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

FOREWORD

I had the fortune of meeting Rich Gold at a National Academies of Science meeting held in San Francisco in 2002. Rich was the invited dinner speaker for our small study group, which was engaged in looking at the intersection of information technology and creativity. It was there that I first encountered the Plenitude and the phi losophy of Richs four hats of creativity: scientist, artist, designer, and engineer. My immediate impression on hearing his lecture was one of delight as I realized I was staring at a real anomaly in the worlda person who had crossed many worlds and lived to tell the tale of his wearing of the four hats. No matter how he leaned while telling his stories, none of the hats ever fell off of his head. It was as if each hat were specially fitted to each of his four personalities.

A few months later, I heard that Rich had passed away. This came as a shock to me, not because I knew him well personally, as I regretfully didnt, but because the world had lost such a rare resource.

Rich was a pure hybridized thinker in a world where monospecialties are the norm.

Achieving simplicity in design is a complex journey that requires many skills spanning from the wildly creative to the purely practical. Good design is something that is best defined when not prescribed, but asked as a series of questionsas Rich asks aloud in this book. Richs lifework is his unique understanding of the world as something so simple as making more stuff, but also asking the complex questions of why we still bother to make stuff at all. The answers are still to come from all of us. Get ready for the open slate of the Plenitude that awaits you.

PREFACE

This book was written during the last year of Rich Golds life. The illustrations are selected from those he prepared for the many lectures he gave to a wide diversity of audiences over the past decade. Drawing on his experiences, he summarizes in a playful yet profound way his ideas about art, science, design, and engineering and how these produce the stuff of the junk tribe or global corporate consumer capitalism. The Plenitude is a graphic textbook, a cartoon treatise, a speculative autobiography. It is also a very practical essay in moral philosophy, rich with ideas and feeling. It is my hope that publication of this work by MIT Press will make this richness (pun intended) known to a wider audience.

Given the volume of Richs output, the stretch of his imagination, and the diverse arenas in which he pursued his activities, Id like to give the reader some background and context for pondering the questions that he touches upon.