In this week's Economist, the Technology Quarterly included an article about Dean Kamen. Kamen, who is based in Manchester, New Hampshire, is perhaps best known for inventing the Segway self-balancing scooter, but he also invented the insulin pump, the home dialysis machine, and has registered upwards of 440 patents in the last 40 years.
You can read the full, fascinating article through the link above, but I especially wanted to share a couple of quotes from Kamen:
"If you look at the way science and technology are presented today, it's worse than they just don't get their fair share of time. It's like somebody brilliantly set out to undermine any prospect for the average kid -- especially girls and minorities -- to feel excited about science. When children see a scientist on television, it's either a squeaky, geeky misfit kid or a middle=-aged white male with frizzy hair and a German accent."
"Technology is easy to develop. Developing a new attitude, moving the culture, is the difficult part... The reason it takes technology 15 or 20 years to come in is because 15 years is the time it takes a kid who saw it when he was young to become a functioning adult."
