Oh yes, I saw this on Hacker News! It was an excellent article -- the amount of research was incredible -- and the subject was amazing. It makes me wonder why we don't still use pneumatic tubes for transporting small things like cash, jewelry, or household pets. Imagine you could just shoot your pooch across town using the power of compressed air instead of strapping it to the roof of your car like Romney did.
The pipes of the 19th Century carried the wires of the 20th. The TV antennas of the 20th Century will carry the two-way networks of the next part of the 21st.
The end of the article mentions modern pneumatic systems in hospitals for vial delivery. I wonder whether the combination of trackable containers (RFID, etc) and computers would simplify the pipe system. For example, a doctor could put vial X into container Y and mark Y's chip to go to room 1234. Then sending it in any nearby upward pipe would trigger a hatch on the 12th floor when it got scanned in the pipe. You then only need to install a single up tube and another own down tube for the entire tower.