I wouldn't say design has become strictly functional. A lot of cars these days look downright comic book to me, and the info-gadgets with which late industrial people spend the most time - phones, music players, etc. - are blobjects.
A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.
Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma.
Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.