‘IT’ hasn’t change a thing, yet

I finally saw one.

It was just the other day. I was in my motorcar, on Bayside Drive,

heading toward the Isle of Balboa. There it was, on the opposite side

of the street, heading toward me -- gliding along without a care,

just as advertised. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? Was it a Vespa?

No. It was a “Segway. “ Ring a bell? Try this: the “Segway Human

Transporter. “ Still nothing?

Come with me now to a time long ago, December 2001. Futurist and

inventor Dean Kamen is about to unveil his much touted -- and boy is

that an understatement -- Segway Human Transporter on ABC’s “Good

Morning America. “ For more than a year, Kamen had teased and

tantalized the world’s media with top secret demonstrations and

carefully planned news leaks about a new invention of his called,

simply enough, “IT. “

Dean Kamen may be an inventor, but he is no mad scientist. He can

get all the attention he wants, whenever he wants it, thank you. His

previous inventions included a portable insulin pump and a

briefcase-sized dialysis machine -- both considered medical

breakthroughs -- and a high-tech wheelchair called “iBot” that could

climb stairs, lickety-split. The chosen few who were given a peek at

“IT” were all techno-heavyweights like Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Bob

Metcalf, a computer engineer who, unlike Al Gore, really did help

create the Internet.

They were generally tight-lipped, but they all dropped tantalizing

hints that “IT” could revolutionize the way we work and play and

live. “I’ve seen it, and it is ... more important than pantyhose and

more important than the Internet,” said Metcalf.

I’m not sure about the pantyhose, but when the media picks up

statements like those about a new product, your publicist raises his

arms toward the heavens and says, “Take me now, Lord. “

On the morning of the grand unveiling on “Good Morning America,”

the latest cool tool was dubbed “Segway” -- because it was supposed

to be a “segue” between how we used to live and how we would live

from that day forward, forever and ever.

Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson gamely donned their helmets,

mounted their Segways, and toodled around for a minute or two. Diane

did well. Charlie did less well. “This is the world’s first

self-balancing human transporter,” said Kamen. “You stand on this

Segway Human Transporter and you think forward and then you go

forward. If you think backward, you go backward. “

That’s a little over the top, but not by much.

The 65-pound battery-powered Segway is a rather simple-looking

one-person scooter that scoots along at about 12 miles an hour. The

rider stands on a platform mounted on two rubber wheels and controls

the show with a T-shaped handle bar.

The ultra-high-tech part, though, is that the Segway’s internal

computer is controlling the show as much as the rider. “Tilt sensors”

measure the rider’s center-of-gravity 100 times a second and respond

to the subtlest weight shifts -- slowing down or speeding up on

demand. That’s the “think forward, think backward” comparison. OK,

fine. But let’s get to the important stuff.

Did it change the world or not? Unless I missed a meeting, I don’t

think so. People have been dreaming about space-age, “Star Wars”

personal transporters for a long, long time.

But from the start, traffic engineers and urban planners had their

doubts about the Segway as the next big thing on the highways and

byways. In big-city downtowns, amid an ocean of cabs and cars and

buses and a few thousand pedestrians, the Segway riders of the world

better be able to “think forward and think backward” real fast.

In the burbs, however, the problems are obvious. Distances are too

great, speeds are too fast and you and your Segway, high-tech as it

is, may make it around the block or down the street -- but not to

Villa Park.

But are we here to be total party poopers and naysayers? I say we

are not.

The Segway is an incredible technology and a fascinating window on

the future, and it’s already proved to be darn useful in certain

settings -- like mega-warehouses, airports, postal centers, corporate

and industrial campuses. That happens a lot with new high-tech stuff.

Once all the hype about “changing the world” and “a revolution in

whatever” dies down, the good ones survive and really do change one

or two things in ways we never imagined.

So if you’re out there and you were zipping along Bayside Drive

about 6 p.m. on June 5 on a Segway, speak up!

Years from now, when thousands of Segways are darting around like

fireflies, you can say -- “...and it all began with me. “ Very cool.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at PtrB4@aol. com.