South Park's 'IT' has this thing beat.... =) - Rit
'On a quiet Sunday morning in Silicon Valley, I am standing atop a machine code-named Ginger--a machine that may be the most eagerly awaited and wildly, if inadvertently, hyped high-tech product since the Apple Macintosh. Fifty feet away, Ginger's diminutive inventor, Dean Kamen, is offering instruction on how to use it, which in this case means waving his hands and barking out orders.
"Just lean forward," Kamen commands, so I do, and instantly I start rolling across the concrete right at him.
"Now, stop," Kamen says. How? This thing has no brakes. "Just think about stopping." Staring into the middle distance, I conjure an image of a red stop sign--and just like that, Ginger and I come to a halt.
"Now think about backing up." Once again, I follow instructions, and soon I glide in reverse to where I started. With a twist of the wrist, I pirouette in place, and no matter which way I lean or how hard, Ginger refuses to let me fall over. What's going on here is all perfectly explicable--the machine is sensing and reacting to subtle shifts in my balance - but for the moment I am slack-jawed, baffled. It was Arthur C. Clarke who famously observed that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." By that standard, Ginger is advanced indeed...
News source: Time
Early Screenshot: Segway - big thx go out to h4x0r (apparent origin from NYTimes.Com - requires subscription)
Screenshot: Image from Time.Com
For those who believe the photo to be fake, I give credit to the creator for making an excellent replica of Dean Kamen and Segway seen on the Time site.
Expect more information once Segway is officially unveiled - Monday (US).
UPDATED 12.2.02 / 10:10 PM PST
Thanx to MaxC for the heads up
DrudgeReport has more info on Segway. Read it here - and make sure you catch ABC's Good Morning America for a first, public look. (Monday Morning - US)
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