January 9, 2001: The day we all woke up and said hello to Ginger.
Who, you ask? Where have you been?
It was Inside.com that introduced
Ginger to our entertainment-starved planet. What it did was take an inventor with a successful track
record called Dean Kamen, feed in a lot of gossip, create loads of hype, and voila! People can’t get
enough of it.
Touted as the Next Big Thing since the PC, the secret thing was code-named ‘Ginger’ and simply
‘IT’. Inside.com created a whole page called the ‘IT’ files, and mentioned that Project Ginger was to
be the subject of a forthcoming book whose author received an advance of $250,000 from the Harvard
Business School Press.
Since Kamen promptly -- and wisely -- refused to supply further details, the speculation began in
earnest.
First things first. Who is Dean Kamen? He is the 49-year-old President of DEKA Research and
Development Corp. , and successful multi-millionaire inventor of
designs that include an all-terrain wheelchair, a wind turbine to help supply power, a pulley system
that can deliver a bottle of wine from the kitchen to the bedroom, and an insulin pump for diabetics.
He also runs his own charity called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition
of Science and Technology), that runs an annual robotics competition for up and coming inventors.
More on what he does and how he lives can be found in this excellent article by Wired Magazine.
For a man who never graduated from college, however, Kamen has never had it so good, and one
peek at Ginger Hype gives you ample proof. Apart from a collection of
articles on the mystery invention, the site also runs a GingerPoll on ‘What do YOU think ginger is’
listing, as options, everything from a wheelchair with legs to a can opener, sound wave engine,
teleporter and even a hoax.
Next question: So what exactly is Ginger?
Most reports say it is a motorised scooter powered by an energy saving, environmentally friendly
Stirling engine. Not exactly earth-shattering, is it? Wrong. Because
the high-tech big names backing the project seem to think it is.
Steve Jobs, Chief Executive, Apple, predicts that cities will be built around the creation.
Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com, told the press, "It is so revolutionary, you'll have no problem
selling it."
Credit Suisse First Boston, also providing financial backing, said it expected Ginger to make more
money than any start-up in history.
And they all agree that new roads and traffic regulations may be necessary if Ginger takes off.
Some reports quote from the patent filed, which reads, ‘Personal Mobility Vehicles and Methods’ and
describes ‘a class of transportation vehicles for carrying an individual over a surface that may be irregular.’
The Deka (Kamen’s company) version is available here, and the US Patent Office description here
While gossip reigns supreme for now, what Inside.com started has grown into something bigger than
big. Is it going to be bigger than a PC? Will it revolutionise transportation? Will it make a lot of
people very rich? Is it bigger than a toaster? Will it be bigger than the Internet?
Then again, is this deliberate hype just a hoax?
More guesses, rumours and ideas can be found here. There’s also a Spoof On Ginger
with a note on the home page: ‘Shame he couldn’t have spent
a little more cash to hire an artist to draw a half decent picture.
As for you and I, there’s nothing to do but wait. After all, tech biggies once said that dotcoms were
going to be bigger than sliced bread too, and we all know what happened to most of them, don’t we?
ALSO READ: It's a bird. It's a plane. No... It's ginger
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