My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water, not a dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends', but I appreciate the varying definitions of "practical" people have.
> My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water
If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify, then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it into a product and selling it to individuals.
They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to waste. Go ahead and learn from our experiments and mistakes. Maybe one of you out there can make it work as a product."
> dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends'
Why is it "dystopian" and "co-opting" if a company uses a technology like this to operate in a more environmentally friendly way?
People love to shit on companies (not specific ones, just "big companies" as a concept in general), completely ignoring where our standard of living comes from.
Considering they said allowing others to build on this progress I would imagine that they have not achieved their stated goal yet:
>The team aimed to build a highly lightweight, portable, cheap (<5% of user’s income) device that an individual could use to produce 5L of drinking water per day.
Ansil849|4 years ago
krisoft|4 years ago
If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify, then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it into a product and selling it to individuals.
They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to waste. Go ahead and learn from our experiments and mistakes. Maybe one of you out there can make it work as a product."
tgsovlerkhgsel|4 years ago
Why is it "dystopian" and "co-opting" if a company uses a technology like this to operate in a more environmentally friendly way?
People love to shit on companies (not specific ones, just "big companies" as a concept in general), completely ignoring where our standard of living comes from.
emteycz|4 years ago
jcranberry|4 years ago
>The team aimed to build a highly lightweight, portable, cheap (<5% of user’s income) device that an individual could use to produce 5L of drinking water per day.