Meaningful Stuff

Author : Jonathan Chapman
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262363798
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Meaningful Stuff written by Jonathan Chapman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument for a design philosophy of better, not more. Never have we wanted, owned, and wasted so much stuff. Our consumptive path through modern life leaves a wake of social and ecological destruction--sneakers worn only once, bicycles barely even ridden, and forgotten smartphones languishing in drawers. By what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so readily transform into meaningless junk? In Meaningful Stuff, Jonathan Chapman investigates why we throw away things that still work, and shows how we can design products, services, and systems that last. Obsolescence is an economically driven design decision--a plan to hasten a product's functional or psychological undesirability. Many electronic devices, for example, are intentionally impossible to dismantle for repair or recycling, their brief use-career proceeding inexorably to a landfill. A sustainable design specialist who serves as a consultant to global businesses and governmental organizations, Chapman calls for the decoupling of economic activity from mindless material consumption and shows how to do it. Chapman shares his vision for an "experience heavy, material light" design sensibility. This vital and timely new design philosophy reveals how meaning emerges from designed encounters between people and things, explores ways to increase the quality and longevity of our relationships with objects and the systems behind them, and ultimately demonstrates why design can--and must--lead the transition to a sustainable future.

Author : Jonathan Chapman
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262045729
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Meaningful Stuff written by Jonathan Chapman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument for a design philosophy of better, not more. Never have we wanted, owned, and wasted so much stuff. Our consumptive path through modern life leaves a wake of social and ecological destruction--sneakers worn only once, bicycles barely even ridden, and forgotten smartphones languishing in drawers. By what perverse alchemy do our newest, coolest things so readily transform into meaningless junk? In Meaningful Stuff, Jonathan Chapman investigates why we throw away things that still work, and shows how we can design products, services, and systems that last. Obsolescence is an economically driven design decision--a plan to hasten a product's functional or psychological undesirability. Many electronic devices, for example, are intentionally impossible to dismantle for repair or recycling, their brief use-career proceeding inexorably to a landfill. A sustainable design specialist who serves as a consultant to global businesses and governmental organizations, Chapman calls for the decoupling of economic activity from mindless material consumption and shows how to do it. Chapman shares his vision for an "experience heavy, material light" design sensibility. This vital and timely new design philosophy reveals how meaning emerges from designed encounters between people and things, explores ways to increase the quality and longevity of our relationships with objects and the systems behind them, and ultimately demonstrates why design can--and must--lead the transition to a sustainable future.

Author : Shawn Askinosie
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143130315
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Meaningful Work written by Shawn Askinosie and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founder and CEO of Askinosie Chocolate, an award-winning craft chocolate factory, shows readers how he discovered the secret to purposeful work and business − and how we can too, no matter what work we do. Askinosie Chocolate is a small-batch, award winning chocolate company widely considered to be a vanguard in the industry. Known for sourcing 100% of his cocoa beans directly from farmers across the globe, Shawn Askinosie has pioneered direct trade and profit sharing in the craft chocolate industry with farmers in Tanzania, Ecuador, and the Philippines. In addition to developing relationships with smallholder farmers, the company also partners with schools in their origin communities to provide lunch to 1,600 children every day with no outside donations. Twenty-five years ago, Shawn Askinosie was a successful criminal defense lawyer trying his first murder death penalty case that would later go on to become a Dateline special. For many years he found law satisfying, but after several high profile trials he reached a breaking point and found solace in the search for a new career. In this inspiring guide to discovering a vocation that feeds your heart and soul, Askinosie describes his quest to discover more meaningful work – a search that led him to volunteering in the palliative care wing of a hospital, to a Trappist monastery where he became inspired by the monks focus on “being” rather than “doing,” and eventually traipsing through jungles across the globe in search of excellent cocoa bean farmers to make award winning chocolate. Askinosie shares his hard-won insights into doing work that reflects one’s values and purpose in life. He shares with readers visioning tools that can be used in any industry or field to create a work life that is inspired and fulfilling. Askinosie shows us that everyone has the capacity to find meaning in their work and be a positive force for good in the world.

Author : Henry Jenkins
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479815179
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Comics and Stuff written by Henry Jenkins and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers how comics display our everyday stuff—junk drawers, bookshelves, attics—as a way into understanding how we represent ourselves now For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable—you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels—clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre. While the American comics of the past were about hyperbolic battles between good and evil, most of today’s graphic novels focus on everyday personal experiences. Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. They give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. When we use the phrase “and stuff” in everyday speech, we often mean something vague, something like “etcetera.” In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express—or hold at bay—through our relationships with stuff. In Comics and Stuff, his first solo authored book in over a decade, pioneering media scholar Henry Jenkins moves through anthropology, material culture, literary criticism, and art history to resituate comics in the cultural landscape. Through over one hundred full-color illustrations, using close readings of contemporary graphic novels, Jenkins explores how comics depict stuff and exposes the central role that stuff plays in how we curate our identities, sustain memory, and make meaning. Comics and Stuff presents an innovative new way of thinking about comics and graphic novels that will change how we think about our stuff and ourselves.

Author : Joshua Becker
Publisher : WaterBrook
ISBN 13 : 0593193997
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Things That Matter written by Joshua Becker and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • Discover practical steps you can take today to live a life focused on things that matter, from the bestselling author of The More of Less and The Minimalist Home. “Things That Matter points the way to free ourselves from the distractions of everyday life so that we can build the lives we seek to create.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project Everywhere around you are distractions: That text you respond to quickly, just to get it out of the way. The newest money-making side hustle to cross your mind. The evening spent organizing your overflowing kitchen cupboards. Disruptions are the enemies of a life well lived—both the new distractions of our generation and timeless ones that have existed for centuries. They all add up to make you feel restless, tired, and unfulfilled. They’re keeping you from living with joy, from accomplishing the good that only you can do. But that can change today. In Things That Matter, Joshua Becker uses practical exercises, questions, insights from a nationwide survey, and success stories to give you the motivation you need to • identify the pursuits that matter most to you • align your dreams with your daily priorities • recognize how money and possessions keep you from happiness • become aware of how others’ opinions of you influence your choices • embrace what you’re truly passionate about instead of planning that next escape • figure out what to do with all those emails, notifications, and pings • let go of past mistakes and debilitating habits Things That Matter is a book about living well. It’s about overcoming the chatter of a world focused on all the wrong things. It’s about rethinking the common assumptions of today to find satisfaction and fulfillment tomorrow. How do we get to the end of our lives with minimal regrets? We set aside lesser pursuits to seek lasting meaning. And we discover the joy of doing it every day.

Author : Daniel Miller
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745654967
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stuff written by Daniel Miller and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff. The book opens with a critique of the concept of superficiality as applied to clothing. It presents the theories that are required to understand the way we are created by material as well as social relations. It takes us inside the very private worlds of our home possessions and our processes of accommodating. It considers issues of materiality in relation to the media, as well as the implications of such an approach in relation, for example, to poverty. Finally, the book considers objects which we use to define what it is to be alive and how we use objects to cope with death. Based on more than thirty years of research in the Caribbean, India, London and elsewhere, Stuff is nothing less than a manifesto for the study of material culture and a new way of looking at the objects that surround us and make up so much of our social and personal life.

Author : Julie Morgenstern
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 9781451639667
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life written by Julie Morgenstern and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expert organizer and New York Times bestselling author Julie Morgenstern teaches you how to get rid of the physical, mental, and time clutter that’s keeping you from the life you want. Julie Morgenstern has made a career out of helping her clients get organized. But in the process, she discovered something surprising: for many of her clients, organizing isn’t enough. For those who are eager to make a change in their lives—a new job, a new relationship, a new stage in life—they need to get rid of the old before they can organize the new. They need to SHED their stuff before they can change their lives! So Julie created the SHED process—a four-step plan to get rid of the physical, mental, and schedule clutter that holds back so many of us. But SHEDing isn’t just about throwing things away! Julie teaches that its just as important to focus on what comes before and after you heave the clutter, so that the changes you make really stick in the long term. Learn about: • Separating the treasures (figuring out what really matters) • Heaving the rest (undertaking the tough work of eliminating excess) • Embracing your true identity (figuring out who you really want to be) • Driving yourself forward (achieving real change now that the past isn’t holding you back any longer) Whether you’re facing a move, a promotion, an empty nest, a marriage, divorce, or retirement, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life provides a practical, transformative plan for positively managing change in every aspect of your life.

Author : Joshua Becker
Publisher : WaterBrook
ISBN 13 : 0593193989
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Things That Matter written by Joshua Becker and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • Discover practical steps you can take today to live a life focused on things that matter, from the bestselling author of The More of Less and The Minimalist Home. “Things That Matter points the way to free ourselves from the distractions of everyday life so that we can build the lives we seek to create.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project Everywhere around you are distractions: That text you respond to quickly, just to get it out of the way. The newest money-making side hustle to cross your mind. The evening spent organizing your overflowing kitchen cupboards. Disruptions are the enemies of a life well lived—both the new distractions of our generation and timeless ones that have existed for centuries. They all add up to make you feel restless, tired, and unfulfilled. They’re keeping you from living with joy, from accomplishing the good that only you can do. But that can change today. In Things That Matter, Joshua Becker uses practical exercises, questions, insights from a nationwide survey, and success stories to give you the motivation you need to • identify the pursuits that matter most to you • align your dreams with your daily priorities • recognize how money and possessions keep you from happiness • become aware of how others’ opinions of you influence your choices • embrace what you’re truly passionate about instead of planning that next escape • figure out what to do with all those emails, notifications, and pings • let go of past mistakes and debilitating habits Things That Matter is a book about living well. It’s about overcoming the chatter of a world focused on all the wrong things. It’s about rethinking the common assumptions of today to find satisfaction and fulfillment tomorrow. How do we get to the end of our lives with minimal regrets? We set aside lesser pursuits to seek lasting meaning. And we discover the joy of doing it every day.

Author : David Gauntlett
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745637752
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making is Connecting written by David Gauntlett and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that, through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections. During the previous century, the production of culture became dominated by professional elite producers. But today, a vast array of people are making and sharing their own ideas, videos and other creative material online, as well as engaging in real-world crafts, art projects and hands-on experiences. Gauntlett argues that we are seeing a shift from a ‘sit-back-and-be-told culture' to a ‘making-and-doing culture'. People are rejecting traditional teaching and television, and making their own learning and entertainment instead. Drawing on evidence from psychology, politics, philosophy and economics, he shows how this shift is necessary and essential for the happiness and survival of modern societies.

Author : Lee W. Brainard
Publisher : Lee W Brainard
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Glorious Salvation Machine written by Lee W. Brainard and published by Lee W Brainard. This book was released on 2022-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a spirit of sanctified humor, this satire skewers the error of the easy-believe gospel and defends the biblical truth that Christians will be changed by the Holy Spirit that indwells and empowers them. Take a rough-n-tumble journey with Peregrinus (Latin for pilgrim) as he, with the help of his mentor Plowman, battles with the errors thrown at him by the likes of such characters as Willy "Rush" Forward, Strawberry Nostrum, Reverend Quacksalver, and Jumping Jack Hallelujah.