French designer Philippe Starck is a leading innovator in the industrial and interior design fields. Photo courtesy of Philiippe Starck.

Editor’s note: From hard drives to motorcycles, and from chairs to buildings, Philippe Starck has designed just about every kind of product out there. In the first of a regular series of columns, the seminal designer shares his vision on the state of design and his creative drive.

One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is what I think is the best piece of design ever. Quite simply, it’s us. Human beings.

I am lazy, sadly, like everybody, and a coward,...

While the device worked during Wired.com's testing period without issue, numerous customers have experienced problems with Toshiba's new Thrive tablet. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

In a series of message board complaints on Monday, customers reported problems waking the tablet from its sleep mode. Instead of normally pressing the power button on the side of the device to turn on the screen, a number of users needed to do hard reboot — or a complete restart of the system software — ...