How has the idea of "tool" changed?

Literally, mechanical things aren't that important anymore. Most of them are made by other machines, which achieve enormous levels of accuracy and precision. And so the idea that you need this skill to make something doesn't really apply much anymore in most devices. It's the idea that's important rather than the mechanical aptitude needed to realize the idea -- that's almost taken for granted.

When did machines start to make machines?

It's very particular, this moment in the Industrial Revolution when people start making machines, particularly lathes with regulating screws. Because once you've got these lathes, then they can make other lathes, and you're off and running. But it's a chicken-and-egg thing at first: How do you make a machine that's as good as a lathe when you don't have a lathe to begin with? That's the great achievement of people like Maudslay. And once you've gotten over that hurdle, you can make machines that can then make better machines. It really is a biological process. And from then on, anybody can make accurate machines. Where the screw really plays a central role is probably a unique moment -- by definition it doesn't reoccur.

You started "One Good Turn" while taking a break from writing your biography of Frederick Law Olmsted. What was the most compelling aspect of Olmsted's life?

Perhaps his fearlessness, the way in which he would undertake things without enormous training. And this is not unique to Olmsted. I think it was a common characteristic of the 19th century, which wasn't an age of specialists. You can see this at a number of points in his life, even when he's offered a job as a reporter and he's never really done any journalism at all. But he accepts it and immediately goes south and spends months traveling around and writing. He could plunge into things, and he generally succeeded.

Olmsted went from being a writer to being an architect, while you went from being an architect to being a writer. Did that create a personal connection?

It did when I was writing the book. I think any biographer identifies with the subject because there has to be some reason you chose this person to write about. In this case, Olmsted did come to his calling late. And I certainly identify with that because I didn't start writing seriously until I was about the same age -- early 40s.

And I think his curiosity is something I identify with. Let me put it this way: People often write about Olmsted and look at his early life and see that as somehow being odd or unconnected from his great achievements. Whereas I think I could sympathize with his curiosity and the various things he was trying. It didn't seem to me so odd that he had all these interests. Also, it seemed to me that they were a part of his later success.

Well, anyone would consider Central Park a success, even though it was the first park he designed.

The other thing that's impressive about Olmsted, specifically in things like Central Park, is his foresight and the accuracy of his predictions. He's building these very large parks, which are out of scale with the needs of the time, but he's looking ahead and seeing that the city's going to grow around them and they're really going to be necessary. When we enjoy and use these places that he designed a hundred years before, we don't think of them as antiques. We think of them as quite contemporary. And more or less, they affect us in the ways they were designed to.

Olmsted already belongs to an age where the ideas are more important than their execution. Is it possible to say whether this primacy of ideas is good or bad?

I don't think so. The only extent to which it's a bad thing is when we've come to take for granted all these things, and then we're shocked if something mechanically doesn't work, because most of the time it does work. So it removes us a little bit from the reality of things. It's probably why people take up things like woodworking and gardening -- it gives you an opportunity to work with your hands and use skills you probably don't need in everyday life. So you can make up for it artificially.

But it's maybe slightly a bad thing in that it distances us from our environment. Although that's been going on so long, since the Industrial Revolution. The average worker had no idea how those lathes worked. So it was pretty early that machines became so complex that the craftsman didn't exercise personal control anymore.

Is this exacerbated in what has come to be called the "Information Age"?

Well, sometimes I think the media overemphasizes the importance of information. I suspect it's not quite as important as we think. The people who make the tires, for example, turn out to be very important, and they're still actually a much bigger part of the economy than the information economy. And, for that matter, so are people who build the computers. The nuts-and-bolts aspect of things gets pushed too much into the background.

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