THE MIAMI HERALD THE HOUSTON CHRONICLEThursday, July 11, 2002; p. E1-2 MAN IS FROM EARTH...IS THE FUTURE FROM VENUS?* TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE Thursday, July 18, 2002 FUTURIST DREAMS OF THREE DAY WORKWEEK, NO HUNGER Thursday, July 18, 2002 ENGINEER LAYS A FOUNDATION FOR UTOPIAN DREAM WORLD FORT MYERS NEWS PRESS Thursday, July 18, 2002 ONTARIO ARGUS OBSERVER ARCADIA DE SOTO SUNFriday, July 19, 2002 FUTURIST HOLDS ONTO HIS UTOPIAN DREAM Friday, July 19, 2002 ENGLEWOOD SUN Friday, July 19, 2002 NORTH PORT SUN Friday, July 19, 2002 PHILANTHROPIST WON'T LET GO OF HIS UTOPIAN DREAM THE HACKENSACK RECORD Tuesday, July 23, 2002; p. F1, 8NO TIME LIKE THE FUTURE SANA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS Wednesday, July 24, 2002; p. D7Y FACTOR LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR Thursday, July 25, 2002 ; p. J1, 4 What Could Be INDIANAPOLIS STAR Sunday, July 28, 2002 ; p. J1, 4 A FUTURIST SHARES HIS IDYLLIC VISION Saturday, July 28, 2002 FLORIDA FUTURIST HOLDS ONTO HIS UTOPIAN DREAMS Sunday, August 4, 2002; p. 1, 3 MAN LOOKS TO CREATE IDEAL FUTURE Sunday, August 4, 2002; p. 1, 3 MAN LOOKS TO CREATE IDEAL FUTURE Sunday, August 4, 2002; p. 1, 3 MAN LOOKS TO CREATE IDEAL FUTURE Sunday, August 4, 2002; p. 1, 3 MAN LOOKS TO CREATE IDEAL FUTURE GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD Sunday, September 22, 2002 IN FUTURIST DREAM CITY, ALL NEEDS ARE MET by Nery Ynclan VENUS, Fla. – At 86, Jacque Fresco doesn't dwell on the past. He works single-mindedly on the future – his version of the future, that is. And if you're having a bad day, that future is going to sound good. In Fresco's world, all countries share their resources; all manual labor is done by machine; there is no poverty, hunger or war; there is no government or need for money; adults work only three days a week; everyone gets to pursue their personal interests. Fresco, by turns futurist, author, inventor, philosopher, and dreamer, has been working toward that place he calls "The Venus Project" for all of his storied life. Why man needs to get to this new plain and how to get there is detailed in his new book," The Best That Money Can't Buy-Beyond Politics, Poverty & War" (Phenix & Phenix Books, $24.95), *which Fresco will discuss at 8 tonight at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.* "The way we're going, one day we'll all be in an unliveable, toxic place," Fresco says. "We have nuclear bombs to level the world several dozen times. With the money it took to make them, we could have built so many universities and schools and healthcare centers and helped people live so well they need not struggle ever again. There's something dreadfully wrong." From his 25-acre spread in Central Florida, dotted with dome-shaped buildings of concrete, steel and fiberglass that look like the Jetsons' vacation ranch, Fresco has not given up his dream of building a $50 million prototype city in which all human needs are met by technology, doing away with the need for money or the motive for crime. His more immediate goal is to find the funding to make a feature-length film of his techno-utopian lifestyle so his theories can reach a mass audience. The May-June issue of The Futurist, which reviews Fresco's book calls him "a visionary engineer" and whether the future he envisions "is probable or even possible is open to debate, but he succeeds in conveying the power of thinking of the future on a grander scale." Drexel University sociology professor Arthur Shostak has used many of Fresco's ideas in his classes. "His contribution to futuristics is singular, as few, if any around the globe, dare the sweep, the depth, and the drama of his vision. When he writes or speaks, futurists grow quiet, pensive, and finally, appreciative-as his work, however one might differ on the details, is sound in its call for a thorough examination of the assumptions under which we labor," says Shostak. "While little of his vision may materialize in the lifetime of us all, our grandchildren may yet salute much of what Jacque first helped them set in motion." The industrial engineer's ideas have been featured most recently on the Discovery Channel's two-hour special Engineering the Impossible and The Weekly Reader, which circulates nationally in classrooms. Fresco and his partner of 26 years, Roxanne Meadows, received more than 1,000 letters, most of them from children asking if they could move to Fresco's brave new world. Looking and acting a couple of decades younger than his age, Fresco can show a long list of appearances at universities, including MIT and Princeton, on radio and in newspapers and magazines-recounting his 60 years of ideas. A handful of yellowing Miami Herald clippings makes it clear that Fresco has been delighting those with a longing for utopia and a taste for technology for decades – including designing cities in the sea and a time-saving, low-repair, 31-part car. What sets apart his vision from other futurists might be his engineering background, which allows him to build, or try to explain how to build, many of the technological wonders he says will free mankind from the mundane work that keeps us focused on small pursuits rather than self-improvement and the betterment of the world. "For a woman to spend the best years of her life typing out the same old letters or standing behind a counter waiting for someone to buy something is a horrible waste of the mind," Fresco says. "The technology already exists to do away with most of these kinds of jobs." Fresco says "cybernation" – the wedding of the computer to production – doesn't go as far as it could today because it would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that possibility scares people. "It will probably take some kind of economic or environmental catastrophe to get people to turn to something else," says Fresco. "I'm not wishing for either, but it seems inevitable." Born in Manhattan in 1916, when fire engines were still drawn by horses, Fresco says his interest in creating a dramatically different social order emerged from the heartaches of the Great Depression. It was a time when, from one week to the next and without the natural world and its resources changing an iota, the fall of the monetary system left families hungry and jobless. Fresco began to read books like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and started to develop his own blueprint for a culture based on values and resources. His father was an agriculturist, so Fresco grew up knowing of nature's bounty if properly harnessed. He worked many jobs, designing aircraft, movie special effects and developing medical devices. Along the way, he says, he met Albert Einstein; R. Buckminster Fuller, the famed designer of domes like the signature sphere at Disney's Epcot Center; and former vice president Hubert Humphrey. Fresco also appeared several times on The Larry King Show when the talk host broadcast from Miami in the 1960s. "Every revolutionary idea was laughed at, at first," says Fresco. "The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics. Alexander Graham Bell wasn't an electrical engineer, he was a phoneticist. All real innovations come from outsiders-it rarely comes from institutions." Fresco's Venus lab, about 12 miles from Palmdale, is visited by those interested in his philosophies, as well as nearby schoolchildren. It's filled with scale models of his circular cities, modular dome housing and cities in the sea. He uses the expertly crafted models made by his artist partner Meadows to make movies he sells to high school teachers and university professors intrigued by his ideas. The tapes and books, and the models Meadows creates of commercial real estate projects, provide the couple income to keep their hope of finding a major backer for The Venus Project alive. In the meantime Fresco continues to invent, whether it be a device to kill anthills without poisons or shoes that breathe with every step. "Refrigerators should be round with shelves that rotate so you can easily reach every item," the inventor says. The compound is filled with experiments. It's all a way to fund the tapes and books he hopes will spread his larger message. Says Meadows: "We know people are hungry for a new way of life by the letters we get. They write to us and say, `I thought we were alone.' We give new hope for the world because it's a specific plan, not just verbal rhetoric." Says Fresco: "It's time to reconsider our values and our outlook. I cannot predict what the future will be-only what it could be. " |