Modular design makes tech personal (and repairable)

Modular design is reaching new audiences by letting users build systems that are suited to their unique needs and can evolve.

Decades before the first personal computer hit the shelves, American industrial designer Brooks Stevens popularized the phrase planned obsolescence—defining it as “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary”—ushering in an epoch of products made to be disposable.