A pragmatic school of industrial designers aims to make the controls of a machine—be it a VCR, a telephone, or a nuclear reactor—reflect the people who will use the machine rather than the engineers who want to show off new technology
“Active” noise-cancellation systems battle noise rather than just muffle it. So far their use is mostly industrial, but soon they will silence refrigerators and dishwashers—and maybe even your neighbors
Despite its seeming indestructibility, concrete is susceptible to the elements and to a variety of peculiarly modern punishments. This, along with scarce funding for maintenance, has resulted in a literally crumbling infrastructure that will take $1 trillion to repair