Jacque Fresco - Introduction to Sociocyberneering - Larry King (1974)

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This is a new science: socio-cyberneering.
And this is its inventor, the extraordinary Jacque Fresco.
He's my guest this weekend on News Weekend.
My guest is an extraordinary Miamian: Dr. Jacque Fresco.
I could go through all the things that Dr. Fresco has done.
He's a social engineer, industrial engineer, designer, inventor,
was a consultant for Rotorcraft Helicopter,
Director of Scientific Research Laboratories, Los Angeles,
designed and copyrighted various items,
ranging from drafting instruments to X-ray units,
has had works published in the Architectural Record,
Popular Mechanics, Saturday Review, and has been a technical
and psychological consultant to the motion picture industry,
member of the Air Force design and development unit at Wright Field,
developed the electrostatic anti-icing systems,
designed prefabricated aluminum houses.
What does it say in your driver's license?
- What is the occupation?
- Industrial Designer ...
Social Engineer.
- Does it bug you that...
people, when they talk about Jacque Fresco in Miami, say that
he's someone who is, "Too far ahead of his time," his thinking is-
"We're not ready for advanced kind of thinking"-
of that type. Does it bug you?
- I imagine every creative person in every field
encounters that sort of problem. No, it doesn't. I can't afford it.
There's too many things that are important.
- What is socio-cyberneering?
- Socio-cyberneering is a new organization,
and it represents the application of the most sophisticated forms
of science and technology toward problem solving,
so that we can reclaim the environment
which we loused up over the years
and to build a way of life worthy of Man.
To humanize society, to break away from the artificiality,
the regimentation, that dominates our society today.
Our society seems torn apart, and pulled in many directions.
Socio-cyberneering is an approach
at the restructuring of society in humanistic terms.
- Humanistic terms? - Yes.
- The times I've spoken to you, you're very science and
technological-oriented. You want categories in people
... classified in categories, certain people living here and-
- I never wanted that. - No.
- Let's say that we didn't read each other,
or I did not communicate the ideas.
In essence, to me, all of the marvels of science and technology,
all of the electronics and mechanical wonders,
are just so many millions of tons of junk,
unless it enhances the lives of men.
The reason we emphasize machines and technology
is to free Man, to go to
art centers, music centers, cultural centers,
and to find the meaning of their own existence and lives.
- How much can machines do? Can they
run the things that are necessary to run?
- Well, Mr. King, if we can
launch a rocket off the Earth while it's turning,
find a place on the Moon, land it automatically,
pick up samples of the soil, bring the ship back
without humans- I think the Russians have done this-
bring the ship back to the Earth, surely we can handle
airliners, or anything else with redundancy.
- The problem though is our political structure is:
How do you start changing a society this much,
which has really no political system?
- No, it has no political system.
It is not affiliated with any political party.
It is neither communist, fascist, nor socialist, nor democratic.
Socio-cyberneering is a sort of a quantum jump,
a severe departure in Man's way of thinking.
- How do you make a severe departure with millions of people?
- With millions of people, well, I think you pretty much understand that
most of the development we have in our society today-
the technology: the airplane, TV, radio,
modern production technology- is really done by very few people.
I would say several hundred people
comprise the modern technological civilization.
But you don't need millions of technicians and millions of scientists.
How many people that you know of today
sit in their home and play their phonograph, and radio and TV,
have any idea of how this works?
It's just happening around them...
- I don't have any idea. - ...and they're falling behind.
What is happening to Man is that his technological society-
the newer value systems that dominate our times
that are pressing onward- are just leaving behind
hundreds of thousands of people that cannot make the transition.
In other words, people that can't change
can be found in the Amazon jungle today: the head-hunters.
And we've got to change. I think the book "Future Shock",
or the book I've worked on, "Looking Forward".
"Future Shock" points out, that there are a lot of things
going to happen, whether you like it or not,
that the future cannot be stopped by anyone.
It is a continuous progression.
- But there'll always be large groups of people that have trouble handling it.
- Yes, this is true. - Look at the change of someone... - We agree.
- ...60 years old, who has seen unbelievable change in their lifetime.
- I believe they can change quickly
if the information is made available to them. In other words
to present socio-cyberneering in one shot is extremely difficult.
I believe that people should not be divided-
the youngsters, the adolescents, and finally the mature young adults
and then the older folks, are all divided people.
When you get to be 65
you don't want to travel on an ocean liner with old folks.
How come we put up these buildings for the old folks?
We think that people ought to live wherever the hell they want to live.
That cities must be designed so we have an integrated intelligent society.
Einstein, when he was 65, 70 years old, he would talk to youngsters.
He kept reading. He kept up with ideas.
Why must societies be divided into different groups?
We think that you're as young as your life permits you to be,
as your exposure, as your ideas.
- Alright let's- with pictures- explore the thinking of Jacque Fresco
and the society he'd like to see: socio-cyberneering.
Now, we'll start with this, and you tell me. - I'll try to point it out.
- Yeah, you can point right at it.
All of the new cities
will be a university, in essence.
The center of a city, the nucleus, will house
an electronic computer which only controls the weather,
water purification, the atmospheric conditions,
that is- it controls air contamination systems.
The computers do not, I say it again, do not control people.
They maintain safety, they oversee the environment,
maintain ecological balance between animal life and plant life.
All the machines do is control the physical entities
that comprise the environment.
The center of the city is a university.
A university that covers all subjects related to Man.
It is not a commercial university. It is not based on any-...
There are no courses that are used to exploit
or abuse any other human being.
All business courses will be phased out.
All repetitious jobs will be phased out.
We feel that machines ought to do
the filthy, or the repetitious, or the boring jobs.
That Man has to be free
to pursue the higher things, the higher possibilities of Man.
In other words, if this is the medical unit- this little branch-
and if you work in this center,
you may live in the garden cities that surround the center.
You don't have to. You can if you will.
Each of the garden cities contain lakes, recreation areas,
and between cities, we let everything go back to nature.
- Will computers be able to control the weather?
- This is a relatively easy project to manage.
- Easy to control? - Yes. - You could control the weather?
- I could go into that with you in a little while. - Alright.
- Can I finish that? - Oh, okay, sorry.
- On the outer rim of the city, we have the agricultural belt.
All of your garbage is compressed
and pumped, recycled out to the agricultural belt.
There are no garbage trucks. There are no dump fields.
We use everything. All waste is recycled.
This is an ecological program.
- Alright. Now, this is what the total city...
- The total city looks like this.
There are circular conveyor belts that take you
anywhere in the city in three minutes.
The city population in this particular city is 15,000.
We have larger cities designed, up to two million.
The cities are all immersed in beautiful gardens.
There are no trees in a row.
It is not a mechanical environment.
It is essentially a city immersed in a second Garden of Eden
where there are lakes, recreation areas,
art centers, music centers, cultural centers,
and surrounding the city we have the agricultural belt
where we grow foods hydroponically.
Between cities, we let everything go back to nature:
the deer, the coyote, the entire ecological balance is maintained.
- We grow foods, how? - Hydroponically.
- What's that? - Soil-less agriculture, in some instances.
And in other instances we use conventional agriculture,
which we'll get onto in the drawings as we go through the subject.
- Alright. What- before we get to the other pictures-
what jobs, that we now know, will not be present in this concept?
- Well, most. - Like garbage men, gone, right?
- Yes. All repetition. All people working in fact- - Mailmen?
- No mailmen, no waitresses, no waiters, no cooks.
- When you go out to eat, how will you get your food?
- Well, there are beautifully designed
areas for eating, in which you have all kinds of food.
Japanese, French food, organic food, and the standards if you like it.
- And how would it get to you? - The way the food gets to you-...
what we do is monitor the behavior of the cook.
That is, we do a multi-channel tape, on the best cooks that we know of.
And, as they prepare their food
we tape every move they make, and how they handle food
and how they dice the carrots, the way you like it.
Then you dial "2736", and you get the kind of food you want.
Chef Milani style, or individualized.
You can even tape your own cooking.
- I remember 5 years ago I used to laugh at you,
and now all this is very believable.
Alright, onward. What do we have here?
- Areas like India, where you have high population densities,
or areas like China, we just can't afford
to go on and make an individual house
for every human being. We just don't have that kind of energy.
Our population has already surpassed the point of no return.
We have to unify our architecture, not that I like it.
But we're trapped. We have to unify it and then make art centers,
music centers and gardens between the cities.
In India, this would only extend six miles.
And then you would have countryside, lakes, and hiking area
for most people. But, if you try to spread your cities out
as we're doing, you're going to louse up the entire area.
- Are you betting that people will not declare war on each other?
So that you can get at building all of this?
- Well, we don't have much choice. We're going to
destroy each other, or we're going to make it.
- Now, this looks like some sort of
submerged stadium, with something flying.
- In an area like Pennekamp Park, we might build
circular cities in the sea, where the water is about 30, 35 feet deep.
Most of the apartment houses will open out into the sea.
You can observe marine life and fish swimming by.
There will be no zoos, no seaquariums,
everything will be observed in natural conditions.
There will be boating, scuba-diving, recreation,
and universities built in the sea.
Socio-cyberneering encompasses the entire social spectrum.
- These drawings all made by you? - Yes.
This might represent an individual house.
Most of the homes will be individually contoured.
If you're an artist, you'll live in the kind of house
that is most suitable to your areas of interest.
If you're a technician, a musician, the house will be designed
for your needs. Most of the houses will be self-generative.
That is, the heat of the sun falls upon your roof
and lowers the temperature on the inside of the house.
The sunlight is scattered on the inner walls,
in which you have a phosphor coating.
And the room glows, all evening, with a soft glow
without any electricity, without any power waste.
All of the pavement in the area is black.
Under the pavement are heating coils,
that is, built-in PVC tubing, or wiring, or conveyor tubing for water.
As the Sun beats down on the pavement, we get all the hot water we need
without burning any fuel, conserving energy
all over the world, at a much lower cost.
- Who's... who's going to pay for all this?
- Where is the money coming from?
If you took all of the gold and all of the wealth of this country,
all of the certificates of debt, and all of the land ownership,
all of the diamonds and rings, and dumped it off the coast of Japan,
as long as you didn't touch the American way of thinking,
our technology and our resources,
we would not be impoverished at all.
America's wealth is not its gold, is not its banking institutions.
These are false institutions. That the entire money-structured
and materialistic-oriented society is a false society.
10 or 15 years from now, our society
will go down in history as the lowest development in Man.
We have the brains, the know-how, the technology,
and the feasibility to build an entirely new civilization.
- You believe that we teach competition? That it's not bred into some-
- Competition is dangerous, socially offensive,
considered right and normal, because
you are brought up to that value system.
What kind of competition did Jesus have?
What kind of competition is there in your body?
Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!"
And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!"
You'd rot away in a month if every organ
of your body went out for itself.
- What's this? - Some individuals will live in homes
of a different design. There will be a wide range
of what you call individuality. The city is built to bring out
what you call individuality, creativity, thinking, development.
To question all things and challenge all ideas.
The city is not utopian. It is an open city, to develop all ideas,
to change our concepts when they need to be changed.
- Here we have a 3-phase picture.
- Architecture will run the gamut. That all the buildings
will be earthquake-proof, fire-proof, termite-proof
and shock resistant, in that they will rest on this particularly
designed sand bay so that no direct shock can be transferred
to the architecture. There are no fire departments,
because nothing in the architecture can burn.
There are no TV sets, radios, tape recorders, or record players.
All of that is done by the central computer system
in which all of the world's music is housed in a central computer.
You don't want records, tape recorders, all this junk
that requires continuous maintenance.
All you want is the music you like. You dial it, and you get the music.
You don't need to pick up records or store them.
You live in an insane culture, where we duplicate things.
It's like having a television station in every home
or every apartment building. All you want is the music
or the program. You dial that.
There's where the computers come in. They don't control you,
they provide you with the music, and the program.
- But you would need a set in the house to get the programs. - No.
All you need is an image screen.
- An image screen? - An image screen. A flat screen built-in
on the wall. You don't have a set sticking out.
You don't have tape recorders. All you have is the music you like.
- Did you read Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day"? - No, I did not.
- Well, he has a society like this, in which the computers also control
the human beings. - Well, this I'm against, very much against.
- He made it so, if you felt a little ill, you pressed the button...
- I don't like that. That's too much like "1984"
and "Brave New World". This is humanistic.
All our cities will be separated by a half mile of landscaped areas
and returned to the natural ecological balance.
The lakes, the hills, the valleys, the animal life between cities
will go back to nature. - How will we travel?
- Cities are connected from core to core by either
cyclic elevators or linear transportation systems.
There are no freeways and no automobiles,
therefore no automobile accidents.
No automobile accidents, because they don't exist.
We have continuous transportation. You don't need to wait for a bus.
We have continuous, moving conveyors.
- When I get back to money, and you said that it's unimportant.
To start this, who will build it? Who's going to build the first-
- It's a membership organization ... which is like,
the members pay about $10 a year and they get the booklet,
and the information, and they go to meetings.
But the funds actually come from donations from organizations
and various agencies of the federal government and private foundations
to build the first city, to solve the transportation systems,
to work out a totally different environment.
And after the first city is built, we expect a rapid growth
in the membership. It is difficult for people
to immediately understand socio-cyberneering
because it is not like anything else that you're familiar with.
- Obviously it requires a change of thinking.
Well, you're not dull, Jacque. Okay.
- For example: agriculture. You read of pests,
you read of insecticides, you read of DDT.
You read of constant spraying contaminating the Earth.
People get angry. They join environmentalist groups.
They try to save our environment, but they come up with
no specific ideas. Socio-cyberneering has a blueprint
for all of the identified problems. For example,
all our agriculture will be totally enclosed, either in plastic
or glass buildings, that can transmit ultraviolet light.
Therefore, you have no insect invasion of plants.
We also have special ultrasonic generators
that keep all insects away from plants.
If certain insects- particularly selected insects
that are detrimental to plants- are hit with ultrasonic,
cavitation is produced and their bodies rupture,
fall to the soil, and enrich the soil.
And are not washed into our rivers, and do not contaminate.
Therefore, an agriculture that's enclosed-
you're not subject to frost,
you're not subject to freeze or weather.
In other words, these nuclear plants out here,
that dump their hot water into the bay,
we use that hot water in the winter to enhance the plant life,
to grow bananas in Georgia, in North Carolina,
by using the hot water from nuclear plants.
What do we do with the radioactive waste?
We encase it in piping and treat sewage water with the radiation.
Not radioactive powder, but the radiation material is sealed.
And through a multiplicity of shields, we only use the radiation
to clean the waters emitted by hospitals
and all other sources of contamination.
- You keep showing this figure of this thing flying around in the sky
so you better tell me what that is. - Oh.
This is one of the methods of conserving our land area.
You read of erosion. Our beaches are being eroded.
Land is being eroded. By designing and building underwater dams
-which is entirely feasible within our time-
we can modify the ocean current, we can modify the Japanese stream.
We can build dams under the ocean, and utilize the Japanese current,
oxygenate the water, and do away with the red tide.
The red tide, by the way, can be dealt with by oxygenation,
by recirculating the water,
by building dams under the water in the Gulf Stream,
to set up greater turbulence in the water, and this is feasible.
If we don't do it, we will cease to be as a nation.
We have the energy, the know-how, the raw materials.
Socio-cyberneering is an organization
that is probably the boldest organization ever conceived of.
We're undertaking the most ambitious project
in the history of mankind. - What's this?
- This represents a surveillance equipment aircraft
to survey the areas, the movement of the currents,
and to monitor Earth systems.
- Alright, Jacque. - This represents a variation of a circular scheme.
Most of the cities are based on natural configurations:
the atomic structure, basic designs in nature.
The center of the city might be related to
studies of the human organism.
This center here may be studies of diseases of the eye;
other systems: diseases of the nervous system.
An all-out research project on enhancing the lives of Man.
There are no military programs or projects in socio-cyberneering.
- And no need for an army? - No need for an army.
- Now, what if one people decides to attack another people?
- We then invite. After the first city is built
we tend to go socio-cyberneering international,
to invite the participation of all nations of the world
into a system of monitoring the Earth,
and using the Earth to enhance the lives of Man.
- What if one group of people get together and attack
another group of people? - We believe that is done due to scarcity,
or that a society suffers from economic deprivation,
lack of arable land area or overpopulation.
- In other words, you believe it would not occur. - It would not occur.
- What is this wild-looking thing? - This is clean sources of power.
By utilizing the natural heat of the Earth-
that is, volcanic energy, or the magma, or the molten lava
under the Earth, of which there are approximately 500 potentials-
if we tap a mountain in Hawaii, called Mount Aloha,
we can get enough power to electrify the world.
We can get enough power from that volcano alone.
We have 500 potential volcanoes we can harness.
We can use that natural heat from the volcano.
No smog. No smoke. No dirt. No gases. No fuels. No oil spills.
And no more burning of fuels in any city to generate power.
If Japan used Fujiyama, they don't need to burn oil.
They don't need oil. All of that heat is sitting there!
20 million years of power, right under the Earth's surface.
In fact, you don't even need to use fusion power or nuclear power.
And it's easy to tap. And it's clean, and available.
As soon as we make up our minds
to put scientists rather than on weapons, nerve gas,
on harnessing the Earth power that is already here.
- How are you going to get the president of Florida Power and Light or
Shell Oil to give up such a...
- Socio-cyberneering does not appeal to governments,
to private enterprise. We're going to do this thing-
just as the automobile phased out the stagecoach,
just as television stepped in and phased out
the old vaudeville and the old motion pictures.
That history and technology is respecters of no society,
no individual opinions, but it moves on.
And we've got to be prepared to face the future.
Socio-cyberneering will tackle some of the most ambitious projects
in the history of Man. This represents the building
of underwater dams within the Gulf Stream.
This dam will collect, direct, and route the waters of the sea
into a spillway that is centrifugally shaped so that fish
and marine life are separated from the turbine blades.
The Gulf Stream will generate power to oxygenate the waters,
to eliminate the red tide, to pick up the amount of fish in the ocean,
to monitor marine life and build an ecological relationship
between the total oceanographic world and the continents.
Areas where we've gone in for strip-mining and loused up the land
by digging out the areas, shamefully pitting the surface
of the United States, we feel we can build underground art cities,
music centers, landscaped areas with gardens
and lakes, and reclaim those areas.
- Now this looks like... a train station.
- After the automobile is phased out, which we hope to do very rapidly,
we hope to build a new transportation system
and also phase out all forms of aircraft, except surveillance.
Aircraft, helicopters. We think aircraft are no longer necessary.
In fact, the skies are so jammed, and landing is so difficult,
and the speeds and the shockwave are no longer worth working on.
I know that people in the aircraft business do not understand this,
nor do they feel this because they feel that all institutions
tend to perpetuate themselves.
We hope to phase out the airplane by designing
transportation units that can move up to 2,000 miles an hour,
floating on a magnetic repulsive field or an air cushion.
And in those huge trains of tomorrow
there will be TV, radio, amusement, art centers, classrooms,
not a group of seats lined up as your trains are today-
highly regimented society, whether you know it or not.
This society will be different in its transportation means.
If forty or fifty people have to leave the train,
we slow up to 100 miles an hour, lift off the passenger section,
or slide it off and slide on a section with the passengers getting on.
You don't have to stop the whole plane or the train.
Today, when three people are getting off,
you land the airplane and three or four people get off.
In the future, we will just shove off those passengers getting off
and that freight, leaving.
- How will this go from, say, Miami to London?
- We then have an underwater project
in which tunnels are suspended 125 feet
beneath the surface of the sea, therefore you eliminate
most of the ocean-going transportation systems.
You're not subject to the weather or anything else.
This is part of the linear acceleration train
that can take you anywhere in the world in just a few hours
safely, without snow, rain, being lost at sea.
- Are all these things you're saying, Jacque, could they be built
with what we know today? Or are some of these things,
are you guessing, based on what we know today? - No
All of these things can be built with what we know today.
It would take 10 years to change the surface of the Earth,
to rebuild the world into a second Garden of Eden.
The choice lies with you. The stupidity of a nuclear arms race,
the development of weapons, trying to solve your problems politically
by electing this political party or that political party,
that all politics is immersed in corruption. Let me say it again:
communism, socialism, fascism, the democrats, the liberals-
we want to absorb human beings. Women's Lib-...
ALL organizations that believe in a better life for Man!
There are no Negro problems, or Polish problems,
or Jewish problems, or Greek problems,
or women's problems. They're Human problems!
To come into socio-cyberneering, and take your part, and function.
We are not concerned with the divisions of segments of society.
- No ... control of the population?
- Population control is dependent upon education.
We feel an educated population needs no control.
- You wouldn't stop sex. - No, sir.
- Good move, Jacque. What's this?
- Some individuals may want to live in a "way out" house.
How far way out- how far out you want to live-
will be determined by your value system, and your lifestyle.
It is not a restricted society. It is not a "1984".
It is not a "Brave New World". But it is something brand new.
We would like you to investigate socio-cyberneering.
- Now, I'm going to give the address out for people who would like
to know more about... oooh, the next one looks really weird.
- Some people may want to live in a different kind of home.
I myself am interested in world affairs, ecological changes,
therefore the walls would have panoramic screens,
giving me the kind of information that I am interested in.
Your home may be different, designed to fit your needs.
The homes will be molded. - Now, nobody will pay the builder
of the home? He won't receive money? - No.
- Why will he build the home? - "He" doesn't build the home.
The homes are built through systems engineering
in which we can form a home every half hour
by blowing the floor up out of the ground so that we have
-up out of a plastic unit which the floor is comprised of-
we blow and shape the furniture, and then spray the furniture.
In other words, if you're going to be here
-if the United States is going to be here- for the next 20 years,
you can't have a plumber install the toilet bowl, and the sink,
and the shower in the same old hand-tool fashion
that was done forty years ago. We've got to make a quantum jump.
Mold maybe fifteen different types of bathrooms.
You pick out that which you like, the bathroom is self-cleaning,
self-drying and we install it in your architecture,
based upon your selection.
- What, uh... uh-...
It will be so hard to change, you know.
- How do we change humans? - A lot of these things sound fascinating but
in order to accomplish any of this, you require, to me,
a change of the human. - The human value system. - How?
- We feel that if enough human beings are exposed
to socio-cyberneering, through information,
and they question things about human behavior, the new schools-
I'd be happy to describe all things. We don't have enough time now
to go into that. But it doesn't take very long
for Americans to change. Americans have been conditioned
in their kind of society to get a different kind of car next year,
to buy a new television set or a tape-recorder.
We are radical as hell. But our political and social institutions
have not changed. And this is where we are stagnating:
because we always equate any new idea
with communism or regimentation.
Because we've been brought up to fear that which is new.
And I think that Christ was a radical.
He brought new ideas. But it took time,
thousands of years, for people to really appreciate ideas.
- They still haven't bought them. - Exactly.
Our ideas- ... - What's this giant foot?
- What looks like a giant foot is really a wind tunnel
in a vertical position. We feel, by building six of these
in the Los Angeles area and the New York area,
and accelerating air down through this tunnel
by means of turbines, and electrostatic filters
and a low temperature base, we can clean the air of the
solid particulate matter, gases, and all suspended particles
within a period of one year, clean the air in the Los Angeles
and New York area, and then remove these structures
and build garden cities again.
Let's not wait for nature to do it.
We loused it up. We're going to have to clean it up,
like the war program.
- You know, people- before I show this last one- people,
just so you know, you know that, ah-...
a lot of this is wondrous to you, and it is to me, of course, but
Dr. Fresco is a respected social engineer, industrial designer,
designer and inventor, Ph. D in Human Factors Engineering,
and has worked on many things from anti-icing systems to
prefabricated aluminum houses, designed systems for noiseless
and pollution-free aircraft, wrote the book "Looking Forward".
He has lectured at the Department of Sociology
in Princeton on sociology of the future,
guest at the College Editors Environmental Conference in Washington,
lectured at Queens College, New York,
University of South Florida, University of California,
designed various items, ranging from drafting instruments to X-ray units.
And, so you know, don't just dismiss this.
If he says it's possible, it's possible. What's this?
- Well, in times to come, most of you are probably familiar with
the giant units that are used to move the rockets
onto their launching platform- tremendous tractor systems.
In the distant future, perhaps the next 15 or 20 years,
huge tractors may be built, with a nuclear reactor built-in
that can fuse the Earth into canals, and transportation ways.
We can shape the Earth by nuclear energy
without mixing concrete, without having trucks and human beings
leveling the concrete. We can do this today,
at 20 miles per hour, if we wanted to.
Shape the Earth into highways, waterways, flood control systems,
in a totally different reorganized technology.
- Alright, now: technicians working now
in this present setup in the private industry concept,
why haven't we seen more things like this,
if they are feasible? If for, just for example:
the Japanese, or everybody's working on a high speed train.
And you can't tell me that the Japanese wouldn't like to have
-the Seaboard Railroad wouldn't like to have-
a train that could get you to New York in 20 minutes.
Even for a profit. Why don't they?
- As far as I know, at present, there is really no integrated
transportation system. Integrating a transportation system,
you'd have to design, it's just like designing a heart
of a human being- if God did it this way-
and then he decided to put some lungs nearby,
and then he built another structure to hold our arms.
All of these are after-thoughts.
What we have to do is design a city as a living system.
As an organism. As a university.
That all of the cities of the future will be university cities
that grow, that continue to exchange ideas.
The city will have a built-in transportation system,
so there are no accidents, and no un-thoughtout areas of technology.
Medicine, botany, agriculture, the total system. One planning system.
Our cities have been designed a long time ago.
The area like Miami- downtown Miami,
may put in a couple of pots and a couple of trees,
and this kind of simulating an intelligent approach
to an environment which costs thousands of dollars.
And these little intrusions on Flagler Street
only cause the buses and the fire engines and the emergency vehicles
to become further tied up. They are no solutions.
They are clumsy, academic approaches by people
immersed in this kind of society, coming up with
their cop-out solutions that have no relationship to the problems.
You cannot be a conventional architect, a conventional engineer,
work for the telephone company, or any other of the old establishment
and come up with an idea that is a radical innovation.
The space program takes new thinking; to save our country,
to save our land, to save our environment,
to save our youth. Our stupidity, our conflict-
we've got to reorganize our way of thinking
and reconsider our social aims,
toward the brotherhood of man. We do that or we perish.
- What do you think Frank Lloyd Wright would have thought of this?
- I think that Frank Lloyd Wright was establishment.
I think that his architecture was radical.
But I think it was radical in a limited way.
And we've got to get away from this limited
"I did this" and "I did that ," and the self-centeredness
that dominates our society today.
It must be a privilege to serve members of society.
Not that we want rewards or medals or honor
for what we do, because it is just an honor to do it.
And if you cannot work for that, then you missed the boat.
You don't understand the teachings of the wisest men that ever lived.
- In your society there are no mayors of cities
- There are no mayors, there are no politicians,
and you don't have to fill out any forms
to go to the arts center or music center
and you go to a university whether you can afford it or not.
If you want a suit of clothes how do you get it?
Well, most suits of clothing are designed by
anatomists and physiologists to be comfortable.
Most of your shoes will breathe as you walk.
They'll be very different from the shoes
that dominate your society today.
Most of your clothing will be organically designed,
in that if you move your arms it'll aerate and breathe.
And most of your clothing will be washed by ultrasonics.
No detergents. No washing machines. No centrifugal separators.
We can knock all of the fluid off clothing today, by vibration.
We can knock fluids off clothing. In other words
if you could move a piece of fabric from position A
to position B rapidly enough, the fluid will remain behind.
Ultrasonically vibrating the fabric can remove the fluids.
And you need not contaminate your waters.
You don't have to use any of the systems today. Let me briefly say this:
You have a bumper in front of your car and behind your car.
But in your society, your car is hit on the side also.
You have safety belts and harnesses in your car.
But that assumes that you're going to be hit by the rear or in front.
If you're hit on a side you go right through the side of the windshield.
What good are these approaches?!
They are designed by men that are cerebral insufficients!
You've got to design a society with a bumper all around the car,
phase out human drivers, put electronic guidance systems in cars,
or eliminate the automobile, design a holistic transportation system.
We must put our mind to this as we do to put a man on the moon.
We must put our mind to the social problem.
We wish to get away from politics. We wish to get away from
the old world method of solving problems.
If you can barely understand what it is I'm trying to say
in this short period of time, please investigate
socio-cyberneering. - Are you saying that
General Motors could build a safe car today?
Totally safe car, with the knowledge at hand?
- Yes, if they're given that assignment.
They're not given that assignment.
- No, because they're working on their own initiative to make more money.
- They're only interested in...
Look, if General Motors had to service their own cars
I can tell you for certain
that they would have two levers that you turn down and
pull out the engine, shove it in a service unit.
And you know, to change a $3 spring in a car or a $2 part,
you gotta do a $45 job on a small car just to pull the engine out.
But if they had to service the car
I can assure you that whole engine would slide out.
You know they put a race-car wheel on with one turn?
That's the way your wheels would go on. You'd have bumpers all around.
You'd have no chromium, no ornament.
The chromium would be in the engine where you have chrome-steel;
tougher engine. In other words,
the automobile companies have total- actually they have contempt.
Let me say this again: All manufacturers have contempt for you.
To sell you the toothpaste...
the products that they sell you are deliberately,
deliberately designed to wear out, break down,
so you have to continually service those things.
You notice that your telephone is pretty reliable?
Well, we here in America can think.
We can design things that don't wear out
and don't break down and don't require maintenance, at all!
- Yeah the instrument, the phone, that stays forever. -You bet.
If the automobile companies had to maintain their cars,
it would be a forever- - The phone company has to maintain the phone.
- You bet! - That's why it's good. - That's why your units hold up.
- I never thought of that. - Right on, most people haven't.
- You know operators can be bad, they can be bad, but the phone itself-
- It's the same for your TV sets by the way.
- You mean if RCA, if everybody had to maintain their own...
- You bet. They'd all be ... automatic systems
which you pull out, shove in a replacement unit.
If your engine breaks down, they pull out the engine,
shove in a courtesy engine, and you take off.
Why hold up the whole car when you need a battery job?
If you did that in the Army Air Force, you couldn't operate at all.
Your society is really comprised of very stupid men.
Let me say it again: all politicians, all lawyers,
all businessmen, will be phased out.
I'm not going to do it, it's not going to be a revolution,
you don't need it. Our society cannot be maintained
by this type of incompetency.
It was great, the free enterprise system, about 35 years ago.
That was the last of its usefulness.
Now we've gotta change our way of thinking or perish.
Our system is dying.
If Nixon remains in, it will die in his lap.
If a liberal group gets in, the society will fall.
Our cities are going broke, we don't have the money
nor the type of mentality required
to save our society in politics or government.
I am not your enemy, I am not trying to destroy things.
I do not believe in revolution.
I believe that ideas must be presented to American people.
They have to make the decision.
- Now, Dr. Fresco is in the local phonebook, am I correct? - Yes.
- Is that the number people would call to contact? - Yes.
- That's F-R-E-S-C-O. Dr. Jacque Fresco.
And we're going to do some more with you,
because you're... You know what I'd like to do one day?
- There's a hell of a lot on socio-cyberneering.
- A Special. - I want to do one on human behavior.
- Now, human behavior, how about a human behaviorist?
And how about some engineers? You know,
what if I get a guy form General Motors? - Great. Love it.
Love it. - An engineer of a car. - Love it.
Get me the biggest establishment people you can get hold of.
I'd love 'em. Bankers, ecologists, economists...
I can't use the kind of language I'd like to use on TV,
but I'd like to talk to them.
I'd like to blow it up for you to understand it.
Like the money system now, the whole idea of devaluation.
Nobody knows what it's all about. They all think it's very complicated.
Actually it's very simple. I'll tell you what it is
if I have the time in a nutshell, what's going on.
If an island, like Haiti
had about several hundred million dollars
in assets. But they went on, and they
printed more money than they had things to back it up, or gold.
Then that money has no value. If a little island, say like
St. Croix printed lots of money and just came to the United States
trying to buy things- they ran their printing presses night and day-
the money is not backed, that's why it doesn't have anything.
Your whole banking system is utterly corrupt.
Your lending institutions have loused up the system.
But there's nobody out there telling you what's wrong with it.
So it looks okay to you.
I'm not afraid of anybody, I don't work for anyone.
No one can discharge me. I have no boss.
The only thing that can happen to me is I can be put in prison.
Well there're many books to write. In other words
there are many things to be done. I am not afraid.
I am afraid to live in the society we live in today.
The direction we're moving in gives us
25 years for total environmental destruction.
We have 7 years to mass starvation.
We don't have much time. - The value of a nation
-dollar value, America's value-
the value of the dollar is not based on gold reserves,
the value of the dollar is based on faith in this country, right?
And it's output isn't it? That's the truth.
- You can't build a nation on faith. It has to be backed up by resources.
- But if the French respect the dollar, it's backed
by respect for American resources.
- Respect, it only means that it serves France in some useful way.
A nation's interest in any other nation is always self-interest.
When we send representatives to any other country
our self-interest is first.
Whatever happens to that nation is secondary.
We have nothing but utter materialism
which dominates our society today.
- You're talking about all countries? - Yes. All countries.
- The science is socio-cyberneering.
The man behind it is Dr. Jacque Fresco.
- I'm Larry King.