What do you think of when you contemplate the future?
For Jacque Fresco, this is what it looks like.
A future where technology is harnessed for all and money has no relevance.
Sound far-fetched? Well at 94, the reality is that it's a future Jacque will never see.
But it won't stop him spending the next seven months traveling the globe promoting his vision.
It's called "The Venus Project" and he says "50 million people around the world
are now involved or aware of it,"
but of what? I caught up with Jacque earlier today and asked if
what he was promoting was, quite simply, utopia?
No. There's no such thing.
The reason there's no such thing as utopia, is because,
if you design the best building you know how to design,
that's the best you know up to now.
With the advent of new material, the city will keep changing.
There's no best laptop.
Next year they'll be smaller, lighter, wider range.
Cameras no longer use film.
So you can't design the best camera.
You can only design the best that you know of up to now.
No utopias, no final frontiers.
But for you, your vision of the future...
...is always changing.
But you look at some of your designs, some of your visions for the future,
and people say, "Yeah, look it's like you might have seen in popular mechanics from the 50s."
You know, "This is what's going to be like in 1999..."
No. Nothing like that.
Hollywood shows you spaceships and people using laser weapons.
They take the same cowboys and indians, and put' em in spaceships.
That is not the future.
That's man's concept of this limited society that doesn't teach you how to think and look ahead.
If we don't live in accordance with the nature of the Earth,
if we don't live in accordance with the natural resources, we can't live.
You can't designate a population of 10 million without doing a study of the resources you have.
After you study, we have enough resources to support so many billions of people and
if you exceed that, you're going to have starvation, malnutrition, territorial disputes.
If you maintain a population in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth,
no opinions of senators.
Politics was great... a hundred years ago.
Today it's all obsolete.
You're talking revolution.
No.
When society breaks down...
Technical revolution...
...but when society breaks down then they'll want to do it a different way.
I'm sorry about that, but it seems that conditions were so abusive, in some lands,
that they put in socialism, communism, whatever, or fascism;
that fits the conditions that people live under.
None of them are the solution.
All governments, all through history, have been corrupt.
You must know that people look at your concepts.
Yes, I have...
...and with utmost respect, Jacque, they will say, "You're a crazy old man."
I understand that. This is not unusual.
Every move from women's rights, to child labor, were fought with battles, all the time.
No new system ever came in smoothly.
Man is the dumbest animal. He pollutes the ocean, the air, the rivers, the atmosphere, and people.
They put themselves on a pedestal, [and say] they were the highest form of life.
That's an ego trip. They're not. We're not civilized yet.
As long as you have prisons, police, armies, navies; we are not civilized.
Until the world learns to live together, constructively,
that'll be the beginning of the scientific age.
We're not there yet.
Look at you now, you're touring around, you're talking to people.
Yes.
And you're 94 years old.
Yes.
You haven't got anything better to do?
No. Not now, I'm afraid of the direction that man is taking.
We have bombs now that are like a thousand times greater than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
How stupid can you be? What can you accomplish with that?
The United States has 300 submarines, and according to the Navy,
each one has more destructive power than all the wars in history;
what are you going to accomplish with that? A burnt-out radioactive planet;
you won the war?
What do you win?
It's much easier to bring the nations of the world together, not kill those that don't agree with you.
Bring them together...
Is your life in danger?
My life is always in danger, it's always been in danger.
I developed the first flying wing aircraft, I had nothing but trouble.
I do all I can do, rather than fear death. I don't fear death.
I fear where man is going. The hell they can produce is unbelievable.
Because of human, not really human stupidity, they're not educated in our schools.
If I took every soldier, I would educate them to be problem solvers, not killing machines.
An amazing guy, he once joined the Ku Klux Klan
just to persuade them that what they were doing was wrong.
Look, in case you're wondering about that flying wing aircraft Jacque mentioned there,
he was working at Douglas Aircraft when the first Northrop flying wing was developed.
In layman's terms, it's a bit like the predecessor to the Stealth Bomber.
The technology Jacque Fresco designed went on to be patented by the US Air Force.
Now if you're interested in hearing more,
he's going to be giving a lecture at Auckland tomorrow night.
I think that's at the Hopetoun Alpha; the details will be on our website
and we'll have the full interview available there as well.