The Segway, Five Years Later

abb_road writes "The Segway was introduced with a promise to transform cities; BusinessWeek has an article on what the Segway has accomplished in 5 years, and how 'personal transportation,' and the company, have changed. From the article: 'The first Segway — a clean-running, technologically dumbfounding, fun-as-hell-to-ride device that was pretty much impossible to fall off of — was introduced to so much fanfare five years ago that the public-relations agency that helped engineer it still uses it as a case study in how to create a media frenzy. It may be an even better case study in media backlash. The initial euphoria had hardly worn off before a new consensus emerged: This was all much ado about a $5,000 scooter.'"

Comments

Inspirational words from TFA

[tehcyder]

"Life," Kamen says, "is too short for incrementalism."

That's well up there with the Sermon on the Mount and Martin Luther King's "I have a dream."

Dean Karman knows how to play the media

[peter303]

I'm not trying to be a troll here, but it seems like whenever Dean's company is about to introduce a new product, they start a PR campaign. Just before the Segway came out is was the "super secret revolutionary invention to change the world". People speculated its was something medical because that was Dean's forte. He did end up productionizing his stable wheels chair technology into a personal walking machine- the Segway. Plus Dean made his round of the TV news magazines and talk shows.

I am not sure if Dean over-hyped the Segway leading to disappointing sales. I hope he continues to invent interesting and useful products. The PR campaigns can remain entertainment.

Re:The segway has a perfect market

[MBGMorden]

My mother loves to travel to foreign cities where she spends days walking. She is too old to do that so I was thinking that she could rent a segway instead. Do you think that the segway would be useful for the elderly too?

Exercise is good for all people, especially the elderly. People often make the mistake of thinking they're "too old" for walking or doing similar things, and when they quite being active the basically start to deteriorate. Notice that a lot of the really old (90 or older) people never really stopped being active, whereas a lot of people that slouch when they age die in their 60's or even sooner.

Let your mother keep walking as much as she wants to. She'll be with you for a lot longer.