The Big Think

In five hundred years I believe the world will look back on early 21st century humanity and will see Dean Kaman much the same way that we now look back on Leonardo da Vinci. Kamen has done a lot of things in his long and eclectic career, but I think he’ll be remember most not for the crazy thing he invented a few years ago, but for something much more mundane and important.

Kamen was on the Colbert Report last night showing off his latest invention. Colbert sticks to his schtick, unfortunately, and tries to milk some comedy out of an invention that I believe is truly revolutionary and important. Check it out.

Kamen is one of those guys that I’d really, really like to meet. He seems to have a knack (Segway jokes aside), for picking one or two really intractable problems and then focusing on them (with his brilliant team) until he gets them licked.

I mean, how cool is it to invent a relatively cheap water purifier that can basically change the lives of 1,200,000,000 people? How’s that for a contribution?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.