Or maybe you think of geodesic domes, those big ball-and-stick structures that look a soccer ball cut in half. Fuller thought they'd make great houses, but today they're mainly jungle gyms, radar covers, and Epcot Center.

What you might not know is that Fuller designed a lot of other things. Cars. Houses. Cities. Even maps. His goal, always, was to promote something he called "ephemeralization." This is the idea of doing more with less so, as Jonathon Keats writes in his new book, "all of humanity could thrive on a planet with limited resources, a world he dubbed 'Spaceship Earth.'"

It's become cliché for people in tech to say they want to make the world better. But Fuller, who described himself as a comprehensive anticipatory design scientist, meant it. In You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future, Keats (who has written for WIRED), explores Fuller's life and work with an eye toward what companies like Google and Tesla Motors owe a man who (for real) wanted to change the world.