Buckminster Fuller predicted PoW, Bitcoin and it's consequences(1981) | Hacker News Reader

Buckminster Fuller predicted PoW, Bitcoin and it's consequences(1981)

7 pointstiagotrs8 comments

"In this cosmically uniform, common energy-value system for all humanity, costing will be expressed in kilowatt-hours, watt-hours, and watt-seconds of work. Kilowatt-hours will become the prime criteria of costing the production of the complex of metabolic involvements per each function or item. These uniform energy valuations will replace all the world’s wildly intervarying, opinion-gambled-upon, top-power-system-manipulatable monetary systems. The time-energy world accounting system will do away with all the inequities now occurring in regard to the arbitrarily maneuverable international shipping of goods and the top economic power structure’s banker-invented, international balance-of-trade accountings. It will eliminate all the tricky banking and securities-markets exploitations of all the around-the-world-time-zone activities differences in operation today, all unbeknownst to the at-all-times two billion humans who are sleeping.

The world energy network grid will be responsible for the swift disappearance of planet Earth’s 150 different nationalities. We now have 150 supreme admirals, all trying to command the same ship to go in different directions, with the result that the ship is going around in circles — getting nowhere. The 150 nations act as 150 blood clots in blocking the flow of recirculating metals and other traffic essential to realization of the design science revolution. "

from "Critical Path" (1981)

Here Buckminister predicts that the price of energy will become so stable that it will be the favored benchmark for valuation and currency denomination. Laughable - for the next few centuries at least - and the opposite of what's happening, as solar prices are plummeting, halving and halving again. I went to one of his lectures back in the day and remember equally laughable advice about worldwide electricity pooling that should happen immediately. Suggestions that were physically impossible (but BF didn't think we'd have to wait for superconductivity to do this apparently, or that it was nearly here) and obviously, have never happened. My electrical engineer father, who worked for a power company, snorted.

We obviously aren't going to have one catastrophically interdependent grid distributing energy from a few sources, either.

FWIW There's an interesting debate between an author and Einstein during the 1930s on whether energy is the limiting factor in economics, or human labor is, as Marx said. Einstein took Marx's side, but our more automated world tilts the other way a bit more every day.

No Buckminister Fuller didn't predict PoW, Bitcoin etc, in any way.

thanks, I will look for documentation on that debate.

I think he looked at the energy work value as stable, as you need a fixed amount of Jaule to boil 1 liter of water from 20C.

In a way, he foresaw an energy based value system. maybe 'predict' bitcoin was a stretch

I found it - see my other comment, I shoulda put it here.

You have a point that I had overlooked, yet in fact the joules needed to make a pencil or anything else do go down a bit each year. Efficiency is not the only kind of economic growth, but a large contributor.

In contrast, the joules needed to mine a Bitcoin go up quite steeply as time goes on and fewer are left to mine, by design. So I don't think this is a fit.

That book is probably: Conversations with Einstein by Alexander Moszkowski https://archive.org/details/conversationswit00mosz

This is Marx's "Theory of Value," of course.

I think he predicted the opposite of what Bitcoin is now. Bucky thought a globally stabilized energy grid, along with computer facilitated time-energy accounting, would lead to a measure of "real" wealth and value of exchange. Bitcoin's value acts more like gold rather than a measure of exchange tied to the time-energy it takes for a "cow to convert grass into milk".

The idea that a world-connected electricity grid via ultra-high-voltage interconnections would lead to a different value of currency and wealth, one that would be more equitable in terms of energy is a nice idea and maybe it would pan out that way. I think a world grid would help solar and wind provide a bigger share of the load.

Under the right conditions maybe this is possible but for me it's harder to see now than when I first read Critical Path. I'm a little more pessimistic these days but I'm still a huge Bucky fan.

I think he's talking about the efficiency unlocked by the uniformity of things, when you have consistent energy being able to be deployed with advanced technology.

It can reduce all the frictions of society.

in his book "Critical Path", link to full book: https://archive.org/details/LIBRORBuckminsterFullerCriticalP...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com