[wnkrshm]

I think that would be something well-adapted to our future of conserving energy. Less planned obsolescence, more maintainability. In a perfect world, we could put all our advances in the 'atom' world into appliances that make everyone's life better.

That's one reason why I really like 'simple' engineering projects that aim to translate scientific/technological advances to communities in developing countries (the good ones, there are many well-meant-but-too-high-tech projects). One of the best ones I can think of is the self-made charcoal barrel and based on that water filtration setup.