Scooter this, buddy.

[chipotle]

Back when the Segway HT--a/k/a "Ginger" and "IT," the two-wheeled scooterish thing--was first revealed, I found myself defending it against a lot of people making incessant, often ill-informed jokes and derisive comments. It reached a point of high irritation, I think, because so many of my friends and acquaintances are sf/fantasy fans who often tend to be more starry-eyed than I, yet when something real came along, by and large they weren't willing to even give it the benefit of the doubt.

Well, poking around a bit just now led me to two articles about the Segway from Dan Bricklin. The opening paragraph of the first article, written before Bricklin had gotten to use a Segway hands on, begins:

Make sure you understand disruptive technologies. Their first incarnations often seem like toys compared to existing technologies. The Segway embodies lots of disruptive technologies. I'm pretty familiar with a previous one: The combination of electronic spreadsheet and the personal computer. The combination was first viewed as a toy compared to "real" computers and financial forecasting tools. It only sold about 10,000 copies in the first 10 months and was barely mentioned in the business press for a couple of years.

Bricklin is understating things a bit when he says he's pretty familiar with spreadsheets--he wrote VisiCalc. If you're interested in the Segway, whether as fan, skeptic or just someone who likes to think about the future, read both of Dan's articles.

Comments

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

I think the issue with the auto industry that you mentioned is a major strike against it. One of my real problems -- and I love the concept, in theory -- is that it's just not a very effective piece of displacing technology, and without that I'm not sure that it can be sufficiently disruptive. One argument for Segway is essentially 'if we changed the pattern of our lives, this would be a MUCH better technology than the automobile', but the trick is that first it needs to be a better technology for the current pattern of living. While it's a very tempting technology for some applications, the truth is that more people live in the 'burbs than in NYC, and I still just don't see it truly fitting their lifestyle. This isn't to say that it won't get some use; I even expect it to end up commercially viable. But I have a difficult time envisioning it as a 'change the world' vehicle.