I am not, I have realized, a forward thinker. I will not be inventing the printing press—no matter whose ideas I borrow—or the next overly-hyped Web phenomenon. I am instead a deep thinker. I find myself on board with new ideas, but also urging caution. Introspection. I want us to ask ourselves the tough questions.
This isn’t for the sake of nostalgic traditionalism, but rather for the good of true innovation, the necessary check to narrowly focused visionaries. After all, we tend to praise artificial solutions to our artificial problems—those caused by last generation’s artificial solutions.
I think of how many times I’ve thought this in just the last few months. Birth control is causing an ‘infertility epidemic’ so we begin freezing women’s eggs. Our built environment consumes exorbitant amounts of energy so Las Vegas builds its next unrepentant, conspicuous spectacle ‘sustainably.’ When will we learn to stop and think—not for the four or five hours of our design charrette—but for a length of time worthy of what is being considered?
This is what I want to do. Criticism not in service to self-congratulatory pontification, but to the depth of our various discussions—and to the long future they’ll inevitably inform.
THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 
