After reading this account of Steve Jobs at the presentation of the Segway HT née Ginger, I am even more impressed with him than I was before. That sort of take no crap, cut to the chase attitude is refreshing and just as I would have expected. Confirmation is a good thing. Some might say that he was rude or mean, but I see it as thoroughly vetting an idea that he regarded as problematic. They say at the end that such “energetic discussion” is good, but the results don’t seem to support any fruits of that exchange.
When you get right down to it, the Segway isn’t that revolutionary. Some people can hardly even ride it. The only thing that might even be revolutionary is the hype surrounding it and its sister invention, the drinking water thingy. It’s practically a perpetual motion machine: a finite, limited amount of information generated a practically limitless amount of publicity with nearly zero loss. If Kamen could replicate that for companies, he could make another fortune just doing PR work.
[UPDATE: As usual, good discussion the article over at Slashdot.]