Inside Dean Kamen's Seceded Island of Geekery 187
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?"
Re:Better water purification (Score:5, Interesting)
there's a survival kit device that is basically a straw with a filter laminate in it - the claim is that you can stick the end of this thing in raw sewage, suck on it and get a drink of pure water. Not something I'd try myself for gits and shiggles, but I have half a dozen of these in my "End of Civilisation" bag so if it does come down to it, I'm not going thirsty. Caveat: it doesn't filter out radioactive particulates, so sticking it in a river estuary after a nuclear strike would be a no-no.
Re:Or... (Score:3, Interesting)
I grew up sailing in Fisher's Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut. We sailed by North Dumpling hundreds of times over the years. At some point in the 80s we noticed a lot more activity on the island than we had seen before, and this must be the point that Dean bought it. Suddenly there was a nice helicopter atop the island, and a grey amphibious landing craft always on the beach. We *never* saw anyone outside, certainly not any hot young things sunning themselves on the upper deck... this guy is apparently not James Bond, despite his penchant for bondian-type toys.
Anyway, it is a very cool spread. Personally I think anyone that owns an island like that should be able to seceed from the union, providing he pays for the protection afforded by the Groton sub base and can afford the duties/tariffs on any exports from CT! :-)
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately philanthropy won't ever take off unless it's profitable.
When it's profitable, they don't call it "philanthropy". They call it "business".
There are plenty of important philanthropists out there, willing to spend money at a "loss" in financial terms. Most notably, Bill Gates is spending more money than the entire network of all of Slashdot's readers to try to cure malaria and other global development programs. Carnegie Mellon University is the result of a massive philanthropic donation.
I'd say philanthropy has already taken off, despite not being profitable, because a lot of people think that there's more to life than profit. They have to start with the profit to make the money to donate, but they don't end there.
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately philanthropy won't ever take off unless it's profitable. Just an inherit part of human greed. Sad but true.
That's one reason why we should bring back massive (i.e. 90%) inheritance taxes. We need to force rich aging people to recognize their own finality. They can then choose four options:
1) Pass on the money while they still live, giving gifts to family/friends under the tax limits each year for many years.
2) Pass on the money while they still live, giving it to charity with no limits.
3) Allow the money to go to charity when they die, with no limits.
4) Have the government take most of it.
The option 4) in my list above, brought about by the 90% inheritance tax, replaces the current option 4) Keep a death grip on money and power in their family until the day they die, then have their children reach in and take over that grip.
Honestly, I'm not sure why we as a society would like the old option four at all. I agree that (living) people have a right to do what they wish with their acquired wealth (with some limits). And, once someone dies, it's nice to be able to respect their wishes. But if people know that the new option four is inevitable if they don't make their own choices while they live, or give it all to charity when they die, we'll all see more philanthropy and a better world.
But is his water-maker better? Cheaper? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to get clean water from non-clean water, there are plenty of systems available. Here's a small watermaker [appliedmembranes.com] that runs on salt water. It's a reverse osmosis device, with the prefilters needed to get rid of the solid crud. Here's a simpler one for non-salt water. [appliedmembranes.com] The U.S. military uses reverse osmosis units heavily. They work fine. They scale down to straw-sized things for survival use, and scale up to city-sized desalinization plants.
So why is Kamen's system better? Lower power consumption? Lower initial cost? Fewer consumables? The article doesn't tell us that. It's not like he's the first person to build a packaged water purifier.
Re:Better water purification (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:3, Interesting)
...including the Slingshot water purifer that Stephen Colbert made famous but that no one has actually bought yet
Unfortunately philanthropy won't ever take off unless it's profitable. Just an inherit part of human greed.
So, how do you make his things profitable? The water purification process seems pretty good, but there's a serious problem getting it to market.
Seems like the best way to do it is to make it profitable for the little stores, which means that they need to be able to get the device and power and maintain it for less than they can make selling the water. Maybe through microloans or something like that.
The real difficult part here is the maintenance and energy costs. If he really wanted to get it everywhere, the thing to do is to design it such that it could be built and maintained in a poor place, then give the plans away, so that small entrepreneurs could make them to sell to the small stores. And then he'd do the same with a cheap, efficient Stirling engine to power it.
Re:But is his water-maker better? Cheaper? (Score:1, Interesting)
IIRC, his device requires no filters or additional chemicals, and also can filter practically everything out (including heavy metals). It's essentially a vapor distiller.
One of the big parts is that combined with the engine, you can run the distiller on practically any fuel source (including.... methane from dung)
Re:Something completely different.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It has weird new formatting...post my last post in big text at the top of the screen? That can't be good for work usage...
I cannot find a way to change it back to the simple mode of just a few minutes ago....anyone?"
Ok...it is offtopic...but, how else will you find out what's going on on Slashdot when they change stuff like this? Modding topics like this to oblivion don't help when you're trying to get info out or about happenings within the forum...
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Genius and marketing not necessarily hand in hand (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone who has met Dean and worked with him on more than a few FIRST competitions, he's someone who is truly geek and lives to discover and improve things. That skill set isn't necessarily the same skills that would serve marketing and promotions people, and once Dean is set into motion he's a hard cat to stop - something you definitely want in an R&D genius.
At some point, Dean needs to do the market research before the announcement phase but if you spend even a few minutes with the guy, you can see how excited and dedicated he is to wanting to change the world in positive ways. I imagine that when you see the world in that framework, it becomes hard to contain your excitement to the meeting rooms....
Still, for one of the smartest and richest guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, he's extremely down to earth. Rare breed.
Re:Better water purification (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes philanthropy has negative side effects that we didn't expect. In the case of the Gates Foundation, medical professionals in Sub-Saharan Africa are bypassing jobs in the local communities where their help is desperately needed. Instead, they are taking cushy well-paid positions with the GF inoculating children against deadly diseases or treating AIDS patients. The downside is that routine medical care is in short supply as workers flock to the high-paying positions to fight sexy epidemics. The big loser is basic health care.
More from here [newsday.com].
Re:Sadly philanthropy isn't profitable. (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, let's never help anyone in one place because we might make things a little worse somewhere else.
Not "Segway aside," but the same marketing pattern (Score:2, Interesting)
mattnyc99 points out that Kamen is trying to leverage the distiller side of the market to help fund / drive down costs to get the Stirling side of the product to market.
The technology in the Segway comes originally from a wheelchair system that Kamen and company designed and produced. The Segway was an effort to popularize the technology to drive down costs, so that the wheelchair would be much less expensive, and widely available.
At least, that's the way I see it.
Read the Document (Score:3, Interesting)
Carnegie at his best:
Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.
So, a rich man knows what to do with your money, but you do not. That's individualism and freedom according to Carnegie, and not coincidentally, everyone who is sitting at the top of the caste instead of the bottom.
Well, you can stick that kind of freedom up your ass, for all I care. If the wealth belongs to the community, let the community decide how to spend it. What Carnegie describes is tyranny exerted by corporate power instead of state power, which is better in some ways, but still not good.