Nothing better illustrates the jury-rigged world we live in, the comic juxtaposition of twenty-first century technology and nineteenth-century construction methods, than the recent incident on Mass. Ave. A stalwart work crew laying spiffy fiber-optic cables accidentally slashed through the lines that control the 77-84 crosswalk traffic light, thereby imperiling the lives of hundreds of twitchy-footed students.

Does this surprise any of us? Is it at all unusual even in the MIT cyber-milieu that elemental physical clumsiness -- rank incompetence, from the worst perspective -- is as proudly present as ever? Do we expect mathematical perfection, a construction job flawlessly executed, whenever bulldozers happen to appear on campus? Of course not. But we know from experience.

Alumnus Kenan Sahin '63 two weeks ago donated $100 million to an institution that can't simultaneously operate both of its Student Center elevators. That can't fix the embarrassing dripping problem displayed by the garish, self-congratulatory concrete arch next to the Media Lab. That is content with a pockmarked, patched-up, orange-cone-punctuated Amherst Alley. That has allowed several of its dorms to deteriorate to the point of failing fire-safety standards. That is planning to build a gargantuan new Stata Center, but put the balsa-and-plastic model on public display for only one day, going as far as to sequester it in a room with frosted windows between presentations to bigwigs and mucky-mucks.

MIT has a distinctly checkered history -- and "checkered" would be viewed by many as a charitable description -- when it comes to construction. The windows in Building 34, right by the 6.001 lab, always seem to have condensation on the inside. Building NE43, in Tech Square on Broadway, was designed to look like a punch card, right down to its sealed windows -- but punch cards don't have perpetually hissing ventilation systems. (Is it any wonder that only a couple of decades after first being built, NE43's companion building is being totally gutted and refurbished?) The Student Center, half in sunlight and half in shade during the day, has a single thermostat. The sunny side gets too much heat; the shady side, never enough. The Tang Hall bathrooms are windy, despite their placement in the building's core.

Kresge Oval has a huge gash. It appeared suddenly and without warning. Badminton and volleyball players have in the past been blinded by Rockwell Cage's inadequately-curtained windows. Birds fly around within Walker. One noted pundit has hypothesized the presence of bird feces in and among Walker's acclaimed lunch offerings.

Can we trust MIT with its big plans -- overhauling housing, a capital campaign, new construction on Vassar Street east and west -- when it displays such an inability to master the mundane?

In fairness, MIT is not the only institution to be plagued by ridiculously low-level difficulties. NASA has had great trouble with its fleet of space shuttles; every now and then a batch of wires is found defective or a drill bit is detected in an engine, necessitating a costly and embarrassing delay in the already-glacial launch schedule. Amtrak this summer unveiled a swanky new advertising campaign for Acela, its new high-speed train between Boston, New York, and Washington. It's a campaign without a product, though -- Acela's delayed at least until the spring. The new train sets, costing who knows how many millions, were built four inches too wide.

Even in our area there are a multiplicity of cases where big plans and grand ideas somehow manage to eclipse the crumbling niches that must be intact to form a coherent, orderly society. The city of Cambridge greedily lays plans for new development while doing nothing about low- and moderate-income residents being squeezed out by skyrocketing rents. The MBTA is busy designing two entirely new transit lines while Maverick Station, on the Blue Line, collapses further into the East Boston sand. And need I mention the billions of dollars being funnelled into Boston's redevelopment projects, within spitting distance of a decaying school system?

Everywhere, horizon-searchers neglect what lies at their feet. Some think that the only remedy is a renewed attention to immediate details -- a crackdown on the present, if you will. The authors of Fixing Broken Windows, a book on policing immediately adopted as dogma by Rudy Giuliani, posit that "broken windows breed disorder" -- the way to tackling large, out-of-control problems like rampant crime is to respond to every small disturbance, every broken window, with whatever it takes to make sure there are no more broken windows. It's a neat freak's delight -- everything and everyone in his place. The small things attended to, the large things thus made possible. It's a bit extreme.

It's not quite what I mean. Yes, the small should be taken care of, just not necessarily with overwhelming force. MIT, which claps its hands so delightedly anticipating groundbreaking for Bill Gates's building, should certainly have a campus bereft of fogged-up windows and blinky lifts. Fascist emergency-response teams are not needed; a reasonable, pragmatic mindset is. The sorts of problems I have in mind are the ones anyone with a few minutes and a few dollars should be able to solve.

I prefer the example of the New York subway. In the 1980s, New York City Transit inaugurated a new graffiti-control measure -- any car found to have graffiti would be removed from service, cleaned, and put back on the rails within 24 hours. The result was dramatic. In 1985, the subway was a rolling hodgepodge of paint; in 1995, and continuing today, graffiti can't be found anywhere. Whether you like graffiti or not is not the point -- the point is that the subway decided on a policy and then implemented an effective, reasonable means to implement it. Can't MIT do the same thing? Can't we think about raising $1.5 billion at the same time as we think about how we might finally be able to grow a lawn in the East Campus courtyard? In a world of big plans, it's all too easy to ignore the day-to-day small plans; that's how we get potholes and burnt-out lightbulbs and broken door locks. But this is MIT. We can figure it out.