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"IT" Revealed - (Ginger)
TIME.Com ^
| 12/2/2001
| JOHN HEILEMANN
Posted on 12/02/2001 6:56:41 PM PST by Enlightiator
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To: RandallFlagg
I agree that IT is fascinating technology. I've seen Kamen's IBOT wheelchair (I know, TIME says he hates to see it called a that), which is amazing and should be a big hlp to the wheelchair bound. However, I believe that there are serious barriers, many of them governmental, to this thing becoming a mass market success. Based on the TiME article, I'd guess that the Segway folks have thought of many of them. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
To: Enlightiator
What happens if it hits a 6 inch (or deeper sometimes) pothole? I've hit bad ones with a bike without wrecking, but know matter how well balanced this thing is, the rider is going to fly forward on his face if this type of accident happens.
To: Enlightiator
It's a little known fact that Algore invented the "it". It was going to be called the AL but that sounded too boring.
To: Enlightiator
A few comments in this report should perk up a few ears.Kamen's aspirations are even grander than that. He believes the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." He imagines them everywhere: in parks and at Disneyland, on battlefields and factory floors, but especially on downtown sidewalks from Seattle to Shanghai. "Cars are great for going long distances," Kamen says, "but it makes no sense at all for people in cities to use a 4,000-lb. piece of metal to haul their 150-lb. asses around town." In the future he envisions, cars will be banished from urban centers to make room for millions of "empowered pedestrians"--empowered, naturally, by Kamen's brainchild.
Kamen isn't so naive as to underestimate America's long-standing romance with the automobile. ("I love cars too," he says. "Just not when I'm downtown.") And he is well aware that uprooting the vast urban infrastructure that supports cars, from parking garages to bridges and tunnels, won't happen soon. Which is why he has pinned his greatest hopes not on the U.S. but abroad, especially in the developing world. At a meeting with Jobs a year ago, the Apple co-founder proclaimed, in typically hyperbolic fashion, "If enough people see this machine, you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it; it'll just happen."
Kamen agrees. "Most people in the developing world can't afford cars, and if they could, it would be a complete disaster," he says. "If you were building one of the new cities of China, would you do it the way we have? Wouldn't it make more sense to build a mass-transit system around the city and leave the central couple of square miles for pedestrians only?" Pedestrians and people riding Segways, that is.
"There's no question in my mind that we have the right answer," he continues. "I would stake my reputation, my money and my time on the fact that 10 years from now, this will be the way many people in many places get around." Kamen pauses and sighs. "If all we end up with are a few billion-dollar niche markets, that would be a disappointment. It's not like our goal was just to put the golf-cart industry out of business."
Kamen's dream is rather thinly veiled in this report. With no automobiles allowed in urban centers and mass-transit on the periferee, guess what the plan is for the internal combustion engine. The private short and long term conveyance that gave us the freedom to travel as we wished with little or no monitering is only a dream away from extinction. While I do find it an interesting idea that our interdependance on foreign oil might be greatly reduced, leave it to the mind of a Liberal to dream of the complete destruction of the internal combustion engine. Along with that demise comes the complete monitoring of almost all travel within the US.
Has anyone asked Kamen what his prognosis is for attractive young women traveling in urban centers after dark, with no protection around them? Unarmed and unable to lock out the riff raff, they'll be sitting ducks.
Ah the liberal mind, it's a wonder it doesn't cave in on itself before it can do any damage.
Socialisms wet dream for a brave new world.
To: Enlightiator
Yeah this Kamen is such an idiot. First the portable dialysis machine, then the internal insulin pump, then the I-Bot wheelchair that can't tip over and can climb stairs, and now this Segway contraption. When is he going to learn and give up trying to invent stuff.
To: Phil V.
Nah... but I watched him yellin that so many times at his viewers that I thot it was way overdue for someone to yell it at him instead!!! Right?
The smart a$$ just used it to buy ponies and pu$$ies!
He raised enuf ta buy the "Jesus Saves" building in LA, then let it go down the tubes and slithered out to the burbs with alla that chicken feed the sheeple sent him... what a riotus con-man! Right out of "Elmer Gantry!"
Didja ever see him do a "chalk talk?"
To: Enlightiator
Can't you just picture the Berkeley campus just crawling with these things in a few years? How is this better than a bicycle? I can see it would be great for wheelchairs.
To: bayourod
Remember that SLINKY toy that looked like a big flimsy spring and would "walk" down stairs? You can roll a ball down the stairs, with the smallest of pushes. With the same push, can you get it to roll UPSTAIRS??? OK, one more time, tell me again how you get the wheels to move simply by leaning forward, with, as some have claimed in this post, NO MOTORS??? You are telling me that by leaning forward, without motors, you are going to 'drive' this thing UPHILL??? Again, the TIME pictorial of this device shows two MOTORS for each wheel. See the link at the top of the post.
To: Enlightiator
eh.. what a let down... the 'south park' version at least had some entertainment value
To: DoughtyOne
"Has anyone asked Kamen what his prognosis is for attractive young women traveling in urban centers after dark, with no protection around them? Unarmed and unable to lock out the riff raff, they'll be sitting ducks."
You've given another reason to increase this thing's speed to above 25 MPH. I'm guessing that Segway will be something that one can manipulate presicely as standing. If a lady is standing at the ATM at 2AM and thugs approach her, she simply backs away and gives "It" a little "TURBO-LEAN" to blast away from the danger.
Personally, a little "TURBO-BULLET" would be better, but we won't see that as long as there's Bradys and Schumers around.**sniff**
To: DoughtyOne; Phil V.
"Socialisms wet dream for a brave new world."More like Socialism's wet blanket for a free world!
First off, he should realize the luddite, legalistic environMENTALcases will try to kill it.
We had one around here that killed using the methane gas created by the landfill being used to generate electricity through litigation! Claimed the generator would pollute too much! He won, of course.(sigh)
To: OldFashionedAmerican
The slinky walks down stairs by exploiting the kinetic energy stored in it by whatever means it was lifted to the top of the stairs. Who or what 'loads' the segway?
To: DoughtyOne
Ah the liberal mind, it's a wonder it doesn't cave in on itself before it can do any damage. Socialisms wet dream for a brave new world.
I loved your analysis, DoughtyOne! Kamen is a wonderful inventor, but a terrible sociologist. The world is not going to revolve around his scooter....
To: Petronski
Motors, motors, motors.... There are motors in it. See the TIME link at the top of this post.....
To: Enlightiator
THIS JUST IN, BIN LADEN WAS SEEN ESCAPING ON THE SEGWAY IN A CAVERN IN TORA BORA...DEVELOPING....
To: RedBloodedAmerican
Couldn't he have duplicated this "Ginger"? What a waste.
Maybe he didn't duplicate that Ginger, but his dad is Jack Kamen who drew all sorts of women for Mad Magazine, EC Comics, etc.
Jack Kamen's EC Cover Art
Dean Kamen's penchant for the fantastic, it turns out, runs in the family. When the millionaire inventor of the mysterious Ginger/IT scooter wants a drawing of one of his medical or personal transportation concepts, he turns to his father, Jack Kamen. In the 1950s, Jack Kamen worked for EC Comics, the publisher of Weird Science, Tales From the Crypt and Mad, drawing supernatural creatures, flawlessly beautiful (but oh so WASPy) women and Leave It to Beaver-style families gone berserk.
To: syriacus
That's where I heard that name before!!!
To: OldFashionedAmerican
Yes, yes. I know, it has motors. I am agreeing with you in differing with the other poster who thinks its powered by gravity.
To: sicsemperchad
Hmmm... If he's got a million dollars, and the thing runs on 5 cents of electricity a day... bin Laden could be on the run for thousands of years.
119
posted on
12/02/2001 8:33:24 PM PST
by
xm177e2
To: Petronski
I apologise. I thought you were jumping on the magic carpet ride bandwagon....
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