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Buckminster Fuller observed, "The better technology gets - the more it disappears."

I pulled this quote from a Web interview with Bill McDonough. Its point resonated with me instantly. I keep a mental log of things whose design and functionality does or doesn't live up to their purposes: necessity, durability, integrity, ease-of-use, re-use, and ergonomics, among others.

Indeed, the best technologies have the best designs, fitting into our lives without confusing, crowding, or polluting our world.

Buckminster and Bill are among the visionary architects of their times. Buckminster, who died in 1983, was a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and inventor of the geodesic dome (the triangle taken to its highest architectural power). Bill is one of the leading voices internationally in the sustainable environment/living movement, advisor to corporations, governments, and communities, as well as a winner of the National Design Award.

Bill talks about the worthiness of good design in relation to the supreme challenge we face globally: How do we create sustainable progress over generations, not just tomorrow? Bill's point is that we accomplish this future through the design of new technology solutions - using nature as our guide - and not by hiding or shrinking from the challenge.

Bucky, as he was known, was motivated in his life's work by the question, "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?"

Think about it - new and ecologically balanced designs for the things we use and dispose of in the courses of our days are the only simple, yet complex, answers for this future. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. What do we stand for today?

These thoughts remind me of the salient advice my mother shared with me as I headed into the world, full of brim and ambition: "Someday you will appreciate your time spent here."

She was referring to our family farm, where we lived at the eternal human intersection of dependence and independence, as close to nature as the seeds we planted every spring and the harvests we enjoyed from toiling our soils.

We make the fool's bet when we think we can beat nature and abuse our blessings ad infinitum. We steal from the future when we ignore our generational responsibilities to maintain a balance with our planet.

To bring complex actions and reactions into foci, scientists using technologies to monitor the Greenland land and ice masses are registering very dramatic and alarming increases in the number of earthquakes and ice fissures in the past 10 years, triggered by melting ice.

While these distant occurrences may seem worlds away from Albuquerque, trust the experts who advise us our independence is built on our dependence. Global warming is a phenomenon whose consequence no creature will escape.

Technology is both the problem and the solution to our environmental conundrum in an external sense. Our consciousness of both the challenges and opportunities is our internal solution - person-to-person, mind-to-mind, action-to-reaction.

McDonough's message is one of sober optimism and hope. We do not stop creating and living with abundance. We do reset our definitions of abundance, and retool our purposes and appreciations for our creations.

One of McDonough's clients, Interface, one of the world's leading commercial carpet manufacturers, serves as a shining example for the force behind Bucky and McDonough's points that the better technology is, the more it disappears. Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, shifted the company's entire manufacturing process to make carpets fully recyclable and healthier for the environment, eliminating millions of tons of waste being thrown into landfills, while making Interface more profitable.

Beyond the pun, Interface and visionaries like Bucky, Bill and Ray give us solid footings in our new old ways of living.

For the record, Mom, I do appreciate the time I spent there - now more than ever. Thank you.