While I’m on the topic of filtering water, I recently read about the grandiosely named Lifesaver bottle, which is capable of rapidly filtering out even the smallest pathogens in water, producing 6000 L of ultra-pure drinking water over the course of its filter’s usable life. The one problem is, it currently costs £230, or $460.

I wonder if this product could benefit from the mantra “good is good enough.” While it is an impressive tour de force of engineering development, the $460 price tag is staggering, limiting its audience to the wealthy (who could easily afford to treat the disease, anyway, if it came to that). Existing commercial water filter bottles, or inventions such as the LifeStraw, may not completely purify water - but you can buy 150 LifeStraws for the price of 1 Lifesaver. And even the LifeStraw is too expensive for those who truly need it.

As with uber-supercars like the Bugatti Veyron, it’s an object that has lost all relevance in its pursuit of the ultimate.

I may be putting the case too harshly, because as the Inhabitat blogger mentions, that price must be representative of tremendous R&D investment, and genuine progress is impossible without such costs. One can only hope that the technology will filter down to future products at more sane prices.