DIGITALMASS EXCLUSIVE
Ginger Unmasked
By Scott Kirsner, 12/3/01In January, word leaked out that New Hampshire inventor and National Medal of Technology winner Dean Kamen was working on a mystery project code-named "IT" or "Ginger." Today, Kamen unveiled Ginger -- a self-balancing scooter now called the Segway HT (for Human Transporter). The device is intended to occupy a niche between walking and driving a car, rolling along up to 17 miles per hour on just five cents of electricity per day, Kamen claims.
But now that we know what Ginger is, it's unfortunate that we'll have to stop wondering what it might have been. What do I mean?
The Ginger Affair began early this year, when Harvard Business School Press agreed to pay writer Steve Kemper a $250,000 advance for a book about Ginger's development without knowing exactly what the invention was. In the book proposal, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying that Kamen's latest creation was "a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?" Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs reportedly said, "If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen."
No one knew what Ginger was for sure, but within a few days, the entire technology sector was buzzing with speculation. Web sites like TheITQuestion.com and Ginger-Chat.com were quickly cobbled together. As someone who had recently spent time with Kamen to prepare a profile, I was invited on national television and radio shows to offer insight into Kamen's personality, details on his accomplishments, and a few educated guesses as to what Ginger was.
Kamen stayed mum. Now, with Ginger's coming-out party over, I'm a bit sad to see the guessing game come to an end.
The Ginger Affair evolved into a worldwide referendum on what we humans want from our technology. Since we had only the haziest of hints as to what Ginger was, the "invention" served as a blank slate for our dreams. When the guessing started in January, as the tech sector had begun to sink into its post-dot-com malaise, people said they thought it might be a personal hovercraft, a teleportation system, or an engine that could extract power from water. People expected Ginger to be a "next big thing" sequel to the Internet, and they hoped it would reinvigorate the slumping tech sector.
Others suggested that Ginger might be a general-purpose quantum computer or a "stargate" that would make travel to other universes possible and also "double as a really good chocolate milkshake machine." One wag conjectured that Ginger might be an acronym for "Great Inventions Never Get Enough Respect," a message that Kamen, who founded a non-profit organization that encourages children to get involved in science and engineering careers, would certainly approve of.
But after the events of September 11th, playful speculation about fantastic technological breakthroughs suddenly turned serious. Instead of hovercrafts, businesspeople pined for better-quality videoconferencing that would render some of their plane trips unnecessary. Public health officials began to investigate new immunotherapies that showed promise in protecting people from biological attacks. The Department of Defense put out an unusual open call for ideas and tools to "help in combating terrorism, defeating difficult targets, conducting protracted operations in remote areas, and developing countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction."
Suddenly, we've stopped looking to technology to bring us closer to the world of science fiction. We want technology that will enhance our security. The Internet brought about major changes in the ways we communicate and conduct commerce. Now, the perfect "next big thing" would be one that protects us from unpredictable, asymmetrical threats, like individual terrorists with suitcase nukes or a tanker truck of Sarin gas.
In this new context, Ginger's debut (and isn't Ginger a much better name than Segway HT?) could hardly have been anything other than anti-climactic. Before September 11th, the world was still enchanted by gee-whiz gadgetry. Now, this "revolutionary" new transportation device seems like a relic from the future we had hoped for -- a Jetson-esque world where meals come in pills and scooters stream along the sidewalks, intuiting exactly where you want to go.
The current crises make that world seem further off than ever. One of the uses Kamen cites for the Segway, for example, is helping mail carriers cover more ground in a day -- but right now, what most mail carriers want is a different job.
Still, there's a vital lesson in the year-long guessing game that has preceded the Segway's arrival. The technology industry is one of the most powerful engines of growth for the U.S. economy, but much of the time, it does a surprisingly bad job of listening to the users of technology, whether they're corporations, government agencies, or consumers. (And the Segway could prove to be one of the worst exemplars of that tendency: do we really want a vehicle with none of the safety benefits of a car and none of the health benefits of riding a bicycle or walking?)
The online referendum about what we hoped Ginger would be sparked a conversation -- at times fanciful and outlandish -- about where we want technology to take us next. The nature of that conversation changed after September 11th. But it ought to continue -- and it ought to include as broad a global constituency as possible -- even now that Ginger has been unmasked.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Wired and Fast Company magazines.