(an idea from 2014ish, need to go through some multiple passes with the brainstorming thing)
Keystone: [ call it this or something else? This.]
The Plumbing Revolution
What is taken for granted is plumbing. People don't think about it as a technology. Grumble a bit when it doesnn't quite work, pressure not quite right, temperature not quite right. Too much fluoride, chlorine? Lead? Environmental estrogens? Plumbing as a technology is static or stagnant over the last century plus.
This is an industrial enterprise proposal. The idea is to upgrade this technology -- nevermind slogans like "into the 21st century". One of (there are a few) operating maxims is the minimization if not elimination of digital technology from our products. If embedded systems will be present, it will be over a redundant layer of solid-state and mechanical logical machinery.
Why do we discount digital technology? Fragility and security risk. You don't want 200 degree shower water because of a bug. We are countering the contemporary fetish for all things digital "Digitalize all the things!" would be an apt slogan for the current epoch in terms of industrial design. This is a powerful technology but it has weaknesses and limitations. Volatility, fragility, Vulnerability.
Domains where digital has been held to some critical assessment, the affinity for analog steadfast: Tier-one audio, and submarines.
Analog signal processing, analog instrumentation and controls. Including mechanical logics (e.g. mechanical watches)
The second maxim is the absolute excellence in materials, refinement of tolerances. Our inspiration here is high-end bicycle manufacture, especially high-end components. Materials, tolerances are quite refined, and we would like the common materiel of plumbing (pipes, fitmetns) to meet this quality.
The third maxim or maybe principle is higher-level and involves improving the quality of the aggregate in-home, in-car, in factory or whatever context you need water and plumbing. In a basic home context this could mean adding filtration, diagnostic insturmentation, filtering, pumps, and reservoirs. Differentiation of drinking and bathing water, the treatment of both in various ways, adding minerals or alkalinizing for example. The way things are now, pressure is dependant upon pressure from the city water main, and how that was channeled into the house. Water content and quality is in present situation unknown, there is typically no diagnostic or instrumentation available. Reservoirs are relatively unknown in housing context, but they can be useful. Fine temperature control is another area suffering in 'modern' plumbing. If temperature and water pressure could be finely tuned, and even the total content of water for a shower could be determined, the water could be heated precisely and reservoired for use at at specific time.
That's basically it. This is an ambitious continental-scale industrial development proposal masquerading as a business proposal, which it is by the way. The goal is to revolutionize indoor, and outdoor plumbing. Starting with materials, equipment, instrumentation, and controls. We have a unique design concept or maybe philosophy.
Incidentally, there is an entire, separate product line for Keystone, and this is indeed, high-end audio. The tools and techniques for this will be a given from the work with analog instrumentation and controls for the plumbing revolution. This also, will be a return to analog music. Home, car, even portable. All analog.
There are some higher-level issues involved here. Time for some reality and politics. America has gotten super corrupt, stupid, clownish, and evil. This manifests in varied idiocies. One of these involves the de-industrialization of America in favor of parasitic financial fuckery. I'm in Austin and it seems like every single smart-boy is in on some crypto venture. Silly or stupid, in spite of the IQs involved. Money is, at best, an enabler. A civilization needs good books and sound money -- it needs the truth, and these are part and parcel of that truth in real productive economic terms. If a money system is sound, currency reinfonces successful production the way a staff officer reinforces a successful attacking line. In a parasitic system, not so much. That's a digression, the point, after conceding the need for a sound currency system, is that having all your society's smart-boys focusing on crypto and money, that's a bad sign. It reflects obvious greed and short-sightedness. It's just dumb to spend all your cognitive resources trying to figure out how to screw each other over on little mathematical angles, which is what most of this amounts to. Much better, is re-industrialization. This is what the plumbing revolution concept is about.
Another political angle at work here in my motivations... As an artist and musician disgusted by the industry as well as the deep-state's manipulation of 'counter-culture' through their control of the underworld, the industry, and now, all the digital content delivery platforms (if not at the enterprise level then certainly at the hardware level). There are a bunch of issues to address here, but the biggest one is the destruction, the deracination of our culture. America has, had, a culture. There is enough still alive to think seriously about re-vitalizing it, lettincg it live and breathe again, grow. There are two many proximate factors to break this impasse with consumer product alone, but it should be clear that we need to get back to secure music (audio file manipulation for cognitive manipulation), and independent music, sold on a proper multi-media, analog format, with art, could be a good contribution. Again, this is a re-industralization proposal.
All of this equipment technology development has product potential diverse areas, submarines for that matter consume high-end plumbing and high-end acoustical devices, not to mention all the redundant-non-digital control and insturmentation system layers.