Joe Lex, of Free Emergency Talks and Temple University fame, was recently seen to post this inspiring quote from R Buckminster Fuller on the CCM-L newsgroup. The quote goes as follows:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R Buckminster Fuller was an inventor, engineer, designer and futurist who, amongst other acheivements, invented the geodesic dome. Subsequently, the scientists who worked out how to rearrange carbon atoms to make spheres and tubes, using the geodesic dome design as a template, named this family of carbon atom arrangements after Buckminster: the the Buckminster Fullerine. If you want to read more about him and his varied interests and influences, go here.
If you want more of Joe Lex (and who wouldn’t?) check out his Free Emergency Talks site. Or you could sign up for SMACC 2013 next March and come and meet him in person.
(Correction 29/11/2012: The above text has been updated. R Buckminster Fuller was not the inventor of the Buckminster Fullerene, as previously stated. It was his work in producing the geodesic dome that inspired the C60 atom arrangements by Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, James Heath, Sean O’Brien, and Harold Kroto at Rice University in 1985.)