Hey Seth, thanks for the comment. Very reasonable point on the importance of considering insider legibility/local context. I think far-UV doesn’t fit the pattern you’re describing, though, because the people writing about it are “insiders” and it’s a very small field where everyone is talking and sharing information—there isn’t an equivalent to local context that someone working in the field wouldn’t quickly discover. Richard Williamson (who wrote the article you linked) works for Blueprint Biosecurity and is a leading expert in this field.
In the case of far-UV, I don’t think there’s a super deep reason for the lack of scale, and field insiders still debate the best path forward to scale up. I think what’s going on is that it’s at the “early adopter” tech stage and in the case of any early-commercial-stage tech, it’s hard to say exactly what would speed up adoption and exactly why people aren’t buying it faster. The most basic principle at play is inertia: it’s always easier to not buy expensive, relatively unproven new tech than to buy it. Probably RCTs/a NIST standard/lower cost would help, but these things still wouldn’t guarantee adoption.
Hey Seth, thanks for the comment. Very reasonable point on the importance of considering insider legibility/local context. I think far-UV doesn’t fit the pattern you’re describing, though, because the people writing about it are “insiders” and it’s a very small field where everyone is talking and sharing information—there isn’t an equivalent to local context that someone working in the field wouldn’t quickly discover. Richard Williamson (who wrote the article you linked) works for Blueprint Biosecurity and is a leading expert in this field.
In the case of far-UV, I don’t think there’s a super deep reason for the lack of scale, and field insiders still debate the best path forward to scale up. I think what’s going on is that it’s at the “early adopter” tech stage and in the case of any early-commercial-stage tech, it’s hard to say exactly what would speed up adoption and exactly why people aren’t buying it faster. The most basic principle at play is inertia: it’s always easier to not buy expensive, relatively unproven new tech than to buy it. Probably RCTs/a NIST standard/lower cost would help, but these things still wouldn’t guarantee adoption.