In such a situation, any promotion of the original ideas inevitably encounters a dual perception. It is difficult for us to approach potential partners or build long-term initiatives without a real and reliable foundation.

This is precisely why the “Earth Renovate” team was created. We decided that the best solution is to gather all the efforts and resources of volunteers to speak about what Jacque Fresco spoke about and to spread his ideas — now without him. In fact, we strive to recreate his materials, significantly expand them — and even go further!

Goals of “Earth Renovate”

We want to create as many channels in different languages as possible to speak loudly about existing global problems and real alternatives. Of course, for now we cannot use footage of Jacque Fresco’s cities of the future, as we are constrained by copyright. But we can make videos, talk about current issues, and combine today’s popular topics with the proposals and ideas we aim to promote.

Over time, I’m confident we’ll be able to significantly expand the team and produce more and more content. We’ll reach out to other organizations and create an entire community of people ready to change the world.

We are not limited to Jacque Fresco’s materials. We can use modern scientific research, correct his mistakes, and ultimately promote one simple message: the existing system is no good — and we need a completely new one.

Who are we and how did we come together?

Around the summer of 2024, these thoughts wouldn’t leave my mind. My name is Dima. I’m one of those who helped organize volunteers on the Discord server of the “Designing the Future” organization. I wanted to bring together the most active and ambitious people — those ready to act, not just talk — and start producing content.

In the very beginning, there were only a few of us — just four people. We chose the path of thorough preparation. Before launching the channel, I wanted each member to make a real contribution to the project. By contribution, I mean creating at least a few videos. There’s no point in creating a YouTube channel without content — setting up the channel itself is very simple, but establishing a production process is a whole different art.

How were we able to build such a strong team?

Как As soon as the team was formed, the question of how decisions would be made arose. We didn’t want to follow the path of democracy, where the opinion of the minority is ignored. I also didn’t like the idea of consensus, as it involves long discussions of every proposal by all members.

Thanks to my friend, who had long worked with such teams, we learned about the book “Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness” It became the foundation for how we make decisions now. The method is called “internal consulting.”

“Everyone in the organization can make any decision, but before doing so, the person must ask for advice from all relevant parties and experienced individuals. The initiator of the change is not obligated to consider all the advice received in their decision. The goal is not to make a questionable compromise decision that would satisfy everyone. However, it is necessary to persistently seek advice and seriously consider the information gathered. The larger the decision to be made, the wider the network must be spread to capture all possible sources of information, including, if necessary, SEO or the board of directors. A decision cannot be made if there is a principled objection.”

— Quote from the book Reinventing Organizations.

This is, of course, a simplified description, but you get the idea. We don’t have a “leader.” Anyone who takes on a commitment becomes responsible for their part. I, Dima, as the initiator of the team, have no more power than any other member, although I set the general direction.

I want to emphasize: we hardly use any money within the team. All participants work for free and genuinely believe in the idea. Many have boldly invested their own money in equipment and tools. This doesn’t mean we will always work like this — no, this is not the strategy. I just want to show that the right kind of motivation, where no one orders anyone around and everyone chooses their own role, makes the process lively and engaging.

This was greatly helped by the book Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn — it explains how intrinsic motivation really works.

Another important element is our communication. Here, the book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg helped me a lot. It teaches how to communicate through feelings and needs. I’m sure it helped me avoid making mistakes, especially at the beginning. Its method is about establishing contact with others through empathy.

What have we achieved?

In almost a year, we have gone through quite a lot of difficulties. To say that everything was easy would be an understatement. We had to do a tremendous amount of work to grow from an ordinary volunteer group into a fully productive team.

Our first YouTube channel in Russian has already gathered over 500 subscribers. This might seem small, but we achieved this quite quickly.

Thanks to Andrey — a team member who has been involved in launching such channels for a long time — our results are not a coincidence, but the result of a well-thought-out strategy. We are confident that if we increase video production from two to four per month, the results will grow even faster. For now, everything depends on man-hours and how many people are willing to join us.

The secret of our productivity

The main criterion for joining our team is a simple, yet for some, very challenging condition: completing a test task. The deadline and form of the task are determined by the individual, depending on the chosen area. Want to make covers? Make a cover. Want to edit? Edit a video.

I fundamentally do not allow people into the team who are not ready to take action. We are not interested in beautiful words and “correct” thoughts unless they are backed by concrete results. The test task also shows how capable a person is of making agreements — whether they completed the task on time.

Those who want to take action complete the task easily, in hours or days.

Our team

Andrey — his responsibility is to select topics for future videos on the channel.

Dima (myself) — I am responsible for recruiting team members, managing the Telegram channel, writing scripts, and planning the long-term strategy for the whole team.

Kolyan — I’ll note that he’s 17 years old, and I’m very proud that people at such a young age are willing to engage in serious work. He is responsible for video editing.

Kostya — currently on a long-term vacation. He usually worked on video editing.

Vova — responsible for voiceovers and adapting videos into other languages, as well as creating thumbnails. He’s 15 years old, and behaves more rationally than many people over 25.

Seva — handles voiceovers in the studio.

Savva — our host and the face of the channel.

Kostya (editor/programmer) — occasionally edits scripts and will later work on the website, which is in its final stages of development.

Dima (designer) — currently on vacation, but in the past, he created the great design for our future website.

Future plans

We don’t want to limit ourselves to a Russian-speaking audience. An English-language channel has already been launched. There are more opportunities there, but fewer people familiar with Jacque Fresco’s ideas. If we apply our strategy to it, we would achieve even better results, but due to the lack of people willing to help, we have put it on pause.

We plan to create our own organization, website, community, and much more. It’s still too early to talk about it — we’re limited by resources.

Why can’t you do the same?

Building a team is not an easy task. But if you clearly define the goal and follow the path, reading the books I mentioned — everything is possible. Don’t forget Jacque’s words:
“If you do nothing, nothing will happen.”

Contact Yevhen Sliuzko, the head of Designing the Future, with proposals and ideas you are ready to take on personally. Designing the Future is an excellent platform for bringing like-minded individuals together into a team with shared goals and a drive for real change. If the idea is truly good, they will help you take the first steps and even register your own nonprofit organization with further team development.

Join the Designing the Future organization’s Discord or our “Earth Renovate” Telegram channel — that’s where we found almost all the team members. Unite, just like we did.

However, if you can’t find the right people, we will always be happy to welcome you and are eager to expand. We have a whole set of tasks for which we are looking for people. It’s not necessary to already know how to do everything; the most important thing is a willingness to learn, and the rest will follow or we will teach you.

1. Scriptwriting
2. Script editing
3. Video editing
4. Voiceover
5. 3D visualization
6. Video adaptation
7. Thumbnail creation
8. Your proposal

Message me on Telegram if you want to join the Earth Renovate team!

Dmitriy Molodozhonov

Back in 2021, I was involved in creating videos with the English-speaking YouTube channel The Venus Project team. However, due to the management’s refusal to publish Jacques’ lectures for free, I switched to creating videos with the team at the Extensional channel. I spent approximately 2 years there as a producer, scriptwriter, and video editor, releasing a whole playlist on General Semantics and other topics. Now, I’ve dedicated myself to writing scripts for the Designing The Future organization and assisting in investigations.

The post Beyond The Venus Project: How We Started Up Again appeared first on Designing The Future.

Some of Jacque Fresco’s most memorable lectures for me are his recordings from the 70’s where he covered more topics – I could see the enthusiasm, the belief in a better future, and the desire to use technology to solve problems as quickly as possible. As Jacque got older, he became calmer and more deliberate, repeating calibrated examples and phrases, but it was during those years that his main ideas and suggestions were shaped. That’s why I want to tell you about such an important topic as “transcription and preserving his legacy”.

Earlier I wrote an article about why The Man of Tomorrow, a biographical movie about Jacque Fresco authored by Nathanael Dinwiddie, was not released. And it would seem that one failed project is not proof of his incompetence or irresponsibility in other areas. It wasn’t until I started delving more into Nate’s other projects as a newly minted director that I realized he was treating them the same way he did his Jacque Fresco film project, devouring the reputation and popularity of The Venus Project, which he may well have already permanently destroyed.

The legacy of Jacque Fresco

Not only do I realize the importance of access to these materials, but young Nate does as well. So in 2011, Nathanael Dinwiddie began researching the biography and work of Jacque Fresco, and now “His Life’s Work,” this research, aimed to create an organized archive, produce a film called “The Man of Tomorrow”, and digitize and transcribe all available materials:

• 616 audiocassettes
• 1879 videotapes
• 195 promotional documents
• 5500 design sketches
• 200 schematic designs
• 400 handmade scale models.
• 297 books
• 85 hard disks
• 113 floppy disks
• Hundreds of CDs
• Thousands of photographs and negatives
• thousands of text documents

And so, from 2014 through 2020, 125 volunteers worked to convert his 864 lectures into transcripts. They managed to transcribe about 14% of them. Wow! That’s a hundred lectures. Where are all those lectures?

Money

I was able to find a fraction of all the materials, about 10 lectures, that were handled by volunteers and are now in the store on the website. Of these, only 1 is free, but you still have to leave personal information to access it – the others sell for $3-5-7 each, depending on the format (plain text, plain audio, white screen video with running captions, and audio). The Venus Project’s YouTube channel offers 2-minute clips of these hour-long lectures, prompting you to buy the full version.

I’ve only listened to a small fraction of the recordings, which has been in the public domain for a very long time – and these, again, are just snippets of hour-long lectures where you have to pay for the full ones.

In order to launch the full-fledged transcription phase, the newly formed Board of Directors decided to raise money in 2019. Crowdfunding was successful, resulting in a total of 105 thousand dollars (55,068 from supporters and another 50 thousand dollars from the SOUL team), thus starting the “intensive” work on the transcription of the materials.

This is not only mentioned on the crowdfunding page, but also in the video (see above). Where next to Roxanne is practically the first time Nate appears in public. He, as an archivist by profession, had to take care of this professionally.

For the transcribing itself 25 thousand dollars from the collected amount was allocated. The money was used to hire transcribers from the Fiverr website.

Plans and deadlines

Now comes the fun part! The Venus Project organization has always had big problems in this, and the new directors have taken it to a whole new level! In 2020, an incredibly important video is released about upcoming plans, stating that the transcription project that money was raised for in 2019 will be finished in 2022. But wait, it’s 2024.

The original video about the plans was hidden… I wonder why.

We still have a copy of it, you can view it above. This is the first time we have heard that “the board of directors have made a decision” and they have promised us:

• T-shirts
• lecture transcript
• a book of 200 Jacques quotes
• printed 3d building molds on sale
• website improvement
• better training for the teams
• A separate museum site where Jacque Fresco will be exiled and where you can buy a subscription to listen to his lectures, now known as the Jacque Fresco Foundation
• A podcast from Nate with guest experts

And then on to further plans, with no dates assigned. Publication of a book-collection of selected excerpts from transcriptions, a series of books of selected works, a series of books of collected works sorted by date, whatever that means. Promising critical reviews. Literature reviews. A transdisciplinary research program – I wonder if this is about that pseudoscientific energy research center in Peru we were promised recently? A virtual simulator. Science fiction and a new research center.

Fortuitously, I had two comments left, which I saved just before the video was moved from only by link status to private.

Actually, there were a lot of comments under the video with criticism, which I didn’t save. I was interested in specific comments, but not in emotions, for example, like this one.

Finalizing the transcription work?

In early 2024, the Venus Project’s website publishes a report article “Honoring the Legacy of Jacque Fresco: Transcriptions of His Visionary Lectures Completed” stating clear enough that the transcription of the lectures has been completed. The signed author of the article, Roxanne, writes that they encountered multiple challenges. Of course they have? How could they not!

The article was published on January 27, 2024, 2 weeks after the massive criticism of Designing the Future, as well as an unprecedented discussion of all the failures of The Venus Project. Nate himself was directly involved in these discussions. One of the points of criticism was the lack of reporting and real results from crowdfunding.

While writing this article, I couldn’t get rid of the thought that I didn’t understand the figures given in various sources at all. On the crowdfunding page, 747 lectures were announced. In the reporting article, a figure of 864 lectures (1800 hours) is given. The Jacque Fresco Foundation website lists 840 lectures. Pretty strange for an archivist where everything should be clearly counted.

By the way, for a number of other crowdfunding claims, I couldn’t find any information. Maybe someone knows more and will share?

The report supposedly explained the details of the delay. Seems pretty lame to me though.

Sure, but why couldn’t you ask for a little more money to hire a professional studio, where the sum is estimated to be higher, but the result would be of higher quality? At least for the selected lectures. Or why criticize the choice of people for transcription for whom English is a foreign language.

On the other hand, one could have gone the other way: involving a community that has done excellent translations before, that is completely on the subject, that knows the nuances of Jacques’s speech. At the same time, it is not clear why the material is kept unpublished, with no access for others. Why not publish the material when it’s ready, thereby filling the budget with money from YouTube monetization. Over 13 years, doing it this way, the amount of material could be significant. Is this technically challenging? – No. Well, about 30 lectures have simply become a product on the website, available to very few people.

Jacque Fresco Foundation – the lost Jacque Fresco and the original The Venus Project

So far, the Jacque Fresco Foundation has not published a single lecture or material on its website, even with the promised paid subscription. Well, the directors sent Jacque to the Jacques Fresco Museum, but that’s just lip service – where to really look for him now? Where to listen to lectures? Who is even working on that? Or if they decided to retire the original ” The Venus Project” – where can you read the original program, accomplishments, explanations, FAQs? – Nowhere.

All of this, including Jacque and the original The Venus Project, has been removed from The Venus Project’s resources without providing any platform, any chance to utilize all of the developments and achievements of the original course for those who wish to continue. The directors are now using the name, resources, and the platforms for a completely different direction, without even explaining the details of what is happening. And since Jacques’ lectures, original films and books are the main “assets” of The Venus Project organization, we, and others, are threatened with copyright for further use and promotion, burying all these ideas, and Jacques himself, in an even deeper grave. This, I’m sorry to say, already looks like a goal, not an oversight.

After Nathanael Dinwiddie crossed the doorstep of the archive, no one is allowed to use it, no one is allowed to listen/work on it, create a movie, a video, a review – not even us, with a million and a half subscribers YouTube channel of thematic content, promoting Jacque Fresco’s original ideas, and a more than a decade of our collaboration. Contrary to all the good statements about preserving the legacy of Jacque Fresco – it looks the exact opposite.

It’s been almost half a year since the Jan. 27 article claiming the end of transcription. Could it not have been possible to put up at least some of the material? Maybe the transcription project, in fact, is not yet complete, and this was purely a formalized message of “leave us alone”, “here’s the report”?

With such success, it was possible to announce the completion of the transcription even in 2019. After all, the publication is a separate project! Do we need to raise crowdfunding for that too?

The article was prepared in co-authorship with Yevhen Sliuzko.

Dmitriy Molodozhonov

Back in 2021, I was involved in creating videos with the English-speaking YouTube channel The Venus Project team. However, due to the management’s refusal to publish Jacques’ lectures for free, I switched to creating videos with the team at the Extensional channel. I spent approximately 2 years there as a producer, scriptwriter, and video editor, releasing a whole playlist on General Semantics and other topics. Now, I’ve dedicated myself to writing scripts for the Designing The Future organization and assisting in investigations.

The post Jacque Fresco’s archived lectures – promised, but where are they? appeared first on Designing The Future.

His work was supposed to be culminating in a documentary, Man of Tomorrow, about Jacque Fresco’s life – however, for some reason we never got to see the movie. Why would that be?

I was surfing the internet a while back, and I came across a mention of this movie. I was extremely fascinated by the concept. After all, I had only heard about Jacque from himself, and it would be much more interesting to look at his life through the perspective of other people. I started researching: – When was this movie planned? – and when approximately it will be released? The head of the organization “Designing The Future”, Yevhen Sliuzko, helped me to find the necessary links.

When I checked out the Facebook page for the movie Man of Tomorrow, I discovered that production started back in 2013.

In one of the first pictures I immediately recognize Nate (he’s on the right). You can see his enthusiasm before an exciting endeavor – I wish I were in his shoes. Nathanael managed to get a grant and the necessary resources from the University of Kansas, the Center for Undergraduate Research, the School of the Arts, and the Department of Film where he was studying at the time to make the film. This was written on one of the Facebook Page’s posts.

The resources have been found, production has begun! Here are the photos from the page below. The number of invited interviewees is more than 24 people: those who were in any way related to Jacque Fresco.

A website was created for the movie, frescofuture.com, which is now available only through the Web Archive.

You can see Nate in the shots: he is acting as cameraman and possibly interviewer.

What’s more, the page is filled with photos of trips to key places from Jacque Fresco’s life. Oh, I would love to see this movie!

Everything seems to be working out more than marvelously. Based on the screenshots and presumably filmed footage, the movie is already shaping up to be the movie that was promised. However, in 2015, there’s this post that says the director of the movie, Nathanael Dinwiddie, has been brought on to another project, and the work on the movie will be delayed for a few more months.

After that, there will be some more posts referring to the movie before 2019. Some ads for The Venus Project itself… and then silence, until one interesting moment…..

That moment was the day I found out about this whole situation. I asked an friend of mine who runs a blog called JacqueFrescoEducation on The Venus Project to write about it all, providing material and links. Undeterred by the information he received, he made a post on his website on February 26, 2024, describing the whole situation to an English-speaking audience. Immediately someone created a thread with a link to this article, posted on the public Discord server where all The Venus Project board members are on, thus starting a public discussion.

A lot of people who support The Venus Project have begun to discuss the situation. I have also tagged Nathanael Dinwiddie without waiting for him to find the discussion himself. According to my observations, Nate is often online and has chatted a number of times on other topics.

Except, we never got an answer. Why hasn’t the movie that was started back in 2013 still haven’t been made? It’s already 2024 – 11 years have passed. Wasn’t it possible during this long time to find other filmmakers, video editors or a bit of money, something to finish the movie, based on the resources, footage and other things that have already been done. At the very least, he could publicly voice the problems he was facing and ask for help. The material has been filmed and there is a whole archive. An excerpt from the brochure:

“The film will contain much of the recently organized archival materials, consisting of more than 2,000 audio and video recordings, 2,500 photographic images, 3,500 design renderings, 300 physical models, and hundreds of documents.”

After 5 years of silence on the Facebook Page, suddenly a series of posts appear saying that there will be a 7-part autobiographical interview on Jacques’ biography.

Indeed, a series of interviews was released on the Jacque Fresco channel in occasion of his birthday on March 13th. But it can’t be called an autobiographical movie: it’s just a 7-part interview with Jacque where he solely talks about his life. How strange why haven’t they published it earlier, instead of a few months after a hot discussion on Discord. – What a Coincidence!

To summarize, we see that Nathanael, taking the resources of a number of institutions, including the grant, began work on a film that he couldn’t finish in 11 years, with more than enough footage already shot.

And that’s where the questions come in. Why is Nathaniel Dinwiddie keeping silent? What will happen to this undoubtedly valuable, already filmed material? And most importantly, where is the actual Movie?!

I see a simple and straightforward solution: talk about the problem, tell us what’s missing. In such a time I would have learned video editing myself and edited everything into one movie, or, a series of interviews could have been made accessible, and enthusiasts would have found a use for it. This should have been done a long time ago – interest in Jacque Fresco and his ideas is declining, and The Venus Project organization, and its director, Nathaniel Dinwiddie, have clearly not been working in this direction since at least the day he was appointed, in 2018.

PS: I’ve been trying hard to find an excuse for this. Things happen to everyone, well something doesn’t get finished, and it wasn’t just Nate who was working on the project, maybe he had lost the interest. But when I started digging further, I realized that this was not the only project he had taken on and never finished. The budgets for the following projects were way bigger than the University grant.

Dmitriy Molodozhonov

Back in 2021, I was involved in creating videos with the English-speaking YouTube channel The Venus Project team. However, due to the management’s refusal to publish Jacques’ lectures for free, I switched to creating videos with the team at the Extensional channel. I spent approximately 2 years there as a producer, scriptwriter, and video editor, releasing a whole playlist on General Semantics and other topics. Now, I’ve dedicated myself to writing scripts for the Designing The Future organization and assisting in investigations.

The post Why hasn’t the movie about Jacques Fresco, The Man of Tomorrow, by Nathanael Dinwiddie come out? appeared first on Designing The Future.