Bucky Fuller was an optimist. At a time when the Worldwatch Institute was predicting global disaster (due to overcrowding, overpollution and insufficient resources), Bucky was quietly promoting his vision of doing more with less.

He was one of the first engineers to realize that the trend over the 19th and 20th centuries was not only to do more, in the sense of producing more manufacturing output, growing more food, and accelerating the progress of technology, but to do more with less. He realized that technology could be used not only to do new things, but to do old things more efficiently.

His geodesic dome was a good example: it created an enclosed space using far less material than prior engineering. He applied the more with less philosophy to all sorts of engineering fields, at scales ranging from hand-held products to entire cities.

Fuller was, above all, a humanitarian. While his focus was always on mathematics, engineering and technology, his aim was always the application of these disciplines to allow humans all over the world to live better lives. Bucky was clearly one of the first citizens of the entire world, not just one nation.

History has proven Bucky's vision right and the malthusian Worldwatch eggheads wrong. The world now feeds billions more people using fewer resources than ever before. Whereas 35% of the world was starving back when Bucky was getting his start, the number had been reduced to 15% by the time he died, despite an increase of 2-3 billion people to feed.