Research Catalog

Title

The plenitude : creativity, innovation, and making stuff / Rich Gold.

Author

Gold, Rich.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxii, 111 pages : illustrations; 21 cm.

Summary

"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."--Jacket.

Series Statement

Simplicity

Uniform Title

Simplicity (Cambridge, Mass.)

Subject

• Creative ability
• Creative thinking
• Technological innovations
• Material culture
• Materialism
• Consumption (Economics)
• Creativity
• creativity
• material culture (discipline)
• Kreativität
• Technische Innovation
• Konsumgesellschaft
• Materiell kultur
• Konsumtion

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

I. Introduction -- II. The four creative hats I've worn -- Science -- Art -- Design -- Engineering -- The other wall -- III. 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 definition -- 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 modified 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.

ISBN

• 9780262072892
• 0262072890
• 9780262543798
• 0262543796

LCCN

2007002120

OCLC

• ocm79256818
• 79256818
• SCSB-1443836

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library