Disposable chopsticks, the ultimate in simplicity, come at a price. China will impose a 5 percent consumption tax on chopsticks to save scarce timber. It makes 15 billion pairs a year, using 71 million cubic feet of wood.

greg baker / the associated press

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John Maeda is a professor at MIT's Media Lab and a nationally recognized computer scientist. His early computer-art experiments, for example, were a precursor to the interactive graphics common on Web sites today.

He's not, by any means, a technophobe. But recently he decided to get a new cell phone and nearly wore himself out in the process.

"It was killing me," says Maeda. "Choosing a service carrier and the kind of plan I needed. Figuring out the implications of choosing a phone using 'GSM' or 'CDM.' I wasn't sure what it meant to have a locked phone or an unlocked phone. I gave up. I said, 'I can't deal with this.' It was too complex a process."

For reasons such as this, Maeda is now a "repentant" technowhiz and a leading apostle of simplicity. In 2004 he founded the MIT Simplicity Consortium at the Media Lab, which works with major corporations to design technologies for simplicity-driven products. He's just published a book called "The Laws of Simplicity" (The MIT Press, $20), a guide to simplicity in the digital age. He ruminates about simplicity on his Simplicity blog, and next week he'll discuss strategies for making products simpler at a panel discussion in Boston on the future of design and technology sponsored by Core77, a New York-based design network that publishes an influential design blog.

"Achieving simplicity in the digital age is a personal mission," says Maeda. "We are all seeking simplicity."

We may seek it, but it's not easily achieved, as the average befuddled consumer is reminded at this time of year. With Christmas less than seven weeks away, it's hard to hide from the retail onslaught of "must-have" gadgets, tech products and home accessories, many of them impenetrable without a user's manual, plenty of them of dubious relevance or value to the planet.

What's a MuVo Sport C100? A Neotitanium Micro Driver? Is daily life enhanced by an Ultrasonic Jewelry Cleaner or Voice Memo Parking Timer that reminds you when to feed the meter?

"There is huge pressure to make products smarter and more technologically imbued, which ends up almost backfiring," says Allan Chochinov, a designer and partner of Core77. "End users feel they can't use them. They make us feel dumb or incompetent."

Adding to the confusion is the accelerated life cycle of products these days, in this design-obsessed culture where style and fashion are powerful forces. "Design is in its premier decade," says Bill Cockayne, CEO of Change Research Inc., a San Francisco technology design firm and one of the speakers at next week's design panel. "Design is in BusinessWeek every week. Design is the new rock star."

Chochinov says consumers are much savvier now than they used to be, and one of the things they are demanding is "clarity" in their products, with less extraneous elements. The proliferation of design blogs such as Engadget and CNET — with their ruthless customer reviews — is helping to ensure that this will happen.

"This new information system on the Internet is allowing people to express their opinions about things before they make purchases," he says. "They talk about 'feature creep,' about too many buttons, about poorly organized products that are horrible to use. It's a shakeout for designers. It will have the same effect as bad reviews on new movies, or Broadway shows that close in a week. This is something that will push our industry forward, and it directly results in sales, or no sales."

What simple products does simplicity guru Maeda admire? "I like the simplicity of chopsticks," he said. "As a design, they are just two sticks. They don't even have to be perfectly straight. You can break two small branches off a tree and scrape off the bark on the ends that will touch your mouth. Voila! Tool and nature intertwined in harmony."