The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) [Hardcover]

Rich Gold (Author), John Maeda (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262072890 | ISBN-13: 978-0262072892 | Publication Date: August 30, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Plenitude is the word of Silicon Valley polymath Gold for the limitless stuff produced to feed our consumer-focused economy, but this small, posthumous (Gold died in 2003) book reads more like his private notebook than a business guide. That's not a bad thing: Gold, a scientist, inventor and artist who worked at times for the toy company Mattel and the legendary Xerox PARC research labs, is good company. Based on a few of his lectures, this breezy book shares thoughts on creative hats Gold has worn, such as artist and engineer, and the worldviews they impose on practitioners (e.g., engineers like to solve problems while designers are contemptuous of artists for their detachment from the commercial). The later part of the book weighs consumerism's pros and cons, coming out in favor—where else could an inventor fall?—while offering valid critiques (e.g., so much of what we make and buy is ugly). Throughout, Gold displays casual insights—such as illustrating the sheer abundance of the plenitude by pointing out the variety of shirts in an audience and the work that went into each—and pads this very skinny book with his own goofy cartoons. The result is a fun splash in some of the important ideas behind modern consumption. (Sept.)
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Review

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 writes about the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory (but in his view, complementary) perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer--all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career. "I have spent my life making more stuff for the Plenitude," he writes, acknowledging that the Plenitude grows not only because it creates a desire for more of itself but also because it is extraordinary and pleasurable to create. 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."

"... a wonderful read if you have any interest at all in art or science or design or engineering or creativity or innovation or the morality of our material culture or managing any of those people or processes... Some books are so good that you know you'll read them again, and you know this by the time you finish. With this book, I knew by page 25." Computerworld

"Gold displays casual insightssuch as illustrating the sheer abundance of the plenitude by pointing out the variety of shirts in an audience and the work that went into eachand pads this very skinny book with his own goofy cartoons. The result is a fun splash in some of the important ideas behind modern consumption." Publisher's Weekly

"Gold's nimble mind unpacks the contradictions and consequences of our stuff-clotted world, quoting a friend's warning: "We should eb careful to make the world we actually want to live in.' This is not the traditional anti-materialist rantand that helps make it a valuable rumination on a prevailing 21st-century condition. The Morning News

"Rich Gold was one of the most creative and unusual minds of our era. His unique vision lives on in this book."Alan Kay

"This is a gem that will shape your way of seeing and thinking about the world forever. Rich was one of the true visionaries of Xerox PARC and this unique book, in both its form and content, provides a window into a brilliant and incredibility imaginative mind at work."John Seely Brown , Former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp and former director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and co-author of The Social Life of Information

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262072890
• ISBN-13: 978-0262072892
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovating for a World We Want to Live In, December 21, 2007

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R.A. (Columbia Maryland) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) (Hardcover)

Lisner Auditorium at GWU in DC hosted a conference "Confronting the Global Triple Crisis: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Global Resource Depletion & Extinction" Sept. 14-16, 2007 sponsored by the IPS and IFG. With the talks from this conference still reverberating in my head, I find "The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff" cutting edge, and had Rich Gold been alive he should have been a speaker at that conference. But to understand the connection between the themes of the conference and the book, you have to read the entire book.

The real connection to a prophetic and visionary view of where we are as a society and culture with lots of "stuff", comes at the end of the book.
One of my climate change friends saw my book and asked what I was reading. A few chapters into the book, I brushed her off with "its a book about innovation".

Everyone I know is now Googling "The Story of Stuff" to see an incredible short online cartoon/video by Annie Leonard which was a highlight at the Triple Crisis conference and is now viral online (among climate change activists). For example, Maryland House Member, State Delegate Liz Bobo told me in passing at a coffee shop this AM that she just got the link to "the Story of Stuff and asked me if I had it. Everyone is talking about this video, and all those folks will love this book!

So I told the Maryland State Delegate, and I am now telling all my climate change friends to read "The Plentitude", Rich Gold's brilliant confessional, philosophical, moral agonizing about how to live and create. Its short history on innovation helps us understand how we reached our current crisis. But more importantly, this little book raises the key questions, begins the conversation, and provides guidance for all in the West, as we face the creative/moral/spiritual challenges of the 21st Century.

I am so sorry that Rich Gold is gone, and so grateful to those who published this wonderful legacy he left us.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding thesis on creativity in the modern world, May 20, 2008

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Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) (Hardcover)

Rich Gold was a visionary in the truest sense of the word. His philosophy can be summed up in his "four hats of creativity." They are: scientist, artist, designer and engineer. Gold has at one time worn each of these four hats, he truly was a person well immersed in all facets of the modern implementation of creativity.
His key theme was "the Plentitude", that segment of the human species that has plenty. The Plentitude creates everything from the large architectural structures, to complex electronics to nuclear bombs and "reality" television. As he mentions, it is ironic that the producers of the worst entertainment drivel often do not watch it or allow their children to watch it.
His philosophy of "making stuff" is expressed in these pages and it is something to be taken seriously although he presents it in a decidedly non-serious manner. That nebulous entity called the Plenitude is capable of doing so many things, both good and evil. It is a free market with some controls that all people are trying to comprehend and grasp. As yet, it is hard to determine how to rein it so that it expresses concern for the non-Plentitude masses and builds things with actual rather than perceived value.
This is one of those books that can be read with pleasure by everyone from a marketer to an artist, to a scientist. The people in all of these groups are mentioned in this book, which makes sense because Gold has at one point been a member of each of these classes.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, February 16, 2010

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J. Giles "jgiles" (baltimore) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) (Hardcover)

I really wish I could sit down and have a beer with Rich Gold. Read this book if you are like me, and wear more than one "hat" (I am a biologist with an art degree who likes to weld and rebuild old cars-oh and I'm female). Rich gives one ideas about how to maximize one's life's work, and to be true to one's inner artist. He describes the world of technology and innovation in a totally fresh way. Brilliant. In my opinion, one of the great thinkers of our time.