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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Download or read book Things That Make Us Smart written by Don Norman and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of THE DESIGN OF EVERYDAY THINGS. Insightful and whimsical, profoundly intelligent and easily accessible, Don Norman has been exploring the design of our world for decades, exploring this complex relationship between humans and machines. In this seminal work, fully revised and updated, Norman gives us the first steps towards demanding a person-centered redesign of the machines we use every day. Humans have always worked with objects to extend our cognitive powers, from counting on our fingers to designing massive supercomputers. But advanced technology does more than merely assist with memory—the machines we create begin to shape how we think and, at times, even what we value. In THINGS THAT MAKE US SMART, Donald Norman explores the complex interaction between human thought and the technology it creates, arguing for the development of machines that fit our minds, rather than minds that must conform to the machine.
Download or read book Love People Use Things written by Joshua Fields Millburn and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "The Minimalists show you how to disconnect from our conditioned material state and reconnect to our true essence: love people and use things. This is not a book about how to live with less, but about how to live more deeply and more fully." —Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk AS SEEN ON THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARIES MINIMALISM & LESS IS NOW How might your life be better with less? Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent—a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment—a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you’re imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you’ll have to let go of some clutter that’s in the way. In Love People, Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences—and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey—to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life. Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.
Download or read book Emotionally Durable Design written by Jonathan Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotionally Durable Design presents counterpoints to our ‘throwaway society’ by developing powerful design tools, methods and frameworks that build resilience into relationships between people and things. The book takes us beyond the sustainable design field’s established focus on energy and materials, to engage the underlying psychological phenomena that shape patterns of consumption and waste. In fluid and accessible writing, the author asks: why do we discard products that still work? He then moves forward to define strategies for the design of products that people want to keep for longer. Along the way we are introduced to over twenty examples of emotional durability in smart phones, shoes, chairs, clocks, teacups, toasters, boats and other material experiences. Emotionally Durable Design transcends the prevailing doom and gloom rhetoric of sustainability discourse, to pioneer a more hopeful, meaningful and resilient form of material culture. This second edition features pull-out quotes, illustrated product examples, a running glossary and comprehensive stand firsts; this book can be read cover to cover, or dipped in-and-out of. It is a daring call to arms for professional designers, educators, researchers and students from in a range of disciplines from product design to architecture; framing an alternative genre of design that reduces the consumption and waste of resources by increasing the durability of relationships between people and things.
Download or read book Everyday Life written by Jack D Douglas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the ethnomethodology and other phenomenological sociologies grew very rapidly among students and professionals in social science during the latter part of the twentieth century. The growth of this interest was handicapped by the lack of clear, systematic, and comprehensive treatments of their basic ideas and research findings. This book provides the first genuinely intelligible and reasonably systematic presentation of this perspective and contributed to the restructuring of empirical knowledge upon solid foundations. It remains important to those who would understood these areas of the social sciences and their potential to contribute to understanding of social life. These original essays, all of which share ideas about the scientific inadequacies of conventional sociologies and the fundamental importance of these new approaches, were contributed by many of the best young research workers and theorists of this approach in 1970, when the book was originally published. They are critical, theoretical, and empirical, and provide the first understandable presentation of this new mode of thought, its distinctions from old points of view, the range of problems that concern its practitioners, and the kinds of results that can be achieved. The book's clarity and systematic treatment of important research topics make it suitable for courses in sociological theory and research, the history of social thought, and related subjects. In addition, this volume can be used in courses specifically dealing with ethnomethodology, in graduate seminars dealing with these issues, and in academic work based on this orientation.
Download or read book Getting Things Done written by David Allen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity." "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots. Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
Download or read book Last Lecture written by Perfection Learning Corporation and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Let the Legends Preach written by Jared E. Alcántara and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-04-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Let the Legends Preach celebrates the past and current legends of black preaching through preserving the sermons that they preached at the Annual E. K. Bailey Expository Preaching Conference. The twenty-four preachers honored in this book received the Living Legend Award for Excellence in Preaching on account of ministries that impacted hundreds of thousands of people across the nation and around the world. Not only does this book lift up preachers that are familiar to so many, names belonging to the great cloud of witnesses in black preaching over the last fifty years, but it also introduces a new generation of preachers to their powerful stories and homiletical wisdom. Each chapter offers readers short biographical sketches on the life and ministry of the preachers that were honored followed by the sermon that they preached or the lecture that they delivered at the annual conference.
