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

[kareem.livejournal.com]

A friend ranted to me about how good the Segway was, and how it'll spur an auto-revolution. I wasn't entirely sure myself, but I'd probably buy one if I had the money to spare. On a slight side-note, doesn't the desinger of "Ginger" actually own his own private Island and Navy?

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

Some European cities might be more Segway-friendly, actually, since they tend to be more pedestrian-friendly. I honestly think the Segway--in concept, if not this specific company--will be part of a gradual "revolution" in transportation, but I don't think we're going to see cars abruptly vanish.

In the novel I'm working on, I have my ideas of what transportation might be like--there's a certain "Segway influence," although so far we haven't seen single-person transports.

As far as I know, inventor Dean Kamen doesn't own a private island and army, no. :)

Re:

[kareem.livejournal.com]

That's likely, but even though the cars here are allegedly smaller and more economical, they're still dominating the roads. I'm not sure about other European countries, but around my area there isn't much in the way of cycle paths. Not ones that are used for anything past recreation, anyway.

I should probably read up on the Segway concept, which I'll probably do after writing this. In a sci-fi novella I'm reading at the moment gasoline has been banned for some time, so everyone walks, rides or takes trains. There's horse carriages, and electrical cars too. The solar buggies aren't highly refined, though, going the max of 20MPH, but for reasons not explained yet the humans have been genetically altered to have an abnormally long life span. Taking an hour to get to work might not seem so bad if your lifespan is a projected four hundred years.

Though this isn't to discourage you from implementing the ideas of different transportation methods yourself. It's actually refreshing to have the world re-explained instead of relying on the readers schemas on such. :)