I think that I feel that I have no choice but to operate under the illusion, which may be a delusion, that we can somehow get past the destruction that we have brought and that we are causing today.

I studied philosophy in school, became disgruntled by the fact that it was a way to have a very interesting conversation with very few people about very few things in very narrow terms and yet still believed (and still believe today) that there was something that I was getting myself involved in when I said I wanted to study philosophy.

Since I live part of the year in Italy, I live in a society in which I'm the optimistic American relative to the people who I'm around there. And that has actually brought to my attention the fact that I do have some sort of optimism and has made me think about it enough that I can attempt an answer.

Just getting totally absorbed in that and therefore when I came back around to [Buckminster Fuller] and found that much of it was made up, I realized that nevertheless, it really was crucial, crucial for how he understood himself, I believe, and certainly crucial for how anyone else ever engaged in his ideas and therefore as a starting point, how can we engage in his ideas today, but with a remove of knowing that it is a myth and being able to navigate it in that sort of level, at that level of reading him as a story.

I select my technology based on what I need and I also don't take up what I don't feel that I need.

I think that surprisingly few people right now know much about [Buckminster] Fuller beyond the few really iconic points. He invented the geodesic dome and he coined the term "spaceship earth" and that's pretty much the extent of what people who even have heard of him know. And I'm struck by how many people have not heard of him at all.

To me, the reason to write about [Buckminster] Fuller is because I think that he has ideas that are incredibly pertinent.