World Game™ Workshop

Wikipedia: Dymaxion map of the world with the 30 largest countries and territories by total area, roughly to scale

We face, thus, a crisis of global knowledge. Globalization is straining not only economic and environmental systems but also the basic American educational structures, from preschool to postdoc. We cannot understand what globalization entails if we lack fundamental knowledge of the globe on which it is played out. The ways in which the world was taught were never adequate; today they are dismally dysfunctional…Yet globalization is such a compelling topic that some form of coordinated inquiry is desirable.

Global Ignorance | Martin W. Lewis | Geographical Review, Vol. 90 | No. 4 (Oct., 2000)

In a few generations man's world has shrunk from a vast planet , whose surface was still incompletely known and whose people were relatively remote strangers to one another, to a continuous neighborhood , In which no man is more than a few hours distance from all other men and on which communication between men may be instantaneous.

World Society’s awareness and understanding of the problems accompanying these changes has not, however, kept pace with the changes themselves. The world's literacy regarding its major problems is still relatively inadequate. Historically accustomed to geographical remoteness and comparatively isolated autonomy, man still tends to think in these terms. His attention is most easily focused on local tensions and upheavals which are in themselves the surface manifestations of the larger problems rather than prime causes. Literacy regarding world problems lies initially with the understanding of their global nature, and with their underlying prime causes rather than local surface events.

R. Buckminster Fuller | Design Science Decade | Document 4 | The Ten Year Program | 1963

A primary goal of the World Game Workshops is to dramatically improve the general public’s overall level of Global Systems Literacy which we define as understanding the drivers behind current and historic global patterns and trends having the greatest influence on the structures of everyday life. In some cases this involves visualizing what was formerly invisible and consequently rarely, if ever, factored into our search for solutions. Global Systems Literacy is key to the discovery of trimtabs – points of leverage -- capable of influencing systems with the least expenditure of time, resources and political capital.

This initiative brings together Fuller’s World Game with our concept of Global Systems Literacy to reveal humanity’s options for success.

 The ushering in of the Anthropocene - the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment - compels us more than ever to examine the interactions of human and natural global systems, giving both equal weight.

The World Game Workshops will explore systems at varying levels of detail needs dictate.

Banner graphic: Global Circulation Model