentioned was that when the children were given blocks to play with and told to build houses, Bucky refused to make normal houses. He would only make structures consisting of triangles. At 5. How amazing is that.

Why does the internet archive suck so much? I am on this page, http://archive.org/details/buckminsterfullereverythingiknow0... and there isn't a single file download. No context, no description, I just get dropped into some shitty video with BF (who is awesome) but unknown to many just talking ...

archive.org needs our help. it is like some crappy swap meet / information dumping ground.

Could you build a well-designed and easy to use interface which taps into the wealth of information and knowledge available on Archive.org? Would it be kosher according to their terms of use? I can imagine this would be a great project or who knows, a startup even.

When I visit that page I see almost nothing but file download links.

Yeah, 100s of little files doesn't increase the reach of information, to lessens it. My beef isn't with the information but the presentation. Only the most diehard autodidacts will push through these barriers.

Left column, all the way at the bottom, "All Files: (HTTPS)"

No this only switches the connection to https, but still hundreds of files.

Fuller was a crackpot and he definitely sounds off his rocker in the video. Maybe he inspired some things, but I don't understand why he gets so much positive attention. Geodesic domes are horribly impractical (prone to leaks, difficult to use their interior space). Three wheeled cars are dangerous.

Fuller was a genius. Geodesic domes are incredibly strong, cost-effective structures that use a tiny amount of materials compared to traditional buildings.

And who are you when you're at home?

What'd he say?

Comments like these make me wish I had the Karma to down vote. Like others have said, the guy was a genius, maybe one day we'll catch up.

For what it's worth, I think you gain karma by writing comments that contribute to the discussion. Your comment could have been something informative, perhaps supporting the point of "the guy was a genius", but as written was little more than "nuh uh you're wrong". (I apologize in advance for also not furthering the discussion.)

Trust me, you will like it less when you do have it. Not only is it right below the up button causing accidental down votes, its also very tempting to simply down vote some one instead of posting a rebuttal. So what to do then ? start a new account once you hit 500 of course :)

Patents:

http://bfi.org/about-bucky/resources/bibliographic/r-buckmin...

Books:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?field-author=R....

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Gold Medal, American Institute of Architects

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Many other awards and honors.