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It hasn't been a great year for Dean Kamen's personal transporter, the Segway. Earlier this year the company Ka-men founded recalled all 24,000 units it has sold in the United States, to repair a software glitch that can make the devices shift un-expectedly into reverse. But Kamen himself, arguably the country's most famous inventor and the head of the DEKA skunk works in Manchester, N.H., is on to bigger, more significant projects. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Brad Stone.
KAMEN: It's such a transforming piece of technology. We are giving people freedom. We are getting letters from people saying, "This must be what governors feel like when they give someone a reprieve from death row." People in a wheelchair can look at their spouses in the eye, climb a curb or go into a restaurant. It changes their lives.
I think it's too early to judge. I'd prefer to see regulatory approval everywhere. I'd like to see the cost curve come down. I wish lithium batteries cost $100 apiece, not $500.
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The company did the right thing. It found a very, very obscure glitch that took years before it ever manifested itself, and it fixed it.
It's bimodal. There's a small group of people on the leading edge, literally doing stuff that will take your breath away. If you are not on the front edge of the wave, it's harder to understand it, much less be involved. You used to be able to open the hood of a car and understand, that's the engine. Most people today look at technology and see magic.
There's no question there are people who have learned to game the patent system. But we are running the risk of pushing the pendulum too far [with proposed patent reform]. I'm afraid we are going to damage the system itself. When you see athletes using steroids, the goal is to get steroids out of baseball, not to shut down the national pastime.
Proposed reforms will be the end of the willingness of big companies to invest in huge R&D projects. It will be the end of little guys being able to attract venture capital and resources.
We need to make sure our patent system holds anyone who wants a patent to a very, very high standard; the invention must be unique and non-obvious to somebody skilled in the art.
I am totally confident that between new sources of energy, new uses, better conservation--having the world of genomics and proteomics start producing bugs that directly produceenergy by converting various plants into fuels--I don't think [energy] is an issue.
Yes, in fact I did with [Apple cofounder] Steve Wozniak. I wasn't particularly good.
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