My response to TED speaker - Dean Kamen on inventing and giving

Dean Kamen and Seasickness

Don’t watch this TED if you get seasick. You will see Dean Kamen driving around on his segway as he gives his TED presentation, and while following what he has to say is easy and straightforward, following him ride across the stage is rather daunting. It also detracts from concentrating on what he has to say, which is “I have invented this really cool thing which will change the way regular people move around cities.”  

Eight years and over 100 million dollars later, it hasn’t yet.  Yes, you do see the odd professional (e.g. policeman) driving one, and they are allowed here in Israel on sidewalks, so a lot of people rent one for an hour to have a real joy ride (they are great fun, if a bit scary at first).  But they have not become any kind of mass transport and I can’t remember the last time I saw a regular Joe drive one around the streets of Tel Aviv. We do have one Segway at our cool engineering college , Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering, but that is because our previous CEO had a real Otaku about these machines.

That does not detract one bit from Dean’s message, because it is generic:  I want to bring positive change to the world and I have put my money (and other people’s) where my mouth is, and developed this invention which represents a true paradigm shift.  I am guessing that the segway is like the first ballpoint pen. It was clunky, dripped and had other technical issues, the company failed, but subsequent ones did work, and caught on. Nowadays, how many people do you know still use a feather and ink well? What I am saying is that thirty years from now when everyone is using a lightweight, solar-propelled safe version of this, folks will look at this and say WOW! The same way we would have if there were a TED video of the Wright brothers explaining how they flew a few meters in the air.

So, Dean Kamen, keep on rollin’ and sharin’.

Personal disclosure: I am involved in a project called the ‘redseamobile’ with Hagai Cohen, which duplicates the experience of water skiing on land.  We haven’t sold a single model J.  - Demo of Red Sea Mobile