Having moved on from Windows, Bill Gates has been venturing to make the world a better place. He donates an enormous amount of money to charity. Last year, he attempted to reinvent the toilet through a competition that would make the everyday fixture more sanitary and efficient. Now, Gates is taking his revolution from the bathroom to the bedroom, and looking to reinvent the condom.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is offering $100,000 grants for people to come up with a next-gen condom. The design challenge notes a few areas where condoms can be improved, notably the decrease in pleasure being a usage deterrent. On the other end of the sex spectrum, female condoms don’t reduce pleasure like male condoms do, but are more expensive than their male counterpart, and still require the negotiation of using a condom before sex takes place. Ever since latex became the primary material used, condoms haven’t had a significant advance in either increase of pleasure or safety.
The Foundation is concerned with raising the usage rate of condoms, but rather than introducing some invasive law that puts accelerometers and tracking chips in our condoms (or something), it wants to enhance the pleasure condoms provide in order to make us want to use them. Walking down the pharmacy isle in any local grocery store certainly shows that condom manufacturers are of the same mindset. Differently shaped condoms are widely available, as well as condoms with chemical combinations that are said to enhance pleasure.
Your idea doesn’t have to totally redefine the condom. You can simply redesign the packaging in such a way to make them more appealing or somehow make them easier to put on. You don’t have to add a flexible display with a lithium-ion battery that has 360 hours of standby time and 8 hours of use time, but — to be fair — you’d probably buy one of those, right?
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