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

I read this book for a book report in my entrepreneurship class and I actually really enjoyed reading about all the concepts and ideas this book had to offer. It is difficult to find a business related book without the same concepts as the next. However, this book introduced a new concept ("The Plentitude") that I had never considered before. I would definitely recommend this book to other business students, as well as anyone interested in the way America's economy functions.

This book woke me up from a 30 year slumber. It brought me back to the "anti-materialist" discussions we had in college and grad school. Really makes one pause and reflect on our contribution to making all this stuff. Cf. dinner table discussion in the movie "Home for the Holidays".

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.

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.

Far ahead of his time, Rich Gold left the world a summary of his life's work, his philosophy and his participation in creating the technology that now dominates our world. Also, his cartooning is unique and delightful.

I highly recomend the Plentititude to all the creators among us. The Plentitude is succinct and focused. It gives insight into the role of the discipline in which one is trained, how this influences further thought and how this training limits potential solutions. The Plentitude's greatest gift, is that it demonstrates how we are all designers. This is both a boon to our very existence and the source of our pollution; both thought pollution and physical object pollution.

I realize this book is posthumous, and I mean no disrespect to the author. With that said, this book, as small as it is, was so annoying to read that I put it down before drudging half way through it. The opening preface was pretentious, and the rest just a bunch of rambles of one engineer's way of looking at things. There were also a plethora of spelling and grammar errors that made this book even more painful to read.

I just finished this book, and I thought it was wonderful. It's refreshingly short; the author doesn't pad the book with any excess, so the idea density is great enough that you get fresh thoughts with some reliability. I'm struck by how relevant Gold's insights are more than a decade after the book came out. It's written in a fun, casual voice, and the ideas feel like carry real weight. This is a book I intend to return to.

stain came off with warm water and dish soap, good as new

Preso perché tra i testi consigliati di "the art of game design" lato theming, e non ci prende neanche per sbaglio, il libro si suddivide in 3 sezioni, biografia, consigli creativi e morale, tutti pessimi o banali.Il libro é derivato da una serie di talk fatti per business della silicon valley e infatti la stessa (pessima) qualità viene riportata anche qui.L'intero testo é bisogno-consumo centrico, perde così qualsiasi profondità nello spiegare qualcosa se non il consumismo in sé, ecco, il suo unico pregio é che é una mappa fatta di fango per vedere dov'é il fango, il mondo é andato avanti da allora a livello culturale, anche il cittadino medio attuale ha una consapevolezza molto maggiore di quella espressa nel libro, ma a quanto pare il mondo del business é rimasto ancorato agli stilemi del Rich Gold anni 90-00.Tanti esempi fittizzi per dire una cosa sola, una bella descrizione della plenitude, tanti prodotti ma ognuno colpisce solo in maniera superficiale, l'unica conclusione é quella di dire, vogliamo e creiamo una società migliore.La creazione e il consumo in tutto ciò rientrano poco, o meglio sono il fango che devi superare per iniziare a vedere oltre, la plenitude non é la descrizione del tutto ma il minimo che devi affrontare per fare meglio, ancora una volta con autoriferimento il fango cerca di impedire la costruzione di qualcosa di migliore.Quando cambieranno gli umani, cambierà anche la plenitude, in un era di cambiamento sociale é motivante vedere di quanto riusciamo a staccare la vecchia plenitude e di quanto già abbiamo assimilato i concetti di sostenibilità e 0-value proposti da gold come soluzioni.Un libro non tanto utile ma un utile testimonianza del nostro immediato passato.