Today's Nomination is Jacque Fresco
Jacque Fresco (born March 13, 1916), is a self-educated structural designer, philosopher of science, concept artist, educator, and futurist. His interests span a wide range of disciplines including several in philosophy, science, and engineering. Fresco writes and lectures extensively on his view of subjects ranging from the holistic design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management, cybernated technology, advanced automation, and the role of science in society, focusing on the benefits he thinks they may bring. With his colleague, Roxanne Meadows, he is the founder and director of an organization known as The Venus Project, located in Venus, Florida.
In contemporary culture he has been popularized by three documentaries, Future By Design,Zeitgeist Addendum,and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, His Venus Project has been inspirational worldwide, especially to activists.
Born on March 13, 1916, Jacque Fresco grew up in the minority neighborhood of Bensonhurst in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Precocious as a child, Fresco's interests did not pertain to the topics presented to him at school. Unwilling, or unable, to conform with the setting of formal education, he sought a self-directed education throughout his later teen years. Fresco spent many days of his youth at the local library. While mostly impoverished during the Great Depression, Fresco claims that it was during this time when he developed the sensitivity and ambition to concern himself with the function of society and the future of humanity.
Fresco found employment at the Douglas Aircraft Company after presenting to them many of his early alternative aircraft designs.Fresco had long taken an interest in designing flying saucers and tried to interest the aircraft industry at a time when experimental construction was underway. After departing from Douglas due to safety design disagreements, he traveled to Hawaii in late 1939 where he then traveled to the South Sea Islands where he interacted with native islanders. Fresco claims that his visit to these islands effectively helped shape his understanding of cultural relativism and the flexibility of human values in alternate environments.
In 1942, Fresco was drafted into the Army. He was soon given technical design duties for the Army Air Force at Wright Field design laboratories in Dayton, Ohio. There he would produce up to forty designs a day. Among Fresco's many designs, a design of a radical variable camber wing attempted to optimize flight control by allowing the pilot to adjust the thickness of the wings during lift and flight. It received a patent and was thereafter given to the Army Air Force. He was eventually honorably discharged. Fresco had many advanced ideas for airplane aviation and this gained him a reputation in the aircraft industry for being "a man twenty years ahead of his time
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In the mid-1940s, Fresco began working with Earl Muntz and Michael Shore who employed Fresco to design a new low cost form of modernistic housing. The result was one of the first all glass-aluminum structures, known as the Trend Home. At 930 square feet, there were 12 variations. The structure could be erected by ten men in eight hours. Its design of light weight, high strength, and long lasting materials allowed for reduced production costs and streamlined production which increased its economic viability. The resulting cost was approximately $5,200.
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In 1949, Fresco was commissioned by Hollywood producers Jack Moss and Irving Yergin to develop technology for viewing three-dimensional images without the use of eye glasses. The technology developed was for both theater audiences and home television. Novel in its simplicity, it was relatively cheap and required little modification of the projection systems used at the time. The technology also had prospects for being used for medical x-ray units and surgery. It was demonstrated in the summer of 1949 in California.
During Fresco's later years in Los Angeles, he also worked as model designer for science-fiction movies such as the television show Ring Around the Moon which became the filmProject Moonbase. Fresco was noted for his high quality models and special effects despite the low budgets of the B-movie productions. Fresco also worked as technical adviser in the film industry, most notably for Lou Stoumen's 1956 Oscar nominated documentary The Naked Eye. Fresco's reputation in Los Angeles eventually earned him a guest appearance on Art Baker's nationwide television show, You Asked For It as the "man of tomorrow" in the early 1950s.
From the mid-1950s and throughout the 1960s, Fresco developed what he called "Project Americana." It was a ten year plan for American social change. His vision included a circular city and the application of full cyber-automation of city operations wherein machines direct other machines to operate. Such was Fresco's conception of a "thinking city" in "The Machine-Machine Age." The national plan also included methods for aiding struggling nations by erecting prefabricated factories that produce prefabricated products for building, installation of cultural centers, and a new curriculum for schooling.
Fresco's ideas for Project Americana continued to evolve and became what was known as Sociocyberneering Inc, a non-profit organization founded in 1971 for which Fresco was president. It was a non-political and non-sectarian membership organization having, at its peak, 250 members, many of whom became Fresco's pupils. Fresco frequently hosted educational lectures in Miami Beach and at his home in Coral Gables. His lecture topics pertained to society, social change, science, technology, engineering, architecture, religion, prudence, semantics, anthropology, psychology, systems theory, and education, among other topics. Aside from educating, Fresco worked with members of the organization to produce designs, films, and literature pertaining to the aims and goals of the organization.
In 1994, Fresco rebooted Sociocyberneering Inc. under the new name, The Venus Project. By this time, Fresco had accumulated a large quantity of designs and models that could represent a general outline of how his vision may look and operate, and were used to gain exposure for the organization through educational films and literature distributed to teachers and universities. Aside from their educational materials, Fresco and Meadows continued to support the project throughout the '90s through freelance inventing, such as for Pratt and Whitney, industrial engineering, conventional architectural modeling, and invention consultations.In the process, some of Fresco's futuristic designs succeeded in inspiring some development companies. In 2006, William Gazecki directed the semi-biographical film about Fresco, "Future by Design" in which Fresco was compared to the Renaissancepolymath Leonardo Da Vinci. In 2008, Peter Joseph featured Fresco in the film Zeitgeist Addendum wherein his vision of the future was presented as a possible solution for the societal and environmental crisis expounded in the film. The reaction that followed was manifested by the development of The Zeitgeist Movement which actively professes Fresco's ideas and once considered itself the "activist arm" of The Venus Project. As of April, 2011, however, the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement disaffiliated.
In 2010, Fresco attempted to trademark the phrase "Resource-Based Economy" in the midst of its popularization to preserve his definition of it. The phrase was reviewed and found to be too generic to qualify. The action to trademark Fresco's specific meaning was therefore blocked. Other small Internet organizations now profess a version of a resource-based economy based on Fresco's original conception.
Throughout 2010, Fresco traveled with Meadows on a worldwide tour in response to a growing interest in The Venus Project. On January 15, 2011, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward was released in theaters, again featuring Fresco and a more elaborate articulation of his vision as a possible solution for planetary dilemmas. Currently, Fresco holds lectures and tours at The Venus Project location and has initiated the funding of a major motion picture that may be made which will depict The Venus Project future. In November, 2011, Fresco spoke to protestors at the "occupy Miami" site at Government Center in Miami.
Venus Project has an official stance on the Occupy movement stated on the website.
"We are concerned that meeting the demands of the protestors while keeping the current economic system in place will not have the desired outcome. It will merely serve to temporarily pacify those who are abused and rightly angry. This will not solve the problems but will prolong them. When force does not work and superficial fixes (laws) are put into place without addressing the underlying problems, then no effective remedy will occur. It is the monetary economic system itself that is the root cause of these problems. Greed, corruption, and war are inevitable byproducts of the monetary system. "
"The Venus Project calls for a total redesign of society where human rights are not merely paper proclamations but a way of life. A society can be designed where war and want are distant memories. All people need clean air, water, food, a relevant education, and the necessities of life. This is now possible if we update our social systems as we have updated our technologies. We are not separate from nature and must live within the carrying capacity of our planet’s resources. This can be accomplished by applying the methods of science to the way we live with the main aim being the wellbeing of all the world’s people and the protection of the environment."
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