Venus Project - A Future World

Jacque Fresco is an industrial designer and social engineer, author, lecturer, futurist, inventor, and the creator of the Venus Project. Fresco has worked as both designer and inventor in a wide range of fields spanning from biomedical innovations to totally integrated social systems. He believes his ideas would maximally benefit the greatest number of people and he states some of his ideas stem from his formative years during the Great Depression. 

In the mid-1970s, he started The Venus Project and the non-profit organization Future by Design together with Roxanne Meadows, that reflects the culmination of Fresco’s life work. To this day he writes and lectures extensively on subjects ranging from the holistic design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits it will bring to society. 

Born on March 13, 1916, Jacque Fresco started his professional career as design consultant for Rotor Craft Helicopter Company. He served in the Army Design and Development Unit at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, U.S. and worked for the Raymond De-Icer Corporation based in Los Angeles, California, U.S., as a research engineer. He worked for many companies and in many fields such as technical consultant and technical advisor to the Motion Picture Industry, industrial design instructor at the Art Center School in Hollywood, California. In Los Angeles, he was colleague and work associate of psychologist Donald Powell Wilson.  In 1942, Fresco started the Revell Plastics Company (now Revell-Monogram) with Lou Glaser, although he later left to pursue his other ideas, working variously in aerospace research and development, architecture, efficient automobile design, bare-eye 3D cinematic projection methods and medical equipment design where he developed a three dimensional X-ray unit amongst other things. 

The Venus Project was started around 1975 by self-described futurist and "social designer", Jacque Fresco and by former portrait artist, Roxanne Meadows in Venus, Florida, USA. It is a 21-acre (85,000 m2) property populated with various domed buildings of his design along with his assistant, Roxanne Meadows, where they work on books and film to demonstrate their concepts and ideas. 

The Venus Project was incorporated in 1995, and now has a non-profit sector called Future by Design. The project was founded on the idea that poverty is caused by the stifling of progress in technology, which itself is caused by the present world's profit-driven economic system. The progression of technology, if it were carried on independent of its profitability, Fresco theorizes, would make more resources available to more people. This new-found abundance of resources would reduce the human tendency toward independence, corruption and greed, and instead make people more likely to help each other. Fundamental to the project is the elimination of the current money-based economy in favor of what Fresco calls a resource-based economy. According to a 2008 interview with Fresco and Meadows, Fresco's lack of credentials has made it difficult for him to gain influence in academic circles. He adds that when universities do invite him to speak, they often don't give him enough time to explain his views. 

For centuries, the world's civilizations have undergone recurrent social oscillations: poverty (for some), recession, war, crime, international conflicts, government corruption, etc. The great majority of people are losing confidence in present day political leadership. Trends seem to indicate that society is moving towards a breakdown of socio-economic system as witnessed by political incompetence, crime, technological unemployment, environmental pollution, dominant self-centered values, etc.  People feel that the present social institutions are incapable of dealing with the many problems that plague nation today. The worlds present problems cannot be solved within the framework of today's social institutions. They cannot be solved politically or financially because they are technical in nature. It is necessary for nation's survival to be  reordered priorities to maintain dynamic equilibrium between humans and the environment.

Transitional decisions should be considered that could permit to volve from present culture of scarcity, waste, and environmental destruction to a caring society of ecological concern and abundance. This approach calls for a radical change in methods of social operation. It would call for a total redesign in the way that are conducted social affairs. Culture must be updated to utilize the most sophisticated methods of science and technology applied to the cybernated age. It must be a system that surpasses the old monetary system and its inadequate code of ethics. Anything less than these recommended changes will have very little effect on solving the problems of our present day culture.  Before any such project as social redesign can be installed you must have available resources, technical personnel, and the equipment necessary to achieve the end goals. Accompanying this must be an ethical code that would be acceptable to the participants such as an end to war, hunger, poverty, scarcity, environmental destruction, etc. 

The Venus Project is a non profit organization that offers a vision of a future society that is dedicated to human concern and environmental reclamation. It is an attainable vision of a bright and better future. It proposes the redesign of  the social institutions by applying the latest technologies to benefit everyone. The uniqueness of the project is that it presents refreshing alternatives that offer practical solutions to many problems.  With the advent of automation and cybernation, there will be an ever-increasing replacement of people by automated systems. It is only a matter of time until the purchasing power of the vast majority will be tremendously reduced, and finally eliminated. Automation requires no health insurance, pension plans, vacation time, or 'people problems'.  As a result of this, fewer people will be able to purchase goods and services even though the capability to produce an abundance exists. This may cause a breakdown of present economic system and a reduction in the quality of life for most people.