Book of SEG

Segway updates: (a.k.a., No Really, Someone Still Cares).

• Well, by now you’ve heard about Justin Bieber trying to outrun overly-enthusiastic fans on his Segway. Shocker: he didn’t make it (turns out that was the whole point — for young Mr. Bieber, the Segway’s motto is “no means yes”). Shocker #2: they were all young girls (faor too young to be interested in casinos accepting Visa, of course). Shocker #3: uh, who is Justin Bieber again? Never mind, I’m guessing I won’t need to know anymore in six months or so; I can save time by not finding out now.

• Southeastern Wisconsin city West Allis (pop. 60,000 or so) has approved Segways to save fuel and “increase public interaction” (he probably doesn’t mean from jeering). I’m unsure what West Allis thinks about online casinos for USA players, but they’ve now got the resources to enforce it. The coolest thing is that the $17,000 for the three vehicles and related miscellany was provided via a U. S. Department of Energy grant, so as taxpayers we all get to join in pretending to help the environment whether we know it or not.

There are major innovations occurring all of the time, and game-changing shifts every few years or so. The truly transformative products happen perhaps once or twice in a lifetime; the 20th Century saw the rise of the auto, the compute, and mass communication and entertainment (telephone, radio, television, Internet).

In 2001, Dean Kamen said that his invention “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.”

It’s difficult to say whether this was earnest but misinformed zeal, or grossly overstated self-promotion. I’m the last person to discourage taking risks and walking the road less traveled (look at the advances made in the field of online slots, one of my personal hobbies), but at the same time one of my pet peeves is groundless overweening hype for yet another example of gimmicky consumerism.

A more (relatively) pragmatic prediction came at the same time, from investor John Doerr: that the Segway company would be the fastest ever to reach $1 billion in sales. A decade later, that target has not yet been met — I’m not even certain that the company has recouped the $100 million that it spent in development.

Setting an annual sales target of 40,000 was a bit optimistic, considering that fewer than that number have been sold over the course of the decade.

Oh, it has its strong points; for getting somewhere just slightly faster than your legs can carry you, there are few products that compare. Persons with legitimate physical limitations may indeed benefit from this alternative to powered wheelchairs and scooters. And for a brief while, devotees of high-tech gadgets had a field day before the next shiny gizmo with limited long-term usefulness came along.

There’s no shortage of Segway-bashing (though that particular industry has faded, along with most everything else Segway-related) and this site will not be dedicated to those ends. What we’d rather do is talk aboutonline casino USA and compare the last decade’s fortunes for both ‘revolutionary’ products.