Photos: Emerging technologies at MIT

Segway inventor Dean Kamen talking about his next invention at MIT's Emerging Technologies Conference. According to Kamen, billions of dollars are being poured into curing diseases that afflict 20 percent of the world's ill. But the other 80 percent are succumbing to bad, undrinkable (unpotable) water. So, he's building a dirt cheap box that solves the problem and that can be distributed all over the world. Said Kamen about how to make it work: "Just add water." According to Kamen's co-workers, the device even works with urine. "If it has water in it, we can get drinking water from it," one of them said.