The Peepoo

Image from www.peepoo.com

You have to love the name and the positioning of the Peepoo, a single use bag that sanitizes poo so that it can be used immediately as fertiliser. From the Peepoo people (called the peepoople) we hear the Peepoo is "... personal, as in personal computer; it is mobile, as in mobile phone; and micro, as in Microsoft. User-friendly and advanced, yet simple and cheap, the Peepoo offers a high degree of contemporary status."

http://www.peepoople.com/showpage.php?page=3_2

This little device is an example of atomized infrastructure - infrastructure that is not part of a network, infrastructure that is not managed by a relatively anonymous, monopolized conglomerate.
These little atomized items are valuable when:

1. governments cannot afford classical infrastructure- on an atomized path, people can have the health and economic benefits of infrastructure even when the governing bodies cannot manage the large capital investments
2. individuals want to distance themselves from the constructs created by infrastructure for political, environmental or lifestyle reasons
3. a resilient system is desired - being non-networked means individual infrastructure 'points' (rather than the traditional 'nodes') will continue to function even when connections have been destroyed by some disastrous event
   

But these infrastructure points change the economic environment. Instead of vast capital requirements, there is now a need for continual consumption of a product. How many of these would you need to purchase for even a month's use? What happens when branding becomes part of infrastructure? But I guess most telephone users know about the arcane pricing structures and aggressive marketing when that happens.