Case Study and foreshadowing of a scary future?

[Sal]

I think [acceptance / or the lack thereof] of the Segway is a case study of how new and unclassifiable technology is handled / perceived and eventually used / discarded / ignored by legislating officials.

We have seen time and time again of the myths of this device being spoken as truths, legislators who have no experience with this device, and are unwilling to try it before handing down a decision, and the list of illogical behaviors and decisions go on.

Is this a sign of things to come? Or are we looking at a particular kind of xenophobia because of the nature of the Segway?

If Ted Stevens - who so eloquently explained the internet to the masses last year - exemplifies, or is a standard of the type of uninformed government official, then we as a technologically advancing soceity have much more to worry about than our beloved Segways.

Just thought I'd rant a bit.

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If INC expects their dealerships to sell and sell and sell and sell, INC should be supporting their territories with appropriate backing to keep them legal.

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-Sal

Edit: I moved this into the Science and Technology Section, because, even though I mention the Segway, it deals with the bigger issue of the fear and lack of understanding of people in charge with new and unfamiliar technological and scientific issues.

[pam]

I think that as a society, we "thrive" on fear. We could just as well "thrive" on joy, but the marketplace and goverment can manage us better with fear, so it's usually the technique used to keep us in line.

This is JMHO, but I'll explain further - every emotion produces chemicals in our bodies - and both fear and joy produce chemicals that jazz us up (Dr. Marty, don't laugh, I'm keeping it really layman here) - and we, as biological creatures, frequently like the feeling of being jazzed up. We become addicted to it. Therefore, we look for things to be fearful of, so we can get the chemicals going. Is it a conscious decision? Only after we're aware that that's what we're doing (or having done to us). Joy will jazz us, too (remember that rush of being in love, of finding the perfect whatever, of your first Segway ride????) but it's not as easily manipulated by whoever is trying to sell us or "protect us" from something.

Roosevelt was wiser than we knew when he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

I don't know if this follows Sal's "rant", but it's possibly tangential to it.

Pam

[polo_pro]

I see two more worrisome trends. First, where are the eventual adopters of segway technology? I feel I fall in this category...I wait till the price comes down to be something reasonable. In the case of segways, this meant that the used market had to depreciate sufficiently. And at this point in time, I think it has depreciated sufficently for most people...$1500 segways should be snapped up much faster than the couple I found (and passed on to others).

Second, the most accepting cultures in the world (SF/Netherlands) are banning the segway. Come on, in one of these cultures drug use is legal, and in the other, alternative lifestyles are broadly accepted. Yes, I know, segways don't necessarily have alot to do with sex and drugs, but you do have "fun" doing all three, right? One possible explanation is that these accepting cultures have alot of technophobes in them.

But to work a polo tangent in, I find polo quite "fun", and I'm always amazed at how the uninitiated are so hesitant to play. Does no one else see the paralels wrt fear? The general public fears segways due to speed, weight, stopping power, etc. They don't want to look at the facts of how few accidents/incidents there've been. In a similar way, segway owners fear polo because they don't want to damage their machine. But the facts are in the dozen or more matches we've had only one incident where substantial damage occurred. And that only happened because we had no indication from other polo playing organizations that it might happen...if we'd known then we'd have changed the rules and still have our perfect record of only minor damage (small scratches from the occasional bump).

ps - I will throw in a disclaimer that people do fall from their segways during polo on occasion (which is why we play on grass), so I totally understand how someone with limited capabilities might not put themselves in every polo situations. But with the amount of warning you get about loss of traction, you usually can tuck and roll. Bumps, bruises and sore backs are possible but I've never heard of an injury (beyond tennis elbow) that isn't remedied by an aspirin and a nights worth of sleep.

[Timezkware Tim]

People are natually conservative when it comes to accepting new technology. Consumers especially. In a marketing thread a while back, I gave the example of how Ford used one model to test market different elements to see which ones the consumer would accept. http://forums.segwaychat.com/showpost.php?p=128472&postcount=18

Many people are naturally afraid of something different. It's never easy to win them over. Even cordless phones took 3 years to sell because people didn't trust them.

Tim

[JohnM]

A couple of interesting pieces of related reading:

What Segway Learned the Hard Way: Three Pitfalls of New-Category Product Strategy
http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/ebuzz/0511/thoughtleaders.html


The Segway Riddle
Dean Kamen's inventive vehicle failed to change the world. Now he's back for a second act
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1226309,00.html

[Tarkus]

I think that as a society, we "thrive" on fear. We could just as well "thrive" on joy, but the marketplace and goverment can manage us better with fear, so it's usually the technique used to keep us in line.

This is JMHO, but I'll explain further - every emotion produces chemicals in our bodies - and both fear and joy produce chemicals that jazz us up (Dr. Marty, don't laugh, I'm keeping it really layman here) - and we, as biological creatures, frequently like the feeling of being jazzed up. We become addicted to it. Therefore, we look for things to be fearful of, so we can get the chemicals going. Is it a conscious decision? Only after we're aware that that's what we're doing (or having done to us). Joy will jazz us, too (remember that rush of being in love, of finding the perfect whatever, of your first Segway ride????) but it's not as easily manipulated by whoever is trying to sell us or "protect us" from something.

Roosevelt was wiser than we knew when he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

I don't know if this follows Sal's "rant", but it's possibly tangential to it.

Pam

Pam,

You summed it up in the first line.

The amazing thing is that this forum has become part of the fearful.

We are afraid that INC won't have spare parts.
We are afraid that Inc does not do enough to support the private customer.

And most amazing to me is that so many are afraid of any other product that even resembles the Segway.

Does that not make us as bad as those that despise the Seg. I've seen the bashing of other products that were just "protos" and never even produced.

What I think is that the rose colored glasses are now starting to come off and we see INC for what it is. A company full of people that were good at designing products but clueless on how to sell them.

You can argue that if you like but the numbers speak for them selves.

The Segway is just another machine, nothing more. I said it and it did'nt hurt a bit.

Be Big,
Alan

[polo_pro]

Maybe I can take Pam's post and Tarkus' post and reduce them to a more simple statement:

...........silence is scary, and Segway INC = silence!

ps - I'm not trying to imply that Segway INC has purposefully chose silence as their main way of communicating to the the thousands of people who've invested their hard earned money in their product. It sorta just happened.

[Sal]

Engineers don't make good marketers.

Not a good way to start a company.

-Sal