The advertising reality of today is very much different from the one that Buckminster Fuller found himself in. In his time, you had to pay ad men to play your message to a certain number of people on the radio, or, much later in even his own life, the television. This is pay for play access, and is the sole reason why Coca Cola is able to exist as a company whatsoever, let alone their continued dominance of a market which should hardly exist to begin with.
Advertising has thrown a wrench into economics: it makes the system make no sense. If an inventor is supposed to be rewarded for their usefulness, how is one of the largest companies on Earth one that provides a certain recipe of sugar water, having no correlation to human need or function? It’s a trick.
The reality of today is very much different: one need not pay for communications capability or capacity. One need not censor their message in nearly any way. Circa 1790, there were likely less than 100,000 people truly literate in the English language. The cost to reach them would mean printing presses, horses and carriages, and more. In the present day, it is quite possible for me to reach a potential of 8 billion people — and even more, forwardly moving through time — with an input cost of essentially zero dollars. Moreover, these individuals may find my message only when they look for it. If I describe it accurately, it will be promoted, at least somewhat, in search functions and algorithms; critically, not to the masses, but to those who have /searched/ for it. While all of these companies operating this grand infrastructure, still — out of sheer ignorance, and lack of any better ideas — generate revenue off of a pay for play model, how /you/ may use it is completely the opposite of pay for play. The creators are the new advertisers of their own works and the paying advertisers are the suckers.
Buckminster Fuller’s philosophy was to leave artifacts, that people might pick up when they needed it. Social messaging can be exactly this, if we are to step out of the revolving numbers drive that these companies, and the public, has chosen to align themselves with. These isolated bits of thoughts, converted to artifact-message, and scattered periodically in the digital sand, may be found by search and picked up when needed. An Instagram post does not have to be totally different from a book. Due to increase in bandwidth capacity, an advertisement now has to be hardly different from ‘the thing’ it advertises. The technological capacity is a framework, a minimum; is an empty vessel, is omni-encapsulating — that is majority being used in a small minded way at present. But you don’t have to use it that way. You can use it differently, and beam out your different messages differently, with very little expectation or hope of money or massive promotional reach. You simply make honest artifacts, and automate their continuous distribution — quite possibly to no one. You don’t want any more views than the right number. I don’t write my books, or invent my inventions, for anyone other than the people who need them.
It is entirely up to the viewer if they listen to what I have to say in my artifacts. I never want to ‘sell’ anyone. I do not want to convince anyone. I will state the facts, the contents, the plan, clearly and simply, and will trust that if what I have created is needed it will be used. You can fake a lot, and a fake can even bring in a lot, but there is never — and never has been — a substitute for the real thing. Tesla may have been mocked, bullied, ridiculed, and forced out of school. But, receiving his patents for the totality of the A/C electric generation, distribution and use system (‘the grid’), Westinghouse never said: “Now where’s your degree? Your esteemed position?” The proof was in the patent. The highest calling is not to be liked, or popular, or wealthy, but to be useful. The only way to ever become the first three, if you do decide it is something you want, without being a fraud resting their considerable weight on a house of cards is to be the last one: useful.