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What do you think of when you contemplate the future?

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For Jacque Fresco, this is what it looks like.

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A future where technology is harnessed for all and money has no relevance.

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Sound far-fetched? Well at 94, the reality is that it's a future Jacque will never see.

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But it won't stop him spending the next seven months traveling the globe promoting his vision.

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It's called "The Venus Project" and he says "50 million people around the world

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are now involved or aware of it,"

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but of what? I caught up with Jacque earlier today and asked if

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what he was promoting was, quite simply, utopia?

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No. There's no such thing.

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The reason there's no such thing as utopia, is because,

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if you design the best building you know how to design,

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that's the best you know up to now.

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With the advent of new material, the city will keep changing.

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There's no best laptop.

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Next year they'll be smaller, lighter, wider range.

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Cameras no longer use film.

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So you can't design the best camera.

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You can only design the best that you know of up to now.

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No utopias, no final frontiers.

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But for you, your vision of the future...

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...is always changing.

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But you look at some of your designs, some of your visions for the future,

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and people say, "Yeah, look it's like you might have seen in popular mechanics from the 50s."

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You know, "This is what's going to be like in 1999..."

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No. Nothing like that.

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Hollywood shows you spaceships and people using laser weapons.

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They take the same cowboys and indians, and put' em in spaceships.

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That is not the future.

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That's man's concept of this limited society that doesn't teach you how to think and look ahead.

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If we don't live in accordance with the nature of the Earth,

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if we don't live in accordance with the natural resources, we can't live.

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You can't designate a population of 10 million without doing a study of the resources you have.

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After you study, we have enough resources to support so many billions of people and

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if you exceed that, you're going to have starvation, malnutrition, territorial disputes.

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If you maintain a population in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth,

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no opinions of senators.

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Politics was great... a hundred years ago.

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Today it's all obsolete.

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You're talking revolution.

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No.

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When society breaks down...

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Technical revolution...

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...but when society breaks down then they'll want to do it a different way.

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I'm sorry about that, but it seems that conditions were so abusive, in some lands,

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that they put in socialism, communism, whatever, or fascism;

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that fits the conditions that people live under.

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None of them are the solution.

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All governments, all through history, have been corrupt.

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You must know that people look at your concepts.

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Yes, I have...

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...and with utmost respect, Jacque, they will say, "You're a crazy old man."

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I understand that. This is not unusual.

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Every move from women's rights, to child labor, were fought with battles, all the time.

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No new system ever came in smoothly.

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Man is the dumbest animal. He pollutes the ocean, the air, the rivers, the atmosphere, and people.

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They put themselves on a pedestal, [and say] they were the highest form of life.

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That's an ego trip. They're not. We're not civilized yet.

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As long as you have prisons, police, armies, navies; we are not civilized.

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Until the world learns to live together, constructively,

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that'll be the beginning of the scientific age.

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We're not there yet.

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Look at you now, you're touring around, you're talking to people.

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Yes.

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And you're 94 years old.

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Yes.

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You haven't got anything better to do?

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No. Not now, I'm afraid of the direction that man is taking.

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We have bombs now that are like a thousand times greater than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

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How stupid can you be? What can you accomplish with that?

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The United States has 300 submarines, and according to the Navy,

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each one has more destructive power than all the wars in history;

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what are you going to accomplish with that? A burnt-out radioactive planet;

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you won the war?

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What do you win?

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It's much easier to bring the nations of the world together, not kill those that don't agree with you.

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Bring them together...

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Is your life in danger?

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My life is always in danger, it's always been in danger.

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I developed the first flying wing aircraft, I had nothing but trouble.

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I do all I can do, rather than fear death. I don't fear death.

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I fear where man is going. The hell they can produce is unbelievable.

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Because of human, not really human stupidity, they're not educated in our schools.

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If I took every soldier, I would educate them to be problem solvers, not killing machines.

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An amazing guy, he once joined the Ku Klux Klan

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just to persuade them that what they were doing was wrong.

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Look, in case you're wondering about that flying wing aircraft Jacque mentioned there,

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he was working at Douglas Aircraft when the first Northrop flying wing was developed.

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In layman's terms, it's a bit like the predecessor to the Stealth Bomber.

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The technology Jacque Fresco designed went on to be patented by the US Air Force.

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Now if you're interested in hearing more,

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he's going to be giving a lecture at Auckland tomorrow night.

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I think that's at the Hopetoun Alpha; the details will be on our website

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and we'll have the full interview available there as well.