Walkin’ and Rollin’ All Night!

In December of 2001, long before eBay thought of using a this phrase as a marketing tool, news of a revolution in technology was sweeping the world of dorkdom. People were asking “What is IT?”

Originally, IT was somehow seized by the media and became a weird code-name for Project Ginger. (Not THAT Project Ginger!!)

Four years after the IT buzz, we know the commercial name for IT and Project Ginger as the Segway HT. Segways are popping up around the world. Like all new technologies, there are those who are opposed to the adoption of this new mode of transportation and early adopters who have trouble with the locals.

Tennesseean Shane Latham may have an ADA lawsuit if he keeps being harassed. In Sin City, local rental agencies have to remain vigilant against local authorities outlawing their very business model! North of the border, in Toronto, city attorneys claim that the vehicle is outlawed by default.

But for all the opposition to this emerging technology there are those who are embracing it. Don’t try to outrun the fuzz in Miami. You may get collared by a Segway-mounted cop! And like Jeep Camp, Segway enthusiasts have already formed an annual gathering for fans called Segway Fest.

As a one-of-a-kind technology, Segway has cornered the market on one-person personal transportation devices. But even a lock on the market does not guarantee success. As the PC industry learned in the 1980s, it can be quite profitable to license your technology to other companies and let them build off of your successes.

Segway announced this month they are licensing their technology to other companies.

What this brings to the table immediately may just be toy robots, but what will it bring in the future? Granting licenses to more companies and more importantly, getting more brilliant minds working with the technology may lead to advances in the medical field, robotics, or a simple evolution of the way people live day-to-day.

In the end, we will probably just use the technology to kill people, but for a brief moment in history we can at least say we aspired to something greater.