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  • What do you think of when you contemplate the future?

  • For Jacque Fresco, this is what it looks like.

  • A future where technology is harnessed for all and money has no relevance.

  • Sound far-fetched? Well at 94, the reality is that it's a future Jacque will never see.

  • But it won't stop him spending the next seven months traveling the globe promoting his vision.

  • It's called "The Venus Project" and he says "50 million people around the world

  • are now involved or aware of it,"

  • but of what? I caught up with Jacque earlier today and asked if

  • what he was promoting was, quite simply, utopia?

  • No. There's no such thing.

  • The reason there's no such thing as utopia, is because,

  • if you design the best building you know how to design,

  • that's the best you know up to now.

  • With the advent of new material, the city will keep changing.

  • There's no best laptop.

  • Next year they'll be smaller, lighter, wider range.

  • Cameras no longer use film.

  • So you can't design the best camera.

  • You can only design the best that you know of up to now.

  • No utopias, no final frontiers.

  • But for you, your vision of the future...

  • ...is always changing.

  • But you look at some of your designs, some of your visions for the future,

  • and people say, "Yeah, look it's like you might have seen in popular mechanics from the 50s."

  • You know, "This is what's going to be like in 1999..."

  • No. Nothing like that.

  • Hollywood shows you spaceships and people using laser weapons.

  • They take the same cowboys and indians, and put' em in spaceships.

  • That is not the future.

  • That's man's concept of this limited society that doesn't teach you how to think and look ahead.

  • If we don't live in accordance with the nature of the Earth,

  • if we don't live in accordance with the natural resources, we can't live.

  • You can't designate a population of 10 million without doing a study of the resources you have.

  • After you study, we have enough resources to support so many billions of people and

  • if you exceed that, you're going to have starvation, malnutrition, territorial disputes.

  • If you maintain a population in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth,

  • no opinions of senators.

  • Politics was great... a hundred years ago.

  • Today it's all obsolete.

  • You're talking revolution.

  • No.

  • When society breaks down...

  • Technical revolution...

  • ...but when society breaks down then they'll want to do it a different way.

  • I'm sorry about that, but it seems that conditions were so abusive, in some lands,

  • that they put in socialism, communism, whatever, or fascism;

  • that fits the conditions that people live under.

  • None of them are the solution.

  • All governments, all through history, have been corrupt.

  • You must know that people look at your concepts.

  • Yes, I have...

  • ...and with utmost respect, Jacque, they will say, "You're a crazy old man."

  • I understand that. This is not unusual.

  • Every move from women's rights, to child labor, were fought with battles, all the time.

  • No new system ever came in smoothly.

  • Man is the dumbest animal. He pollutes the ocean, the air, the rivers, the atmosphere, and people.

  • They put themselves on a pedestal, [and say] they were the highest form of life.

  • That's an ego trip. They're not. We're not civilized yet.

  • As long as you have prisons, police, armies, navies; we are not civilized.

  • Until the world learns to live together, constructively,

  • that'll be the beginning of the scientific age.

  • We're not there yet.

  • Look at you now, you're touring around, you're talking to people.

  • Yes.

  • And you're 94 years old.

  • Yes.

  • You haven't got anything better to do?

  • No. Not now, I'm afraid of the direction that man is taking.

  • We have bombs now that are like a thousand times greater than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

  • How stupid can you be? What can you accomplish with that?

  • The United States has 300 submarines, and according to the Navy,

  • each one has more destructive power than all the wars in history;

  • what are you going to accomplish with that? A burnt-out radioactive planet;

  • you won the war?

  • What do you win?

  • It's much easier to bring the nations of the world together, not kill those that don't agree with you.

  • Bring them together...

  • Is your life in danger?

  • My life is always in danger, it's always been in danger.

  • I developed the first flying wing aircraft, I had nothing but trouble.

  • I do all I can do, rather than fear death. I don't fear death.

  • I fear where man is going. The hell they can produce is unbelievable.

  • Because of human, not really human stupidity, they're not educated in our schools.

  • If I took every soldier, I would educate them to be problem solvers, not killing machines.

  • An amazing guy, he once joined the Ku Klux Klan

  • just to persuade them that what they were doing was wrong.

  • Look, in case you're wondering about that flying wing aircraft Jacque mentioned there,

  • he was working at Douglas Aircraft when the first Northrop flying wing was developed.

  • In layman's terms, it's a bit like the predecessor to the Stealth Bomber.

  • The technology Jacque Fresco designed went on to be patented by the US Air Force.

  • Now if you're interested in hearing more,

  • he's going to be giving a lecture at Auckland tomorrow night.

  • I think that's at the Hopetoun Alpha; the details will be on our website

  • and we'll have the full interview available there as well.

What do you think of when you contemplate the future?

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