Page 30 - Studio International - June 1970

frustrates social behaviour, but as Maurice thoughts of long ago. It is surprising to dis- you have got it there you have just got to
Broady has pointed out, it does not determine cover just how much of the message was bring it back down again. The whole thing is
it. Ditto the environment. If the physical contained in his first book Nine Chains to the senseless isn't it?' An 'efficient' railway system
environment—environmental determinism—is Moon, published in 1927. deprives significant minorities of public trans-
to be taken as a measure of man's success on The range, brilliance and impact of these per- port. Intensive farming may be more 'efficient'
earth, why are we so unimpressed with formances is tremendous, you are blown out of but is it an acceptable means of food pro-
Sweden and Switzerland? Why, if the your mind by a tidal wave of language that duction? A super-market may provide a more
United States has the highest standard of inexorably reveals that the way we think, feel `efficient' means of distribution, but for
living on earth, are we all so frightened of it? and act is just all wrong. Out of the deluge diversity and variety of product it cannot
Why is a whole generation on the receiving come extraordinary flashes of information: compare with the small tobacconist or sweet-
end of its bounty dropping out? Why does wealth equals energy, matter and intelli- shop its 'efficiency' puts out of business.
`improved' environment so often lead to gence; energy and matter can neither be Efficiency can mean impoverishment, and
psychological slums, to increased neurosis, created nor destroyed, intelligence is always often does. As for environmental efficiency,
schizophrenia, and the majority of hospital increasing, therefore wealth can only increase. the architectural fraternity may be outraged
beds filled with mental patients? Fifty years of aeronautical development cost but they have to admit that Monsieur Hulot
Fuller gives overwhelming primacy to the one hundred times as much as all the gold in has a point...
environmental factor above all else for a very the world. Every child is born a genius. Truth In the design revolution, who are the revolu-
cogent and intensely personal reason: his is innate, lying superficial. We can only tune tionaries ?
first daughter died in 1922 of three epidemic in to one millionth of the great reality with `The revolutionaries are the young generation. You
illnesses in succession and he laid the blame our senses. Horsepower output per pound of might say that they're the Berkeley generation that
squarely on sub-standard housing. The defi- engine metal has increased two thousand five made world news by being in protest. The Berkeley
ciency of the environment has obsessed him hundred per cent. The air in a one hundred generation were born in the year of Hiroshima. But
ever since. foot sphere weighs seven tons. Brain is most importantly they're the first generation to grow
Environmental determinism, 'leaving out the physical, mind metaphysical. up with television. That generation has listened to
human equation', ignores quite fundamental It all seems to matter, to be part of a cosmic television one thousand hours a year. They hear the
factors of human behaviour: biological urges comprehension of vast integrating patterns. television more than they do their own parents. Their
that are scarcely more sophisticated than On the receiving end of the tidal wave it is parents come home and say "we had an awful time
those of a primitive cave-dweller; the need to just impossible to say—'Hey, just a minute, in the shoe store today, let's have a beer", and the
dominate and to be dominated; innate what about... ?' although many of the state- children go back to the third parent which is the
aggression; tribal nature and the significance ments provoke a questioning response. television which tells them about the whole world
of territory—in fact all issues that have con- `The population problem is fundamentally remote. and not about the shoe store. And the third parent
cerned the human sciences for the past de- Everybody on earth could be on Long Island and it tells them not only about the whole world but about
cades have no place in Fuller's grand strategy. would be less crowded than a cocktail party.' all the inventions that are going on: you can go
He seems to be much more interested in Then why design man-warrens floating in the around under the polar ice-cap in a nuclear sub-
environmental hardware—control systems of sea? Why re-design Harlem as a super- marine, you can get all the way to the other side of
various kinds—than the disciplines that could ghetto ? the moon. The third parent has convinced the young
be described as environmental software : psy- `I see society tending to trust the computer in a very world of all humanity and not just the local family.
chology, sociology, anthropology and zoology. big way.' The compassion of young life is for all humanity.
Even when he talks about ecology it is pri- The example he cites is an aircraft landing in They're the first generation to grow up without a
marily in hardware terms and about patterns fog. A computer may be doing the landing, bias, and the first generation to grow up with a
of mobility rather than the subtler and more but the folks on the plane trust the handsome conviction that man can do anything that he
complex behaviour of ecological systems. bronze-faced pilot with a toothpaste smile needs to do, that he could make his world work.'
About these, and about the effects or absence and snappy sunglasses—if he weren't there The fact is that we are abysmally ignorant
of effects of environments on human be- they'd really be scared. Society, backing its about the influence of television on our lives—
haviour, we should honestly admit that we rump up into the future as usual, is profoundly and especially young lives. In one study it was
just don't know. distrustful of the computer and thinks of it far shown that as a consequence of oversimplifi-
Human nature is elusive of analysis; it just more in terms of Big Brother than little sister. cation of complex issues on TV, American
seems inadequate to regard man simply as a `Between 1900 and today we have gone from less children expect any problem to be capable of
rational mechanism—like Bertrand Russell than 1 per cent of humanity to 46 per cent enjoying a solution within thirty minutes. True, we can
writing to his wife (one of his wives) : 'You higher standard of living than any monarch— participate in assassinations, moon-landings,
must understand that I do not love you'. despite the fact that the metals for each world man Biafra and Vietnam—although our exposure
Would Bucky understand the paradox of Huw were continually decreasing, so you couldn't say to them creates a need for a rising threshold of
Wheldon's crushing remark: `The, best en- we had done it by exploiting more resources—it was horror to make an impact—but the 1 per cent
vironment I was ever in was a slit trench' ? done by doing more with less.' world information is accompanied by 99 per
Isn't it arguable that the best environment In not many years there will be no more cent vicarious sensation and reaches us only
Bucky has ever known, the most productive, mercury left on earth. In a few more decades by virtue of unmitigated hours of tawdry
the most significant, the place that provided no more petroleum products. World resources trivia.
the conditions for his most creative thinking, are finite. However sophisticated the re- Bucky invests the average TV producer with
was a fire-proof tenement in Chicago ? Per- cycling of materials may become it can never an integrity too rarely encountered on the
haps the environment should have a built-in be 100 per cent efficient. No one can question small screen. Ironically, the first thing a radio
abrasion factor. the material advantage of doing more with or TV producer has to do with Bucky himself
Bucky's natural mode of communication is less, but what can be questioned is the value is to apply his own principle of dying more
what he calls 'thinking out loud' during the of efficiency as such—conspicuous thrift as a with less to his own extravagant verbal style—
marathon discourses, those one-way mono- moral virtue. I remember Ove Arup saying mining the ore for 4 per cent of gold. A one-
logues clogged with repetition and as rousing `So many things in life are wasteful, I mean, hour radio documentary was mined and
as a revivalist meeting. In fact he is not think- climb mountains ? Complete waste of energy, refined from twenty-five hours of tape.
ing out loud at all—he is repeating out loud you could work it out in ton-feet and when `The very word "pollution" is a word of ignorance . .