Zippers.

Consider the lowly zipper. How you ever considered how they work, I mean really looked at one up close? Zipper People, and you know who you are, are a tad obsessive when it comes to closure.  Zippers are used on everything from clothing to luggage to camping gear. The current incarnation of the zipper has been around for nearly a century, supplanting the “button” as the designer’s choice to close men’s trousers and to avoid, as the marketing campaign of that time put it, “…the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray….”. I can imagine buttons everywhere high-fiving one another over having been displaced from that particular function.

That said, the zipper is a pretty amazing invention. Lightweight, efficient, inexpensive – the way it pulls two sides together is nothing short of miraculous. Perhaps we humans can learn something there, as we have a proven track record of “disarray”.