If you'e not familiar with the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, check out Disinformation's dossier on him. He was a true genius, a somewhat eccentric visionary whose theoretical and applied advances in engineering, physics, and other fields have made large, though often underrated impacts.

Unbelievably, Critical Path--published weeks after his death at age 87--is the only one of his 28 books that is still in print, with the on-again, off-again exception of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969).

(Recently, St. Martin's Press has issued a collection of some of Bucky's most important writings, Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for a New Millennium. The Buckminster Fuller Institute has also re-issued some of his writings as Internet e-books.)

In Critical Path, Fuller is as ambitious as ever. His goal is to plot the entire history of the human race, examine where we are now, and show us the bright future we could make for ourselves if we would just quit being such jerks. Along the way, he proves the existence of God, exposes hidden global power structures, solves all the world's problems, and performs other such feats seemingly without breaking a sweat.

Critical Path has many of the hallmarks of so-called "crackpot literature": unorthodox punctuation (massive, annoying hyphenation), strange language (overuse of the prefix "omni-"; humans referred to as "Earthians"), an impossibly broad scope, and noticeable hubris because the author is sure that he has all the answers. Yet it's not easy to dismiss Fuller, considering his many groundbreaking achievements, including the Geodesic Dome (the strongest, most stable, and most efficient type of structure ever built) and the Dymaxion Projection map (the most accurate, undistorted map of the world ever put on paper).

In Critical Path, Fuller declares that humanity is at a crucial juncture in its evolution in which we can, within a lifetime, either have a perfect world where all of us have everything we need or destroy the planet and ourselves. Sounds like typical millennial/New Age thinking, except that Fuller has a concrete plan to bring about Utopia. His hope rests completely with technology and science. Moreover, he states that at the time this book was published (1981), all the necessary technology already existed; it just wasn't being used properly. "Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize that sum-totally, the omni-engineering-integratable, invisible revolution in the metallurgical, chemical, and electronic arts now makes it possible to do so much more with ever fewer pounds and volumes of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given technological function that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival. War is obsolete . . . It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human life advantaging and environmental controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful."

Fuller goes on to discuss what these technological advances are and how they will help us. First up is a full integration of the world's electrical-energy networks into one totally efficient grid that "will deliver its electrical energy anywhere, to anyone, at any one time, at one common rate."

We also need to construct a large number of Geoscopes, which are large, see-through spheres shaped and oriented like the planet Earth. By standing inside, you can view the stars exactly as they appear to anyone standing at any point on Earth. Computers for each Geoscope will "store all relevant inventories of world data arranged chronologically, in the order and spacing of discovery, as they have occurred throughout all known history." Time-lapse images projected onto the Geoscope will display in a matter of minutes all sorts of global, long-term trends, everything from continental drift to human migration to use of transportation. "With the Geoscope humanity would be able to recognize formerly invisible patterns and thereby to forecast and plan in vastly greater magnitude than heretofore."

Fuller goes on to offer other ideas for changing the structure of the work week, the educational system, transportation, government, architecture (cities and individual dwellings would use Geodesic domes), and much more. His naive goal is the disappearance of nations, a one-world democracy in which everyone has everything they need.

Like other visionaries before him, Fuller made bold predictions that have failed to come true, at least within the timeframe he mentions. He predicted that the world energy grid would be operational by 1989. He hoped to see the wide use of Geodesic dome cities and dwellings by 2000. Sorry, Bucky.

Although Fuller may sound overly optimistic, he apparently knows what he's up against. Every so often, he slams the human race as it presently exists. In one memorable passage, he refers to humanity as "failure-prone, competitively greedy, selfishly wasteful, fearful, and inferiority-conditioned".