-Caveat Lector-
Ginger: The Wheel Thing?
Gadget Is Rumored to Be A High-Tech Unicycle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2001; Page C01
What could it be?
Respected inventor Dean Kamen of Manchester, N.H., we are told,
has come up with a world-moving invention that will be "an
alternative to products that are dirty, expensive, sometimes
dangerous, and often frustrating, especially for people in the
cities."
Has the man reinvented sex?
Harvard Business School Press is paying a quarter of a million
dollars for a book on the subject. According to the book
proposal, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos says it's a "product so
revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it." Apple Computer
CEO Steve Jobs says it will change the ways cities are designed.
Venture capitalist John Doerr has invested millions in it.
The code name for this product is "Ginger." What could it be?
If anybody actually knows, they're not talking.
But the digerati of Silicon Valley who know Kamen well were
convinced they had the answer yesterday.
Ginger, they claimed, is a wearable car.
Speculation and even drawings of a purported patent application
flew feverishly around the Web.
The drawing looks like a pogo stick with a single wheel under it
that you can't push over, no matter how hard you try. "Sort of
'B.C.' meets George Jetson in the form of a Razor on steroids,"
as Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future put it yesterday.
If Ginger is indeed a kind of 60 mph wheeled witch's broom, there
would be a sort of outlandish logic to it, given the inventor's
background.
Kamen, who according to Wired magazine holds a Guinness record
for the longest interrupted span of time spent dressed in denim,
has a history of socially motivated invention. A physicist and
engineer, he holds more than 100 patents, several for
quality-of-life devices, including the portable dialysis machine.
His latest invention was the Independence 3000 IBot Transporter
-- a sort of intelligent wheelchair. It includes onboard sensors,
gyroscopes and computers that allow the device to place its
wheels almost like feet so as to climb stairs and travel over
curbs and rocks. He demonstrated it in July in the Senate and at
Vice President Gore's residence.
Those smart miniaturized gyroscopes would presumably be at the
heart of a Ginger machine that could whisk people magically
through cities at high speed while never being a parking problem.
(Maybe when you step off Ginger, it will fold itself up into
something the size of a briefcase? Maybe you can then instruct
the briefcase to follow you like a puppy?)
Sure, there will be bugs in the system. Literally. In your teeth
and in your hair, if you are scooting along at high speed. But
that could be solved by a sophisticated designer encasing you and
your Ginger in an Armani egglike shell.
And replacing the automobile will not be easy. Where would you
put your CD player on Ginger? Where would you put your beer? What
about the teenage market -- people who see transportation devices
as a means to make out? These are all difficulties that need to
be ironed out. (Two teenagers getting to know each other standing
up at high speed could actually be pretty awesome.)
But whatever the case, Dean Kamen comes out of a classic American
mold, Internet pioneer Stewart Brand observed yesterday.
"Dean is a genuine Gyro Gearloose -- one of the best we have in
this generation," he said. "He's in the tradition of Carl
Djerassi and the birth control pill, Thomas Edison and the light
bulb, Benjamin Franklin and the Franklin stove. And they really
did change everything."
Whatever Ginger turns out to be, Brand, like other members of the
Silicon Valley elite yesterday, was willing to believe that Kamen
was onto something. "I don't think it's cold fusion," he said.
"If Steve and Jeff were given access, their judgment is pretty
good about what's new, true and important."
"On the other hand," he said, laughing, "it might be early
investors' hype."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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