Nathanael Dinwiddie - Designing The Future https://www.designing-the-future.org/tag/nathanael-dinwiddie/ The post-scarcity world can be achieved by designing an advanced environment for both humans and nature. Sun, 20 Apr 2025 10:34:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/pb_logo-site-150x150.png Nathanael Dinwiddie - Designing The Future https://www.designing-the-future.org/tag/nathanael-dinwiddie/ 32 32 Masterminding Eden: The Venus Project and UFOs. on July 2025 https://www.designing-the-future.org/masterminding-eden-the-venus-project-and-ufos-on-july-2025/ Fri, 21 Mar 2025 16:37:13 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=8104 The Venus Project has made an announcement about their participation in the Masterminding Eden conference, which will take place all of July 2025 in Switzerland! […]

The post Masterminding Eden: The Venus Project and UFOs. on July 2025 appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The Venus Project has made an announcement about their participation in the Masterminding Eden conference, which will take place all of July 2025 in Switzerland!

We’ll break down what this event is really all about, headlined by indigenous shamans, and how the aliens are involved! (Yep, that’s right).

About the event organized by a psychospiritual coach

A 31-day summer camp that will bring together up to 300 participants, where in the end the “ greatest minds of the planet” will present an ideal plan to create a sustainable civilization, focusing on a new concept of cities (actually eco-villages). All this is presented outwardly in an allegedly scientific manner and with the most serious intentions to change our world.

Masterminding Eden is a freshly created event website, no history, no links to business registration. Nowhere to verify that it will take place for real. Social media of the initiative is empty or just starting to fill up.

Despite this, they charge a substantial fee even for a simple application for participation – $110. Participation in the conference itself will cost $2,500/week and $8,000/month. This does not take into account where you will live, as the center where all this will be held – supposedly on the reconstruction (in fact, no). You are given the choice of living in a tent, a campsite, or a sleaping pod. The amount increases depending on the chosen living conditions.

The event is directed and organized by Camara Cassin, a certified psychedelic psychospiritual coach from Canada (screenshots taken from her LinkedIn profile). An image search found Camara among the headliners at the New Age “Conscious Technology Symposium” held in the fall of 2024, featuring the popular pseudo-scientist who cures with $1,200 crystals, Nasim Haramien. It’s quite possible that this is the exact format of the event that we’ll see here as well. A webarchive of the website of Camara’s main business showed the provision of services in bioresonance treatment (the same story as crystals), as well as folk medicine, homeopathy and so on.

The entire event, the wording in the text on the conference website, or in the podcasts, is buzzing with consciousness and demonstrative environmentalism, grandiose in scale, that will change the whole world and save our civilization from the “6th extinction”.

Masterminding Eden participants
Masterminding Eden participants

Among the participants, there are companies with a spiritualist orientation. For example, I took from the very top of the participants, highlighted by large portraits, Juan Carlos Kaiten: his company Social Alchemy combines advanced collective intelligence and social synergy practices with ancient and modern spiritual knowledge. Or another, like HOLOS: specializes in psychedelic experiences and retreats (with the note that everything is legal under local laws). I met on the list those promoting “tribal wisdom” and Indigenous culture reconstructors. There are also dubious empty companies/failed startups, movements or think tanks with a focus on eco- villages, or plans to create different concepts of cities, unity with nature, etc.

// Not that they’re the greatest minds, but most of them seem to have their own beliefs that they’d be willing to defend to the last – and if only for the sake of making this spectacular show, it would already be worth it to gather them all under one roof for 31 days and launch a reality show, making some serious competition for Mr. Beast. I’d watch the entire season. Especially its finale.

The venue is a conspiracy museum

The conference will be held supposedly at the Next Gen Village innovation hub. Photo search leads to the Jungfrau Park amusement park.

Let’s get this straight. It is not an innovation hub at all – it is an amusement park, formerly a conspiracy museum on contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations (there is a chapter about it further on). Although it is repeatedly mentioned in presentations of the “Masterminding Eden” as an educational and scientific center. This park rents out space. But whether that space will be rented is also questionable.

In any event of failure with the park rental, as it became known from a recent podcast, a particular eco-village in Italy – a much more realistic alternative – is being considered as a backup option. Probably, the organizers are already realizing that it might not be possible to raise the necessary amount of money to rent a fancy location. And then the whole thing with brainstorming for a month – 12 groups of 12 people who will “constantly be intermixed” (whatever that means) – will take place in much more humble surroundings.

The choice of the 12×12 format, however, is thought-provoking in itself. It seems that numbers play a symbolic rather than practical role here. Such a construction reminds of an attempt to create an illusion of sacredness, initiation, and some exceptional knowledge. After all, in religions, secret orders, esoteric circles and New Age communities, the number 12 – and especially 144 – carry a special meaning. It seems that the event is based not so much on content as on ritualism and a sense of belonging to a “higher knowledge”.

When asked “why would we be there for 31 days?” – the host and organizer said that it had never happened before, and it would be a “Manhattan project for all mankind” – in general, a super megagalactic event.

Headline: spiritual leaders and wisdom keepers

The headliners at apparently esoteric camp and the backbone of the entire “Masterminding Eden” team are spiritual teachers and wisdom keepers from all continents.

A video snippet from the podcast:

– Yeah, so you would be amazed to hear that when we first launch our application process, the very first people to apply and come on board were more than 20 Indigenous wisdom keepers and spiritual teachers from around the world.
We have them represented from every continent.

– It’s amazing.

Simon Michaux will take part at this event as well. And over a year ago, on one of his podcasts, he already told us all about it. So, it looks like everything’s going according to the plan:

“I want everything to feel like Sacred Femininity collabored with Sacred Masculinity.” Council of Elders – gather spiritually and philosophically awakened, socially and media conscious people from around the world and put them in one conference, feed them till they drop and let the ideas flourish, do this every year. Like a shaman from the Amazon jungle, Native American elders – anyone we can reach. Let’s learn from them.

From the summary of Simon Michaux’s podcast #1.

We’re also promised a full video report, and maybe even a documentary from there. We’ll see Nate and Roxanne smoking the peace pipe with representatives of the wisest from every continent. Well, isn’t this the beginning of The Venus Project?

The Venus Project’s first statements

In addition to including the event in an email newsletter, and several social media posts, one of the first podcasts on “Thinking through a Plan for Eden” featured a personal appearance by Nathanael Dinwiddie, who is on The Venus Project’s board of directors.

Yeah, so my name’s Nate Dinwiddie. I’m Vice President of The Venus Project and one of the members of the board.

And The Venus Project, it’s for a long time, I mean, it’s the creation of a guy named JacqueFresco and his companion, Roxanne Meadows. And for a long time, it WAS focused on these sort of ambitious solutions to the global problems primarily in the form of self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustaining cities of the future. And Fresco had a big vision for a whole world redefined by those cities.

So naturally, Masterminding Eden kind of coincide with that whole vision of the future. It’s offering that ambitious path to these large-scale problems and trying to propose a way forward that addresses it and is a sort of scalable solution and trying to bring people together in a very interdisciplinary way to fulfill this whole vision of what’s possible. So it’s a natural fit for The Venus Project to be interested and want to help in some way. And primarily, we hope to sort of transfer or transmit some of the wisdom of Fresco to the project, a large body of work with many designs, thousands of sketches, and lots of lectures on the topic, and of course, many full designs of cities as well. So we hope to be able to bring some of that thinking and ideas and design work into the brainstorming process of conceiving what the next iteration, the next generation of designs might be. So that’s what we hope to bring to the table.

As it turns out, The Venus Project has been involved in the preparation of this event for over a year, since at least January 2024, and has been one of the leading participants. And the conference itself has already been rescheduled at least once.

A conspiracy alien backstage

The choice of the site for the conference is hardly accidental. Out of thousands of places on the planet, the organizers chose this park. In this “place of power” there is an unusual interweaving of New Age cults with similar stories, which plan to unfold to their maximum by 2030, with the tale of climate catastrophes, the end of the world in this period and the following post-apocalyptic world, where they eventually rebuild the civilization.

Judging by a lot of facts – we’ll end up with something like that with the new The Venus Project.

Erich von Daniken in front of his Jungfrau Park. The name used to be prefixed with “unsolved mysteries of mankind”
Erich von Daniken in front of his Jungfrau Park. The name used to be prefixed with “unsolved mysteries of mankind”

There’s a reason why The Venus Project is hiding their new program and the new direction being set by their new directors. Remember the notes from Simon Michaux’s podcasts, and that the new city in Peru will be the “Ark”, and after the apocalypse these guys, calling themselves Arcadians, the guardians of wisdom, will restore the entire civilization. Think about a couple of other cults, like AllatRA (Creative Society), and recall the pseudo documentary of all sorts of woo-woo, alternative history and conspiracys. They operate according to the same script logic: catastrophe, revelation, chosen ones, new era.

Jungfrau Park was built by Erich von Daniken, author of Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. He believed that our technology and knowledge were passed down by aliens, and that religions were based on contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Different rooms of this park told of different “unexplained artifacts”. The park existed in this form from 2003 to 2006. It reopened in 2009 as a regular amusement park, although retaining some of the original program.

The park itself is designed as an exhibition space, where each pavilion is dedicated to one of the “great mysteries of mankind”. Visitors are shown theories about the Nazca Lines, the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, the Mayan calendar and even ancient Indian “vimanas” – supposedly flying machines described in Vedic texts. Inside the pavilions there is semi-darkness, light shows, holograms and a dramatic voice-over telling us that “we may have been visited in the past.” The central building is a giant sphere with an observation deck that contains exhibits steeped in the spirit of Erich von Daniken. All this creates the feeling of participating in a pseudo-scientific odyssey between ancient civilizations and galactic mysteries.

Ufologists and Jacque Fresco

Fans of flying saucers and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations have surrounded Jacque Fresco since the 1950s, when he was featured in Frank Scully’s book “Behind the flying saucers”, 1950, after giving an interview.

Jacque Fresco's “flying saucer” design
Jacque Fresco’s “flying saucer” design
Frank Scully's book, The Mystery of the Flying Saucers, 1950.
Frank Scully’s book, Behind the flying saucers, 1950.

And all because Jacque Fresco once worked in the development department of Wright Field, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is closely associated with the famous Area 51. Jacques’ designs are full of saucer-like crafts.

Another notable crossover with ufologists was in the story of the name “The Venus Project,” which Millard Deutsch came up with, as he himself states in the six-page book “Naming the Venus Project: The Way I Remember It.”

Millard Deutsch writes how he knew Jacque and Roxanne through a friend’s recommendation (along with Millard, Roxanne, and Jacque was a member of DIVERSE CITY, an organization registered at The Venus Project address in the early 1990s) – before that, he notes, he was president of the World Brotherhood, a non-profit esoteric ufology organization. He first stayed in their guest house because of hard times, and then became a resident.

Millard was fast at typing on a computer, which pleased Jacque, and so they typed an article for the World Future Seciety magazine. Anyway, he was sitting at the computer one day, and during a break between typing the article, the three of them (Jacque, Roxanne and Millard) started discussing a more appropriate name than “Sociocyberengineering”, which had been used since the 70s. And then Millard suggested “The Venus Project” – and everyone went “Yes! That’s it!”.

But here’s the interesting thing, Millard’s associations were truly from another world, and the city called Venus just put the puzzle together. He cites here a story about an alien from Venus (he truly believes in this) “whose advanced civilization lives in the center of the Venus.” The alien visitor visited the Pentagon, offering technology and abundance in exchange for humans to stop killing each other, but the president and generals refused, referring to the destruction of the economy and the foundations of society. This is described in the book “Stranger at the Pentagon”. And this is exactly what he had in mind when he came up with the name “The Venus Project”.

A 6-page book about how “The Venus Project” got its name, 2016
Another book by Millard Deutsch about how Jacque Fresco did not die after his death, but went to meet an extraterrestrial civilization at the center of the universe, 2017

Jacque Fresco in his speeches sometimes touched on the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrial contacts, sharply joking at the statements of ufologists, conspiracy theorists, and brought to light various esoteric charlatans and pseudo-scientists.

Pseudoscientific energy sources

Simon Michaux, who has taken Jacque Fresco’s place of authority at The Venus Project, has made explicit references to flying saucers in presentations, and that the government is hiding these technologies from us.

Simon believes in vortex engines and all sorts of other pseudo-scientific energy generation concepts that he plans to “independently test with The Venus Project at the new Prometheus Institute” and he even writing a book about these energy sources right now. According to the story, “official science” has been hiding and suppressing this knowledge for decades/hundreds of years in order to preserve the established order.

You can read the outline from Simon’s podcast on the topic of pseudoscientific energy here (podcast #4)

This is also now the new slogan of the revamped “The Venus Project” organization – “unconventional energy sources” is explicitly mentioned. By the way, after our criticism, “unconventional” was changed to “new”.

A slogan from the site’s archives, a year earlier, reflecting the main focus of the new The Venus Project:

The Venus Project explores unconventional energy sources, operating to a new resource management paradigm, to benefit human wellbeing and the environment.

Meanwhile, The Venus Project’s completely revamped website now explicitly includes one of the “global catastrophic risk scenarios” – contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Yes-yes, in case you’re not aware, they think you and I are doomed. Forget the abundant future society: first comes the apocalypse. A whole set of threatening scenarios awaits us, often with a deep conspiracy overlay, after which humanity will supposedly bounce back in development for a hundred or two hundred years. This is what the current leaders of The Venus Project seem to believe.

And they intend to prepare not for a post- scarcity world, as Jacque Fresco promised, but for the fight for survival. The new slogan speaks directly to this. Instead of a techno-utopia, there is the harsh reality of scarcity, politics, money, and all the beauties of the system that Fresco spent his entire life trying to overcome.

Bonus to those who read this far. Here’s a $7,985 discount on the event

If you do want to attend this event, and you are feeling the price tag of $8,000 is to much to ask for. That is, tickets to this science-educational amusement park start from just $15 for the whole day. You will participate in performances about alien contacts with human civilization, shoot lasers at each other, play on slot machines and ride on bouncy castles, and there is even a small water park. All in all, the most appropriate place on Earth for such an event.

And the intergalactic conference with The Venus Project will be in one of the rented spaces, most likely near the food court area. You’re welcome 😉

So if you strip away the bright wrappings, the headlines, and the big promises, and read a little deeper, the difference between what The Venus Project of Jacque Fresco envisioned and what it is becoming under the leadership of Nathanael Dinwiddie and the ideological support of Simon Michaux has become quite shocking. It is not just a change of course; it is a complete U-turn, so abrupt that it boggles the mind of even its most loyal supporters.

We’ve already covered how they almost got involved in The Thorium Network crypto-coin scam with a fake research institute, which was later shut down by the court order, and warned about the Prometheus Nexus (formerly known as Venus Arantas) crowdfunding for a desert city, which has also been delayed for over a year and a half, only because of our heads up. Because of us, The Venus Project has changed the website, albeit technically, just for the sake of formality, introducing you to a new program – while still misleading you, keeping everything secret, acting behind the scenes, not answering questions, and denying everything we observe or hear on podcasts from their key team members. We are trying to preserve some of the reputation of The Venus Project and Jacque Fresco’s ideas, but the exposures themselves are not enough. The Venus Project is not turning off this path. It is on a steady course toward obscurantism, New Age beliefs, conspiracy theories, and the total oblivion of everything Jacque and the original The Venus Project stood for.

What are your thoughts on this? Spread the word to those who would be likely to be interested – there is little open information, and to gather anything at all, you have to do a whole lot of research, listening to hours of meaningless podcasts and researching connections, doing fact checking on claims.

Message me at the contacts below. Sign up for updates and support our initiative.
Thank you!

Update 5 April 2025

A pop-up window appeared on the Masterminding Eden website

Exciting News! (yes, that’s exactly how it’s written on the Masterminding Eden website)

The esoteric gathering for planning the future community on higher vibrations and ether energies — with participation from The Venus Project — has, unsurprisingly, been postponed yet again. This time, to sometime next year… or maybe they’ll push it back a couple more times, who knows.

When will we finally see Roxanne and Nate openly talk about their new preferences and agenda? After all, the apocalypse they claim to be preparing for is just around the corner, and “the Ark” still isn’t built. 🤷‍♂️

Update 20 April 2025

The Venus Project has made no public announcement regarding the cancellation of the event.
To my knowledge, they promoted it extensively: two newsletter emails, multiple social media posts, and at least two podcast appearances featuring Roxanne and Nate. Ticket prices ranged from $2,500 to $8,000, plus a $120 registration fee.

It’s standard practice — if you actively promote an event, you’re also responsible for informing the public if it’s canceled. Failing to do so, and not explaining how attendees can get a refund, seriously damages trust. At this point, I’m not even sure where The Venus Project’s reputation stands — especially in the English-speaking world, where credibility has been fading for quite a while. Sadly, it’s beginning to blur the line between a struggling movement and something that looks more like a scam.

The post Masterminding Eden: The Venus Project and UFOs. on July 2025 appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
Jacque Fresco’s archived lectures – promised, but where are they? https://www.designing-the-future.org/jacque-frescos-archived-lectures/ Sat, 01 Jun 2024 11:23:43 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=4895 An article on preserving the legacy of Jacque Fresco turned into an investigation into the cloudy stories of money and corruption at The Venus Project. […]

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

]]>
An article on preserving the legacy of Jacque Fresco turned into an investigation into the cloudy stories of money and corruption at The Venus Project.

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.

Jacque Fresco archives which promised to show on the Jacque Fresco Foundation website, but the website is under perpetual development.
Jacque Fresco archives – the materials we’re talking about

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.

The Venus Project website requires you to pay for Jacque Fresco's lectures.
The Venus Project website requires you to pay for Jacque Fresco’s lectures

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.

20 Jacque Fresco's "classic lectures from the 70s" will cost you $160 on The Venus Project website
20 Jacque Fresco’s “classic lectures from the 70s” will cost you $160.

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.

The Venus Project’s Matching Donation Campaign for the Jacque Fresco Archives

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.

Doubling the amount

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

Note that only $25k of that is allocated to transcription!

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.

Iwould think The Venus Project to be less capitalistic to sell a t-shirt in the first 20 seconds

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.

I left the movement due to inactivity and delution of the message after Jacques death. Sad not much has changed….

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.

Discussion in "The Death of Jacques Fresco's The Venus Project" document on Discord server.
Discussion in “The Death of Jacques Fresco’s The Venus Project” document on Discord server.

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.

Jacque Fresco Foundation website is under perpetual development.
Jacque Fresco Foundation website is under perpetual development.

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.

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

]]>
Why hasn’t the movie about Jacques Fresco, The Man of Tomorrow, by Nathanael Dinwiddie come out? https://www.designing-the-future.org/man-of-tomorrow-film-about-jacque-fresco-by-nathanael-dinwiddie/ Mon, 29 Apr 2024 17:08:49 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=3722 One of the key Board of Directors for The Venus Project organization is now Nathanael Dinwiddie, who got his seat back in 2018. Were you […]

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.

]]>
One of the key Board of Directors for The Venus Project organization is now Nathanael Dinwiddie, who got his seat back in 2018. Were you aware of this? He had been researching Jacques Fresco’s biography and had the opportunity to work in depth with The Venus Project’s archives, going through and structuring them over the years.

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?

Nathanael Dinwiddie

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.

This begins as a two man team. Production on a budget entails using Canon Mark III DSLR cameras. Dylan Snyder assists.

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 proposal for Man of Tomorrow was enthusiastically approved. The Center for Undergraduate Research, the School of the Arts, and the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of Kansas have provided grants and resources to begin production.

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.

Our 21st interview features futurist-transhumanist, Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan spoke about Jacque Fresco’s relation to transhumanism. Zoltan is also running for governor of California under the Libertarian Party.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 24th interview again features Karl Geissler as a followup to his previous. Karl began attending Jacque Fresco’s lectures in 1971, at the founding of Sociocyberneering. Karl was an avid reader of Fresco’s booklist and beyond. If you have heard audio of Fresco’s Classic Lectures, Karl is best recognized by his warm German accent. He has proven himself especially well versed in Fresco’s proposals. To this day, Karl remains a close friend to Fresco.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.

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.

Our 22nd interview features Pat McCord. Pat authored the book “Rings of Venus,” set in a Fresconian universe.
Our 20th interview features Lionel Rolfe. As a child, Lionel attended drafting lessons at Jacque Fresco‘s Scientific Research Laboratories in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Lionel is a member of the Menuhin family and became a journalist. By coincidence, Lionel later met Fresco’s lifelong friend, Jack Catran, and publicized their mutual relation to Fresco and Catran’s book “Is There Intelligent Life On Earth?” The article was entitled, “Unpopular Science,” published in the Los Angeles Reader. Lionel later republished this article in his book called, “Fat Man on the Left.”
Our eighteenth interview features Eli Catran. Eli is younger brother to Jacque Fresco‘s lifelong friend, Jack Catran. Eli assisted Fresco in the development of the Trend Home in 1947. Eli remains the last friend from Fresco’s Brooklyn origins.

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!

The prisons that Fresco suffered in childhood.
КоOnce a thriving airport, the Floyd Bennett Field was where Fresco, 12 years old, marveled at the impossible feat of human flight.

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.

Update: To all those interested in seeing Man of Tomorrow, sorry for the delay of progress. The director of this film was recruited by TVP for editing a section of The Choice Is Ours, and has since been recruited for another large project by TVP. Therefore, progress on Man of Tomorrow will be delayed some months more. However, it was always expected that Man of Tomorrow would take a few years due to financing and the long process of assembling materials from archives to use in the film.

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.

MISSING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FUNDS, MISSED DEADLINES, AND DEAD PROJECTS: NATHANAEL DINWIDDIE’S “MAN OF TOMORROW” MOVIE SCAM

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.

Jacque Fresco was born March 13, 1916, 108 years ago. In memory of Fresco’s work, a 7 hour biographical interview that explores his life and work will premier in 7 separate parts on the Jacque Fresco Youtube channel on March 31st. Each additional part will be posted each subsequent day until April 6th. Be sure to subscribe to the Jacque Fresco Youtube channel. To access all videos, see the following playlist.

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.

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.

]]>
The Venus Project is no longer has a clear proposal and plan, but rather countless options https://www.designing-the-future.org/the-next-evolution-of-the-venus-project/ Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:10:51 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=938 In this interview, Nathanael Dinwiddie and Theofilos Chaldezos, the new directors of The Venus Project, admitted that The Venus Project’s vision and plans are defined […]

The post The Venus Project is no longer has a clear proposal and plan, but rather countless options appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
In this interview, Nathanael Dinwiddie and Theofilos Chaldezos, the new directors of The Venus Project, admitted that The Venus Project’s vision and plans are defined and limited by what they have found on the Internet. And it is constantly changing. Why is there no specificity in what they say? – Because the New The Venus Project no longer has a clear proposal and plan, but rather options, and there are countless options, and each option has its own sub-options, and approaches, and possible futures, and everyone can find their own option to like-but they have to work under the guidance of these same directors.

This interview confirms our research with direct official responses. Jacques Fresco’s “The Venus Project” really doesn’t exist anymore and it’s all considered “obsolete” in favour of eco-villages, permaculture, local self-sufficiency, and Nate and Simon Michaux’s vision of a conspiracy theories in science and energy, in preparation for the coming “apocalypse” or as they call it, Polycrisis.

Nathanael Dinwiddie - (main?) director of The Venus Project since 2018
Nathanael Dinwiddie – (main?) director of The Venus Project since 2018

Every other sentence they convince us that they haven’t deviated from Jacques Fresco, but it felt like a search for excuses with quotes taken out of context rather than a matter-of-fact explanation.

As Nate says, “The new The Venus Project, it’s just another level of abstraction, of a higher order than Jacques.” The transformation into a philosophy club is becoming more and more pronounced. You can now spend months arguing about things that don’t exist and never will, going through endless options and sub-options. Leaving the role of judge to the directors.

Simon Michaux (as well as his non-peer-reviewed, 3 year old, study) is highly praised and talked about as a defining piece of work for the new The Venus Project! … – well, Simon’s podcasts expose the pseudoscience, conspiracies, and flimsy research in their plans. Perhaps by emphasizing uncertainty and many options, there is a desire to hide the real plan they are working on now with Simon Michaux, which is uncomfortable for the established public on whose support and donations they depend.

Read our research to find out the details. Two and a half months after this document was published, we still haven’t seen any responses from Nate. Why? There are only their own quotes there, and what can be denied in their own words?

Our research “The Death of Jacque Fresco’s The Venus Project”

Moneyless Society podcast interview “The Next Evolution of the Venus Project”

The post The Venus Project is no longer has a clear proposal and plan, but rather countless options appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The Venus Project’s 1 million dollar crowdfunding for Simon Michaux! https://www.designing-the-future.org/the-venus-project-1-million-dollar-crowdfunding-for-simon-michaux/ Mon, 26 Feb 2024 12:59:46 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=545 The first interview in which Jacque Fresco’s ideas and work are in the past tense, and you can tell they’re not really doing it anymore: […]

The post The Venus Project’s 1 million dollar crowdfunding for Simon Michaux! appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The first interview in which Jacque Fresco’s ideas and work are in the past tense, and you can tell they’re not really doing it anymore: “We’ve spent the last few years learning about the constraints that keep us from achieving a Resource-Based Economy (RBE), and what a transition to that paradigm might look like. We have the development of these ideas in mind and will be working with partners on them.”

The directors of The Venus Project claims that RBE vision used to be a global approach, but not now: “We’ve started to look at it as a localized economy. The Venus Evolution is working on the transition. Many groups are developing their approaches, we are working with those groups or trying to.”

This interview, in over a month, has only been viewed by 100 people. It’s amazing how they don’t already talk about it on all their channels. What’s the reason for keeping it from the public?

Roxanne Meadows and Nathanael Dinwiddie are giving a rare interview at The Venus Project
Roxanne Meadows and Nathanael Dinwiddie are giving a rare interview at The Venus Project

Nathanael Dinwiddie adds: “We can’t rely on wind and solar anymore, especially on a global scale. Thorium reactor and geothermal, ammonia engine – is our future.” – Supporting the narrative about the low efficiency of renewable energy, and the ubiquitous corporate conspiracy to promote solar and wind power to distract attention. This has been mentioned on podcasts by their new senior advisor and leader of the whole endeavor, Simon Michaux.

The Venus Project wants to raise 1 million dollars through crowdfunding to build a remote city in the desert. But wait, turns out that’s going for travel costs and to convincing people to invest most of the money (which is $10 billion by the way) – so not for the construction itself. They want to “catch the Big Fish”. Simon Michaux has mentioned it more than once on podcasts: “Crowdfunding will help me get out of work and catch Big Fish”. What are the chances of this to succeed and where are the guarantees?

And it looks like crowdfunding has been planned for a long time, and it’s about to start.

Let’s note that to start with crowdfunding would be an obvious outlaw! The supportive audience still has the image presented by Jacque Fresco and the original The Venus Project in their minds because of decades of presenting ideas through lectures, interviews, books and movies. What was done to bring these people up to date? Absolutely nothing. The new ideas and suggestions differ in significant ways, you can read about this on Insider’s chapter on this website, where we have notes from Simon Michaux’s podcasts.

Then Nathanael Dinwiddie went on to justify that they’ve been accused of moving away from Jacques’ ideas, and that it’s hard to get along with individual groups and people, but they’re trying: “These people are fulfilling their needs, but we’re not interested and we don’t need that anymore.”

But like Nate says, The Venus Project is a vision. So please leave the original names and the website behind the original ideas put forth by Jacques Fresco – and that will clear up any misunderstandings and disagreements. Allow those who want to continue on the path to follow it, not put up obstacles.

So.. what impressions does this almost exclusive interview, which was done for the first time in 4 years, leaves you with? Avoiding specifics and discussing topics vaguely without mentioning names, titles, or details: responses lacked depth and failed to provide substantial information. Such an answers leaves us with much more questions.

And final word from Nate: “Get you ready for Metacrisis and Polycrisis!” (whatever that means)

Looking forward to more interviews!

Interview, January 17, 2024: https://www.facebook.com/ed.gold.5621/videos/410477214752721

The post The Venus Project’s 1 million dollar crowdfunding for Simon Michaux! appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
Why create a new movement? What about The Venus Project Movement? https://www.designing-the-future.org/why-create-a-new-movement-what-about-the-venus-project-movement/ Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:18:06 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=422 The Venus Project movement completely dissolved in 2023, in secrecy, without announcing to the public, like so much else (see screenshot below). And by the […]

The post Why create a new movement? What about The Venus Project Movement? appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The Venus Project movement completely dissolved in 2023, in secrecy, without announcing to the public, like so much else (see screenshot below). And by the fact, the movement was transformed to just a supporters in 2016, with new naming “TVP Support”, as you can read in the “First Director” chapter of the main research.

So no more country coordinators, no more regional points of contact (POCs), no more individual groups, no more private initiatives or team/organizations – now all surviving international team members work directly for the board of directors (as volunteers, under a rather strict non-disclosure agreement and transfer of all rights to the results of their work). And now, they must instead of developing the movement in their own country – find a task from the directors, and launching private initiatives turns into bureaucracy and insurmountable obstacle. There probably won’t be many people left to do that.

The movement has not been supported and developed in any way, and judging by the results themselves – it was not part of the plans of the board of directors from the moment of their appointment (current directors in 2018).

And even more so, despite the fact that the movement has helped to keep The Venus Project alive, to get The Venus Project Research Center off the market, to become visible and globally recognized, to be supported by voluntary contributions, crowdfunding and volunteer work, to bring many opportunities on a plate – the movement is directly compared by Nate (main TVP director) to the chaos and disorder that they are trying to clean up in order to make “real change” in the organization and its direction. Well now that there’s almost nothing left – changing course, and changing dramatically (as seen in previous posts).


What is your opinion? If you do not agree with this, and wish to join the efforts, to continue working to achieve the goals and proposals set by Jacques Fresco – write to us, have skills – join the team.

We will not give up and will continue to do our best.

The post Why create a new movement? What about The Venus Project Movement? appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The first article to double-check our claims https://www.designing-the-future.org/the-first-article-to-double-check-our-claims/ Fri, 16 Feb 2024 15:13:20 +0000 https://designing-the-future.org/?p=338 The first investigative article to double-check our claims about The Venus Project and its new course! The author of the article has conducted his own […]

The post The first article to double-check our claims appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>
The first investigative article to double-check our claims about The Venus Project and its new course!

The author of the article has conducted his own investigation and provides additional arguments and evidence, correspondence with an unknown key member of the team that has shared secret snippets from upcoming presentations.

Some points from the article:

The pseudo-scientific and conspiracy theories accusations are indeed true;
The paper submitted by Simon Michaux is indeed not peer-reviewed, and his allegations of contacts “in high places”, as well as the meetings which he was supposedly was a part of, cannot be proven or backed by any sort of evidence;
The Thorium Network (which is listed under the page of TVP’s partners ) is indeed scummy, and is linked to a spiderweb of phantom companies, fake CV’s, crypto-currency scams, and a forum of scam victims from a previous venture;
The behavior of the new board of directors has been indeed abusive. And there are plenty of revealing resignation letters from the past;
The conversations that have been carried on Discord server have been nothing but pure stonewalling by Nathanael Dinwiddie, Peter, and other members of the new team;
Please note how the first step is raising a lot of money, without any guarantees to prevent it from being siphoned off.

In summary, the claims made in the ‘The Death of Jacque Fresco’s The Venus Project‘ investigation are highly likely to be true based on the presented context. These claims indicate that The Venus Project has strayed far from Fresco’s vision of a future free from politics, poverty, and war, instead descending into an apocalyptic cult led by a con-man and his followers. As a result, The Venus Project has forfeited its once significant role in human evolution and cannot be endorsed by anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of science.

The Jacque Fresco Education Network
Read the whole article here: https://jacque-fresco-edu.net/blog/32

The post The first article to double-check our claims appeared first on Designing The Future.

]]>