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

I was interested first of all in trying to capture this myth that was always changing and to create some sort of a master story, some version of the myth that resonated with me, since I could have taken more or less any detail that I wanted or the opposite and try to put that down on the page in a way that I could express from that outset for myself and for our readers what it was that was so magical about [Buckminster] Fuller's way of putting together the world.

The city is better because the city has an economy of needs and once you're talking about a city, maybe you can start talking about how you manage the climate of that city as a whole. Not by putting a dome over it but by more passive means that can potentially be put together in creative ways.

We're back around to [Buckminster] Fuller again. Back around to the recognition of patterns, which may be true or may not be. But nevertheless, have enough of a semblance that they're worth exploring. That, to me, is where my work begins.

I didn't grow up with [Buckminster Fuller]. I never met him. I was once close to meeting him as a child at a ski resort one summer. He died in 1983. Only in 1999 or so, 2000, when I was working as an editor at San Francisco Magazine, did I really come back around to that name because Stanford University had just acquired the archive.

[Buckminster] Fuller was an independent operator coming up with these madcap ways of combining things with absolutely no strings attached and the fact that world changing now is happening within the corporation by and large, and that disruption is ironically what corporations do.

I don't think that I am hopeful because I have some data that you don't, that I am going to share with you and going to convince you on that basis.