The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff

Lessons from and for the creative professions of art, science, design, and engineering: how to live in and with the Plenitude, that dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff that creates the need for more of itself. About the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer—all professions.

We live with a lot of stuff. The average kitchen, for example, is home to stuff galore, and every appliance, every utensil, every thing, is compound—composed of tens, hundreds, even thousands of other things. Although each piece of stuff satisfies some desire, it also creates the need for even more stuff: cereal demands a spoon; a television demands a remote. Rich Gold calls this dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff the "Plenitude." And in this book—at once cartoon treatise, autobiographical reflection, and practical essay in moral philosophy—he tells us how to understand and live with it.

Gold illustrates these creative expressions with witty cartoons. He describes "seven patterns of innovation"—including "The Big Kahuna," "Colonization" (which is illustrated by a drawing of "The real history of baseball," beginning with "Play for free in the backyard" and ending with "Pay to play interactive baseball at home"), and "Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff" (and its corollary, "Technology Desires to Be Product"). Finally, he meditates on the Plenitude itself and its moral contradictions. How can we in good conscience accept the pleasures of creating stuff that only creates the need for more stuff? He quotes a friend: "We should be careful to make the world we actually want to live in."

CONTENTS
Foreword by John Maeda
Preface by Marina de Bellagente LaPalma
INTRODUCTION
THE FOUR CREATIVE HATS I’VE WORN
Science
Art
Design
Engineering
The Other Wall
SEVEN PATTERNS OF INNOVATION
Necessity Is the Mother of Invention
It’s a Thing of Genius
The Big Kahuna
The Future Exists
Colonization
Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff
Change the Defi nition
IV THE PLENITUDE
Life Is Fecund
The Plenitude of the Mall
Progress and Industry
In my most cynical moments . . .
Problem One: The bland and the ugly
Problem Two: The real and the faux
Problem Three: The unplenitude
Problem Four: Destroying the world
Problem Five: How many genetically modifi ed organisms . . .
Solution One: Pass a law
Solution Two: Reject the Plenitude
Solution Three: Quality over Quantity
Solution Four: Zero-growth economies
Solution Five: Just make the good stuff
Solution Six: The real problem is too many people
Solution Seven: Just love it
A Moral

МIТ Рrеss | 2007 | ISBN: 0262072892 | 134 pages | PDF | 6 Mb