"Fuller’s theory of ephemeralization anticipated the digital age; his invented terms 'synergy' and 'Spaceship Earth' became part of the language..."

"... scientists who discovered a carbon molecule that looked like a geodesic sphere were aided by his insights (and named it buckminsterfullerene). But it’s also hard to take some of his more eccentric ideas seriously, such as 'air-deliverable housing,' or the proposal to cover Midtown Manhattan with a huge dome. National Lampoon parodied his apparently limitless technological optimism in a feature titled 'Buckminster Fuller’s Repair Manual for the Entire Universe.'... Fuller’s public lectures, which could go on for five or six hours, were famous. Always extemporaneous, these modern-day Chautauquas were a startling weave of poetry and science, delivered in his own peculiar locution. Stewart Brand summed it up well: 'Fuller’s lectures have a raga quality of rich, nonlinear, endless improvisation full of convergent surprises.'... The counterculture eventually lost its enthusiasm for the domes, which, according to Brand, always leaked, wasted space and were impossible to subdivide and furnish. 'When my generation outgrew the domes,' Brand wrote, 'we simply left them empty, like hatchlings leaving their eggshells.'"

 
Writes Witold Rybczynski, in "Buckminster Fuller, Role Model and Cautionary Tale/The biography 'Inventor of the Future,' by Alec Nevala-Lee, explores the dreams and failures of an American optimist" (NYT).

There's a Wikipedia article for "Spaceship Earth," and it refutes the assertion that Fuller "invented" the term:

"There are reports that Mr. Obama used to be skeptical of having a library at all..."

"... a bold move would be to revert to tradition and deposit his papers at the Library of Congress."

Failing that, he should set himself apart by thinking small or, at least, smaller. Mr. Obama has written a moving book about his early life; there’s no need to retell that story. His library should be more of an archive and less of a museum, more of a house, less of a shrine. In an austere age, a modest library could be the grandest statement of all.

That's Witold Rybczynski, the urbanism scholar, and I love this idea of presidential humility and minimalism and can even imagine Barack Obama opting to further his glorification and magnification through the old humility and minimalism gambit.

But come on. Well, maybe he will go smallish or arguably smallish... if that's the only way left to make a big impression. Personally, I find gigantic presidential libraries creepy and embarrassing, but then I've only ever been to one. I can't imagine making a pilgrimage to the library of some President I adulated, but then, that's not how I've ever felt about a President, so I'd inevitably be keeping the grim in pilgrimage.

Also, I'd like to question this line of Rybczyki's: "Mr. Obama has written a moving book about his early life; there’s no need to retell that story." That book was written at the outset of his political career, part of an enterprise of packaging, framing, and mythologizing. It is quite obviously in need of retelling. And Obama in his own preface to the 2004 edition acknowledged that he could (and perhaps should) have written a different book:

I think sometimes that had I known [my mother] would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book—less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. In my daughters I see her every day, her joy, her capacity for wonder. I won’t try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.