JC

Fuller points to the usefulness of useless knowledge as a critical element in this collective abundance and the salvation of our species: Specialization’s preoccupation with parts deliberately forfeits the opportunity to apprehend and comprehend what is provided exclusively by synergy.

Today, the concept of synergy permeates everything from boardrooms to artspeak to hipster dinner party chatter — but it was Fuller who coined it as cultural currency in pioneering the study of synergetics, which concerns itself with the “behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.”

When facts are few, persuading the ignorant is relatively easy. But information abundance, already characteristic of early modern societies, engenders a degree of skepticism: The more there is to know, the more likely we feel that truth is elusive. Information super-abundance, or the condition of “digital plenitude,” as media scholar Jay David... See more

for nearly fourteen years afterwards, I stared at a smartphone every single day. Five thousand days, all in all. I can’t think of anything else I’ve done with the same level of commitment. There have been days where I’ve had nothing to eat or drink and there have been nights when I didn’t sleep. But until very recently, I never once went... See more

Most jobs are going away and they aren't coming back. AI is coming for everything.

Fuller cautions: Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery.