In the early 1990’s while studying automotive at SIUC in Southern Illinois, I found work doing manual labor for a man who lived in the rural hills of the Shawnee Forest.  While we’d work, we would have deep conversations about a variety of topics.  One day he handed me the book Critical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller and said that the ideas I had shared during our conversations were similar to those espoused by “Bucky.”  It took me almost 6 months to finish reading Critical Path (some times I’d spend a whole day trying to comprehend a single paragraph).  John has become a lifelong friend and mentor and Bucky has been a focus of my study and interest for over 20 years.  I think Fuller’s work is still greatly misunderstood.  On the surface if one were to take a casual glance at his work, he might seem like a quack.  But when you dig in deep, you realize he was on to something; he recognized a fundamental principle in how natural systems operate that few before him had noticed.  Not all of his ideas seem rational, but the core of his thinking is sound and will lead to advances in thinking and technology that improve the world for all humans. http://www.bfi.org/about-bucky...

I’ve been intrigued with Stafford Beer’s work since I first experienced his Team Syntegrity protocol in 1994.  When I heard about, then read about, his Viable System Model (VSM), I was convinced that this is a much needed breakthrough in Systems Thinking.  I’d heard of “cybernetics” but quickly realized that I didn’t really know what it was about.  I had a lot to learn so I began reading every book that I could get my hands on that dealt with cybernetics and Stafford Beer’s work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Stafford_Beer...