MISCmedia for 1/19/01
Read All About IT

EVERYBODY WANTS 'IT.'

Everybody seems to think IT will change the world.

Nobody who knows what IT is is apparently willing to talk.

For those woh tuned in late, IT (all capital letters), also code-named "Ginger," is a mysterious invention being cleverly hyped by its creator, one Dean Kamen.

The Harvard Business School Press is said to have paid $250,000 for a book about IT, to be issued at the same time the invention itself is revealed, sometime next year. The press's press release about the book deal claims Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and some venture capital tycoons have seen the thing but are sworn to non-disclosure agreements not to discuss it.

The release also offers some hypeworthy clues: that the invention isn't a computer or a medical device, that the model shown to Jobs and Bezos (which may or may not be full size) can be assembled quickly from pieces carried in a large gym bag, and that it would be so revolutionary that, quoting Jobs, people will "architect cities around it."

This clever tease campaign has led to some serious speculation and rumor-mongering.

While some mighty wacky theories have popped up, ranging from an antigravity device to a Star Trek-like teleportation machine. Some amateur sleuths have discovered patent applications in Kamen's name for a sort of Razor scooter on steroids (one of Kamen's past inventions was an all-terrain wheelchair); but that thing could very well be an abandoned Kamen project, or one unrelated to the "Ginger" code name.

I, however, will be your IT boy today, for I have it on very good authority indeed just exactly what IT is.

And just because you've been extra-nice, I'll share it.

The definitive and accurate description comes from Kieren McCarthy at the UK tech-news site The Register:

"What can it be? What can it be? Is it a hoax?, cry the cynics. Will it stop my hair falling out? Will it make my sad, pathetic existence better for a few minutes?

Well, folks, we can tell you what Ginger is.

It's a manifestation of the sick modern world where style is more important that substance, where perception is king, where people screw their neighbour to buy an overpriced bit of clothing with a particular name on and where the press report a story because other parts of the press have reported it and so it must be a story.

It could also, possibly, be an interesting bit of technology. But we're not holding our breath and we don't care until we see it. And you shouldn't either.

Call up your wife and tell her you love her. That's real."

MONDAY: I love jazz. I hate Jazz.

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