Tensegrity: the toy, the meaning, the future

The Tensegrity is a fascination toy - easy to build, fun to hold and behold. And, as our friend Dr. Timothy Wilken is so clear about in his deep reflections on the nature of the Tensegrity, much of our fascination with the Tensegrity has to do with the balance and mystery of a "pattern that results when push and pull have a win-win relationship with each other. The pull is continuous and the push is discontinuous. The continuous pull is balanced by the discontinuous push producing an integrity of tension-compression.

"Push and pull seem so common and ordinary in our experience of life that we...think little of these forces. Most of us assume they are simple opposites. In and out. Back and forth. Force directed in one direction or its opposite.

"(Buckminster) Fuller explained that these fundamental phenomena were not opposites, but compliments that could always be found together."

My son, the research scientist, recently directed me to a NASA site describing a new kind of "shape-shifting" robot that their scientists are currently playing with. Take a look at this kind of beautiful - kind of creepy computer animation to see how it might someday push and pull itself across the surface of, for example, Mars.