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Inside Dean Kamen's Seceded Island of Geekery
mattnyc99 writes "The new issue of Esquire has a long, in-depth, intricate profile of Dean Kamen and his quest to invent a better world. Earlier this month, we discussed Kamen's Sterling-electric car, but this piece goes into much more detail about how that engine works — he got the original idea from the upmodded Henry Ford artifact in the basement of his insane island lab — and about how his inventions often go overlooked, including the Slingshot water purifier that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet. Quoting: 'To get the Slingshot to the 20 percent of the world that doesn't have electricity, Kamen came up with the idea of splitting it in half. Leaving the Stirling aside, he would try to develop a market for his distiller in parts of the developing world that have electricity but not reliable clean water. "There are five hundred thousand little stores in Mexico," he says. "If we can put one of these in 10 percent of them, that's enough to put it in production." That may be the killer app for the distiller.' So, is this guy all hype with overpriced devices, or is time for someone to take his genius (Segway aside) to the mass market?"
Or is he, as the title implies but the summary fails to make clear, a guy who has made tons of money selling stuff he's invented since the 80s, and has made enough money that he bought his own private island (with its own "navy" and "air force")and then half-jokingly seceded from the United States something like 20 years ago.
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There are a lot of great R&D guys out there who have no idea how to get their product into the consumer's hands. Kamen started out making medical equipment (portable dialysis IIRC), and the Segway is the little brother of one of the best mobility devices (wheelchairs) in existence. But his track record is horrible when it comes to mass market devices. OTOH, you have the iPod, which is a very functional and stylish, yet underperforming, piece of technology, and the sell like mad. If he wants to turn the trend around he needs to spend some of that mountain of cash on a top shelf PR and Marketing firm, as opposed to the stunt publicity that "announced" the Segway.
Next time you need kidney dialysis you won't need to question his genius.
And kudos to him for seceding from the union!
Well, I am in Mexico and I can tell you that a lot of small businesses here consist on buying some midsized reverse osmosis/filtration/UV equipment and make money distributing 20 liter bottles of water in a given neighborhood.
So yeah, a lot of those small stores are already "crushing our feeble electricity distribution infrastructure", so there wouldn't be too much of a difference there. Not to mention that it is a way-too-powerful union what's crushing the electricity distribution here, but I disgress...
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The problem seem to be that they haven't figured out CSS...if they had figured it out, these pages would be usable and non-ugly.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Thinking like that is exactly _why_ the world needs people like Dean Kamen.
Irrational engineering has led either directly or indirectly to many, many of the world's great advances. Guys like Kamen are out there on the "crazy edge" of bleeding edge, for a good reason.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
The problem with this, of course, is that if you have enough money, you can create your own charity. Said charity can then employ your descendants to perform not-too-difficult jobs for rather-higher-than-average salaries.
If you have upwards of $10-$20M, this is a completely valid way to do things The hit in high inheritance taxes falls on those with just enough to be taxable but not enough to fund ways around it.
Please, don't take this personally. I know you're just making a post on Slashdot. But why can't you even read one article about this before you make useless guesses?
After two minutes of Googling, I found this diamond in the rough, a patent application secretively titled "STIRLING ENGINE THERMAL SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS", submitted by Dean Kamen. Though you may dislike the Segway, and I can't blame you for it, the technology came from his iBot wheel chair, which is the closest thing I've seen to offering someone who doesn't have use of their legs a chance at full mobility. This has improved the lives of thousands of people. Unless you're an aid worker or another genius inventor, your comparable contributions to society are far less, without even touching his more traditional medical inventions.
So, with all due respect, before you pat yourself on the back for shooting down an idea you are totally ignorant of, stop typing and read about the idea first. Then, if you have something useful to say, the world will be glad to read about your idea, and then reply.