Back in 1960, an obscure Dutch cultural critic named Constant Nieuwenhuys predicted that someday we would all become architects. Stuck in a world where everything looked the same, he suggested, we would be so alienated from our environment by technology that we would constantly redesign the space around us just to recover the joy of living.
Nieuwenhuys was wrong about only one thing. We're not alienated at all. Here we are, roaring into the 21st century, powered by the longest economic boom in U.S. history, wired to the Web and to one another, thirstily consuming new technology even before we know...