Dallas Esports and Bucky Ballers – Guest Post and Follow-up Discussion

Guest Post by Lynn Davenport, Social Impact Podcast, Dallas, TX

You can explore Lynn’s other work on her LinkedIn page here.

Jason spoke with Lynn about her article for a new episode of his “If We Were Honest” series. I jumped in at the end. The three of us did a Q&A when we live streamed it earlier this week.

Dallas has a history of significant influence in public education with the “Dallas Miracle” perpetuated by George W. Bush and other corporate education reformers. The lucrative ecosystem of education nonprofits and public-private partnerships relies heavily on underserved communities for cheap labor to build the future Metaverse. They prey upon the captive market of public school kids to train future coders and gamers. Pay close attention to words like ‘hub’ and ‘lab’ when referencing the so-called innovations, which are really just real-time experiments on children.

The pandemic and lockdowns served as a major boon for the esports industry with children stuck at home on devices. EdTech Magazine featured Richardson ISD when they wrote, “Launched online in the early days of the pandemic, the esports club not only served as a social lifeline for students in lockdown but also became the springboard for an impactful school program. Their online gameplay was so successful that when participants returned to campus full time, educators at the school doubled down on esports. They convinced Richardson Independent School District leaders to build a state-of-the-art esports room that opened last fall. The school also launched a popular esports class, educating students about careers and technical skills related to the growing esports field.”

Mobile YMCA

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photo courtesy of Mobile YMCA

A friend in education sent me this message:

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The answer is yes. This is all wrong. And no, you are not paranoid. The agenda to gamify education and tokenize behaviors has impacted all aspects of education.

Mobile YMCA wrote, “The Tech Hub aims to introduce children, specifically those in underserved areas, to the same opportunities to improve literacy in science and technology, help build critical thinking skills, and encourage them to take on a more active role in the community. The Tech Hub’s primary use is as an eSports Gaming Center on the go!”

There’s a major push for out-of-school learning, STEM themes and gaming which often appeals to dads. The nonprofits say their programs like the YMCA or Big Thought will close the digital divide. Hybrid learning programs such as STEMuli in Dallas normalize life in a panopticon with two days in a physical building and the rest at home with their avatars being tracked by a virtual eyeball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4OEcseMhs

The data extracted from these programs feeds the insatiable appetite of collective impact and social impact investors. Services are bundled together for vulnerable children and the parents are not given informed consent for the impact data and surveillance imposed on them for digital twinning. The children are anchors and access points into at-risk families as profit centers. See this 2011 white paper on the imperative of data collection in blended learning settings.

In a Dallas Observer article they included a quote from a Dallas ISD trustee, “I’m thrilled you guys are going down this path,” said trustee Dustin Marshall, who is CEO of a logistics company and a former ranked Mortal Kombat and Warcraft player. “I think it’s great we’re meeting students where they are.”

Dallas has become a hub for the burgeoning industry. It’s home to id Software, creator of iconic games such as Quake and Doom, as well as Team Envy, an esports franchise funded by oil magnate Kenneth Hersh.”

Who is Kenneth Hersh?

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Ken Hersh is the president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. He is listed on the World Economic Forum website. According to Wikipedia, Hersh was born in 1963 in Dallas, Texas, where he spent his childhood. In 1969, Hersh attended the St. Mark’s School of Texasfor both his primary and secondary education. He graduated from St. Mark’s in 1981. Hersh subsequently attended Princeton University in New Jersey. He then attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Successful businessmen like Hersh forget they were educated in a classical model void of technology and screen addiction. They push harmful technologies on impressionable youth while they celebrate victory with their experimental investments. The expansion of education technology increased after Bush’s No Child Left Behind which baked in Reading Response to Intervention (RTI) software and companies like Istation were waiting in the wings until the bill was signed in 2002. By 2003, Istation was being piloted in all major urban school districts in Texas. Dallas Morning News featured Istation in 2018, “Dallas billionaire Dick Collins is building a digital curriculum that makes learning language and math skills as captivating as playing video games and measuring student success a snap for teachers.”

Buckminster Fuller and Buckyballs

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My mom told me about a book a co-worker gave her in the 90s called The Hidden Dangers of The Rainbow by Constance Cumbey. In it Cumbey talks about Buckminster Fuller. She said, “Books by Buckminster Fuller clearly spell out an intent to give every world resident a number and require the usage of this number in all financial transactions of any sort including minor purchases – with a universal “credit card.” The Movement has also been promoting the establishment of gigantic global agencies for controlling the distribution of food and other vital resources. The motivation behind this proposal may be gleaned from the Fuller writings: in order to control the world, one must also control the world supply routes.” At Rice University in 1996, scientists figured out how to use carbon-nano tubes to create hollow balls they called Buckminster fullerenes or Bucky Balls.

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It’s My Dome circa 1960: American architect and inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) posing in front of a geodesic dome, the design of which he invented. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Spaceship Earth – Photo By Mike Billick

Spaceship Earth is a dark ride attraction at the Epcot theme park at the Walt Disney World in Florida. The geodesic sphere called Spaceship Earth was influenced by Bucky Fuller and has served as the symbolic structure of Epcot since the park opened in 1982. Disney’s FastPass can be summed up as one giant study in human behavior and how to move people to desired outcomes through a series of nudges and incentives. Much like ants.

Life Under the DOME

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Alison McDowell took this picture at Rice where Buckminsterfullerenes or “buckyballs” were discovered

Alison McDowell has written about the root meaning of the word ‘domination’ and ‘domes.’ She speaks often of Steven Newcomb’s work in the area of the Doctrine of Domination, what it means to agree to live beneath the DOME of governance and the yoke of submission. She said in her Soulbound Tokens, Trust Networks, and California’s Big Test article“Biosurveillance track-and-trace data is an example of the kind of communal data, or data commons, they intend for us to share as “responsible” members of society. In augmented reality, we must be tracked and traced with unique identifiers all the time, or layered data streams cannot be integrated, and information overlays fall apart. The digital empire cannot function without rivers of sensor-based geo-location data pouring over the entire planet fed by ubiquitous-sensing, nanoparticulate smart dust.”

World Game

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Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965) drew this portrait of Fuller in 1963So

THINK Magazine (I. B.M.), November/December wrote about Bucky Fuller’s World Game in 1969. World Game was sometimes referred to as World Peace Game. It was an educational simulation created in 1961 to address overpopulation and the uneven distribution of global resources. It was designed to be an alternative to war games by using Fuller’s Dymaxion map to solve metaphorical scenarios with a “total world” view. He was an avid futurist who dabbled in mathematics, engineering, environmental science, architecture, and art. He called the planet “Spaceship Earth.”

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LBJ hosted Bucky Fuller at the White House

This photo of Bucky Fuller with LBJ gives me the creeps. Fuller straight up wanted to build a dome over Manhattan. Wired‘s Tim McKeogh wrote, “In 1960, Fuller hatched a plan to build a dome over Manhattan. It seems far-fetched, but only until you consider the geoengineering projects — space mirrors! atmospheric sulfur injections! — geoengineering currently being given serious thought.”

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My 3rd Grade Art Contest Entry

Reunion Tower

Growing up in Dallas in the 70s, I was fascinated with Reunion Tower. The geodesic dome or “microphone” tower is an icon within the famous Dallas skyline. The building originally served as a radio broadcast station. I could see it from my second-story bedroom in elementary school and begged my mother to let me celebrate my birthday there at the lookout deck which boasts a rotating cocktail lounge and restaurant at the top. I drew the Dallas skyline for my submission to an art contest.

Reunion Tower has been refitted with 259 custom LED fixtures manufactured by Altman Lighting and Color Kinetics, a division of Philips Solid State Lighting. The lighting on the globe is often used for celebrations and political messages across the city. They make it green for St. Patrick’s day and red white and blue for patriotic events. The globe was lit up in rainbow colors on June 26, 2015 to celebrate the supreme court ruling which legalized same sex marriage.

I featured the Reunion Tower ball in my 2019 article on the global hive mind being cultivated in our cities and neighborhoods to create the global workforce:

In late 2021, Alison McDowell wrote an in-depth article on Esports called Poverty, Identity, and Child Gamers in Rio’s FavelasShe said, “A January 2021 article in the E-Sports Observer states that Afrogames has partnered with the Rio De Janeiro Secretary of Sports, Recreation, and Youth. Children who participate in the program have access to trainers, psychologists, and mentorship programs. But how much data is collected on players’ physical and mental performance and where does it go? What are the ethics of creating a digital economy that expects youth to play first-person shooter video games so their family has enough to eat? It’s as if these battles royale have become today’s gladiator tournaments. This is happening in communities traumatized by perpetual gun violence, including violence carried out by the state.”

She included a debate with Derrick Broze where she said, “I presume he means my tweets stating his support of “play to earn” gaming schemes, that are promoted by the World Economic Forum, were “not cool.” She further responded, “I remind you these comments relate to the clip above and are about “play to earn” crypto gaming schemes targeting poor children in the Global South. Regarding consent – can children give consent in online spaces for transactions? Who is to say these spaces are safe? To me, enterprises like “Splinterlands” look like rackets that siphon money to the top. This doesn’t look like a space where children should be earning a living.”

Love is Metaphysical Gravity?

I saw this YouTube video suggesting Fuller said love is metaphysical gravity. I couldn’t disagree more.

In the video there was a quote that said, “The Universe is never at absolute zero; if our eyes were more sensitive to the different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum we would be able to see that everything radiates photon vibrations continuously.” Fuller believed we belong to the collective universe rather than individuals endowed by our Creator.

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Buckminster Fuller to Children of the Earth (1972)

Fuller wrote a book called Buckminster Fuller to Children of the Earth. One seller review said, “Youth, he says, sees this and will settle for nothing less. He sees man’s capabilities wonderfully reflected in the fresh minds of children…and speaks to the child who lives in all people.”

Children have long been the target of exploitation and extraction for cheap labor. Esports is cloaked in positive language to fool parents into supporting the movement. The agenda goes well beyond the obvious model for profit. Children are necessary players in this global simulation where every move is tracked and harvested for their energy source.

Give your kids a real ball and close the digital device.

Lynn Davenport

5 thoughts on “Dallas Esports and Bucky Ballers – Guest Post and Follow-up Discussion

  1. Amy Harlib says:

    UGH! Brainwashing impressionable children into becoming compliant robotized slaves of technocratic globalist predator overlords vividly and clearly described.

  2. washington sean says:

    Great piece Lynn! Listening to the podcast in sections.

    Last night, on the NASA channel, they were showing the 2007 film “In the Shadow of the Moon” and at one point the shot was of the planet from space and the narrator uttered “Spaceship Earth” in the eerie 1970’s movie voice… it definitely struck me differently after reading your article.

    Moving children out of seat time learning and into screen based media/material consumption flies in the face of WHO/CDC, AAP, etc. of recommended hours of screen time for children. I don’t understand how parents don’t get this on an intuitive level that remote learning and (eSports included) is bad and parking your kid in front of a screen for 6-9 hours is not healthy. But I suspect signal modulation in the devices themselves has allowed the parents to rationalize the increased device use since most parents have often become addicted to screens .

    Not that I was ever a fan of the pseudo-militaristic grooming of pee-wee football, but as the debate over padding, helmets and physical contact sports was ratcheted up, I now see how e-Sports will continued to be offered as a ‘safer’ alternative to riskier activities.

    I also really liked that you drew on Alison’s article ‘Poverty, Identity and Child Gamers in Rio’s Favelas’… that article in particular was an ‘ahh ha’ moment for me. .

    ~Sean

  3. kocotube01 začasni says:

    A while ago Alison mentioned this DAO metahub called DAWN – https://www.thedaoist.co/dawn – and wondered about what the graphical symbols they are using to communicate with each other internationally mean. Lynn expressed doubt that E-sports mean ‘electronic’ (or something in that neighborhood) and I think she is onto something there. I think that E stands for electrum (also known as ‘green gold’, wink-wink, nudge-nudge), a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper, used by ruling class at least five thousand years ago and later as first coinage. More about the e-pun you can read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum

    Now let me make a case by offering my opinion about the graphical symbolism these internationally well connected people use – or as they call themselves: “A cryptonative political space working on outreach, education and publishing for all DAOs” – by looking at the detail of that Dawn DAO’s ambassador-ship level graphics (the inner circle or one could even call them Pentagon of Dawn DAO):

    https://ibb.co/rMcNQDz

    The Dawn DAO’s inner circle is offering eleven black roses. But who might potential recipient of those eleven roses be? There is only one position left (out of five) for the ‘ambassador-ship’ seat in DAWn’s ‘pentagon’ and the text says: “Designed for organizations who are relevant in the ecosystem and at least to a certain degree involved with the creation and maintenance of public goods.”. Are those eleven roses a secret code for what is being offered (as the text further says): “The DAOist’s communications, intelligence and education efforts can benefit you and you want a seat at the table.”? Or maybe are the Communications, the Intelligence and the Education offered by Dawn only means for reaching the Ends … oh so precious. And don’t forget their connection in the Publishing and their political Outreach.

    First lets look at the meaning behind ‘black roses’:
    https://www.angelicalbalance.com/spirituality/black-rose-spiritual-meaning/
    Is it a symbol for something which never existed, or for keeping secrets, or creating confusion, …? If you read that article you will see many potential meanings, but I am inclined to think that black roses were chosen predominantly to symbolize the death of the old system (financial, economic, social) and are thus suggestive of ‘new beginnings’, times of … ‘precious’.

    But why eleven of them? Because period eleven in the ‘Periodic system of elements’ contains three of the metals that were used for coinage; gold silver and copper. This larger group of metals is also called ‘transition metals’ which is even almost poetic pun, used in the case to designate the times of big transition from carbon based society onto silicon & ‘rare earth’ based society.

    In short Dawn DAO is offering members of the inner circle bright future abound with gold silver and copper. Also don’t forget that Dawn is Roman ‘rosy-hands’ goddess Aurora (Greek Eon, morning mist of light) and that gold is called ‘aurum’ after her.

    And just to confirm my opinion … the first of the ‘ambassador-ship’ positions in the Dawn’s ‘pentagon’ is occupied by a very mysterious Eleven Yellow – https://elevenyellow.com/ – and it’s founder Spaniard Jose Saez – I suspect he is from an old Spanish Saez noble family https://www.houseofnames.com/saez-family-crest – (also known as Selo Resiste) who operates on the international level from his base in Bali:
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/working-in-paradise-balis_b_5399919

    Did you get the pun there?
    ‘Eleven’ … stands for _ _ _ _, silver and copper and ‘yellow’ hones in on the ever so … ‘precious’.

    What about the rest of the image – https://ibb.co/K2B7Kmk ?
    If someone is interested, I can continue, taking apart left or right (hidden) hand conundrum, wrist belt, wound under the breast, missing breast, dark shawl/space time with eight planets in the shape of ankh, fiery head of Phanes/Cosmos where grand ideas come into being. Say the word and I will continue.

    And then there is also the other image – https://ibb.co/2qBRxry – concerning the outer circle consisting of 18 (yet another pun) Ministries of Dawn DAO which utilizes doublespeak layering (one layer for the inner ‘war-room’ circle of hidden ruling-hand kind and quite another for the outer ‘religion-spreading’ circle of steward-ship out in the open by wannabees kind). This one is also not meant for the unwashed masses to understand and ponder upon. Should I unravel this one, too? Say the word and it shall be done.

    And what about that rotating eye, the logo of Dawn DAO? Or is it a galaxy? Or is it a hard disk drive capturing it all with its read/write head mounting, ? Or is it a variant of yin/yang where the active wavy, shiny, rotating part (Cosmos) continuously writes a up to date total-backup of myriad of its own stories back onto the inactive side (Nothing) – once unique and particular constituents’ deterministic paths have ended in a region of bright light, reaching their final destination after taking wavy and circular paths that begun in a region of Chaos (outer limits of eye’s iris, where colors of rainbow come out to play by Iris the messenger of gods) separating shiny, rotating and active Cosmos and inactive, black, ever fuller potentiality of Nothing.
    What is it that comes continuously out of Nothing, you ask? Ensoulments of all things and beings and with that the potential for those things and beings to break their destiny and change their path through the use of free will – or is it through intervention by Nyx from beyond Nothing, thus negating existence of true free will? -, changing their otherwise deterministic and wavy paths in the realm of shiny and loud Cosmos.
    In other words … these Dawn DAO guys think that they have gods’ ears on their side and think their actions are acts of gods’ hands.

  4. Tantramarshire says:

    Why not have children exposed to the Bucky Fuller world of design and innovations – so that they see a different way to design more in line with nature – he was a very interesting character and I never found his talks coming across as creepy or sinister and I think Lynn is unfairly characterizing him – I once had someone visit another blog and tell me Bucky was a spook. Bucky was interested in helping humanity, not as much in the technocratic social engineering, and so in that way he differed to Jacque Fresco The Venus Project. Still popular today is the venue at Montreal Quebec from Expo 67 Bucky’s Dome exhibit still remains to this day. Bucky is a Hall of Famer at Global Breakthrough Energy Movement… “Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.” — R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983)

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