I’m sure everyone recalls the hoopla about “It” / “Ginger,” which most people believe turned out to be the comically underwhelming Segway scooter. Yet the Segway’s creator has said many times that the Segway was not “Ginger,” and that it was just some precursor to the real paradigm shift-causing invention.
What ever came of that? Was he bullshitting, or is “IT”/“Ginger” still a mystery?
This TIME Magazine article seems to think so.
I think the general consensus is that “It” was the Segway, but after everyone finished laughing at it, Dean Kamen backpedaled and started claiming that “It” was something else that was really, really wonderful :rolleyes:
A couple of years ago Dan Rather interviewed him for Sixty Minutes II and Kamen showed a Stirling Cycle Engine he was developing that could generate electricity and distill water, with the idea of distributing it in rural villages. I’ve heard the suggestion that this was the world-changing device that was being hinted about.
Part of the problem is that the hype around the Segway was so overblown that there was no way it could live up to the expectations.
Last I heard they were actually selling a bunch of them, to PD’s, private security, local govts and the like. That was a month or two ago.
Are they belly-up? They did do as advertised. (forget the cost)
Peace,
mangeorge
They seem do be doing pretty well. I see postal service and PD on them periodically around here (Bronx, NY) and Amazon sells them online. (I want one, but not at that price).
PC
Well, considering “as advertised,” Ginger was going to “fundamentally change the world,” “be the largest paradigm shift since the microchip,” and “would be so revoluationary that cities would be retrofitted to accomodate it,” I think it fell a bit short. 
The Segway unquestionably IS “Ginger,” since Kamen said so at the time. He even went so far as to explain how it was going to “Fundamentally change the world” - he claimed it would change the way cities are designed and transportation was planned.
If he’s now saying it’s not, then either he lied then or he’s lying now.