OT: Hey, Mqurice, here's a story about It:
Don't Know What It Is, or What It's About, but Harvard Thinks It's Worth $250,000
nytimes.com
January 12, 2001
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI
So, um, what exactly is It?
At the very least, It is accomplished marketing that would make P.
T. Barnum proud.
And at most, according to educated guesses, It is . . . well, a
scooter.
On Tuesday, the media news Web site Inside.com reported that the
Harvard Business School Press had paid $250,000 a relatively jaw-
dropping sum in the world of academic presses for a book proposal
by the scientist and inventor Dean Kamen, to be co-written with the
magazine journalist Steve Kemper, about his newest invention. The
device is called It, or by its top-secret code name better make
that formerly top secret Ginger.
There was a catch: the editor who bought the book proposal about
It for such a grand sum, Hollis Heimbouch, did not even know
exactly what the book was about, or what It is. Nor did, according
to Inside.com's report, the book's agent.
But the carefully evasive proposal included intriguing tidbits:
Jeff Bezos laughed when Mr. Kamen assembled an It for him, and John
Doerr, a partner in the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers, was an investor. The proposal also
included proclamations from tech-world celebrities like Steve Jobs,
Apple's founder, that the device might change urban life and could
be as significant as the development of the personal computer.
There were other clues. According to Inside.com, the proposal
stated that the device will "profoundly affect our environment and
the way people live worldwide."
"It will be an alternative to products that are dirty, expensive,
sometimes dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in
the cities," Inside.com said.
It could be assembled "using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from
components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and some
cardboard boxes."
At a time when many technology stocks are on life support, any
exuberance at all about any technological innovation was welcomed
by the crowd drawn to Internet reports about the book sale.
The mystery set off a flurry of speculation on the Internet,
prompting at least one instantly constructed Web site devoted to
speculation about what It is. And reports about It appeared
yesterday on the NBC show "Today," "Good Morning America" on ABC,
CNN, MSNBC and CNBC.
Ms. Heimbouch declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the
literary agent representing Mr. Kamen, the Maryland-based Sagalyn
Agency. The 49-year-old Mr. Kamen is, according to his proposal, "a
true eccentric, cantankerous and opinionated." The invention he is
known for most recently is the iBot, a motorized wheelchair that
can traverse difficult terrain like stairs and sand.
Paul Saffo, a computer and publishing industry consultant based in
Silicon Valley, said that by his guess, the invention is a
gyroscopic stabilized unicycle. The United States Patent Office
carries registration by Mr. Kamen for at least a dozen personal
transportation devices.
This is exactly the sort of thing that gets the pulse of nerds
racing, Mr. Saffo said. "Wander around Silicon Valley and there are
probably more adults on Razors than kids." (Mr. Saffo was referring
to the Razor, the best-selling scooter that took over urban
sidewalks last year.) The top-secret part, he said, may be the
energy source.
You need enormous energy to propel something like that, he said.
"It may be the kind of thing where you're driving around town and
you stop in a bar and get a glass of vodka to power it," he said.
The fact that the book proposal generated so much attention, Mr.
Saffo said, indicated more about Mr. Kamen's ability for
self-promotion than it did about the future of technology or public
concern about the environment.
"You don't want to read a book about a thing, you want to read a
book that deals with a person," Mr. Saffo said. "Dean is energetic
and self-promoting and much better than the average business
professor in selling a book and promoting it to an audience. He may
or may not be a brilliant inventor, but he is certainly a brilliant
marketer."
An executive involved in the sale of the proposal, said that a
division of Random House had bid $300,000 for the project, but had
included an escape clause in the contract stipulating that if the
invention, when revealed by Mr. Kamen, was not sufficiently
intriguing, the publisher had the right to pull out of the deal.
Mr. Kamen's agent rejected the offer.
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