What Is 'IT'?
Source: Inside
January 9, 2001
Steve Jobs quoted on accomplished scientist's new
device: 'If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince
them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen.'
A venerable press pays $250,000 for a book on project
cloaked in unprecedented secrecy. EXCLUSIVE
Book Proposal Heightens Intrigue About Secret Invention
Touted as Bigger Than the Internet or PC
Harvard Business School Press executive editor Hollis
Heimbouch has just paid $250,000 for a book about IT -- but neither
the editor nor the agent, Dan Kois of The Sagalyn Literary Agency,
knows what IT is.
All they do know: IT, also code-named Ginger, is an
invention developed by 49-year-old scientist Dean Kamen, and the
subject of a planned book by journalist Steve Kemper. According to
Kemper's proposal, IT will change the world, and is so extraordinary
that it has drawn the attention of technology visionaries Jeff Bezos
and Steve Jobs and the investment dollars of pre-eminent Silicon
Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, among others.
Kemper -- who has been published in Smithsonian,
National Geographic and Outside among others -- has had exclusive
access to Kamen and the engineers at his New Hampshire-based research
and development company, DEKA, for the past year and a half. He tags
the proposed book as Soul of the New Machine meets The New New Thing
and won over his agent and publisher with e-mails describing the
project in carefully couched language. He also included an amusing
narrative of a meeting between Bezos, Jobs, Doerr and Kamen.
In the proposal, Doerr calls Kamen -- who was just
awarded the National Medal of Technology, the country's highest such
award -- a combination of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. Doerr also
says, a touch ominously, that he had been sure that he wouldn't see
the development of anything in his lifetime as important as the World
Wide Web -- until he saw IT. According to the proposal, another
investor, Credit Suisse First Boston, expects Kamen's invention to
make more money in its first year than any start-up in history,
predicting Kamen will be worth more in five years than Bill Gates.
Jobs told Kamen the invention would be as significant as the PC, the
proposal says.
And though there are no specifics in the proposal as to
what the invention is, there are some tantalizing clues. Is IT an
energy source? Some sort of environmentally friendly personal
transport device? One editor who saw the proposal went as far as to
speculate -- jokingly (perhaps) -- that IT was a type of personal
hovering craft.
Consider the following items, culled from the proposal:
IT is not a medical invention.
In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr, Kamen
assembled two Gingers -- or ITs -- in 10 minutes, using a screwdriver
and hex wrenches from components that fit into a couple of large
duffel bags and some cardboard boxes.
The invention has a fun element to it, because once a
Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his ''loud, honking
laugh.''
There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro and
Pro -- and the Metro may possibly cost less than $2,000.
Bezos is quoted as saying that IT ''is a product so
revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are
people going to be allowed to use it?''
Jobs is quoted as saying: ''If enough people see the
machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it.
It'll just happen.''
Kemper says the invention will ''sweep over the world
and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking.''
The ''core technology and its implementations'' will,
according to Kamen, ''have a big, broad impact not only on social
institutions but some billion-dollar old-line companies.'' And the
invention 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.''
IT will be a mass-market consumer product ''likely to
run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new ones,'' according
to Kemper. The invention will also likely require ''meeting with city
planners, regulators, legislators, large commercial companies and
university presidents about how cities, companies and campuses can be
retro-fitted for Ginger.''
The invention itself is as interesting as the inventor. Kamen -- ''a
true eccentric, cantankerous and opinionated, a great character,''
according to the proposal -- dropped out of college in his 20s, then
invented the first drug infusion pump; he later created the first
portable insulin pump and dialysis machine.
Kamen, an avid aviator who commutes via a helicopter, is
also the founder of FIRST -- For Inspiration and Recognition of
Science and Technology -- a nonprofit organization that encourages
young people to pursue studies and careers in math and science. He's a
single man obsessed with his work and out of touch with popular
culture. According to the proposal, Kamen was seated at a White House
dinner next to two people he'd never heard of: Shirley MacLaine and
Warren Beatty.
Kamen's most recent invention is the iBot, an off-road
wheelchair that can climb stairs, cover sand and gravel and rise to
balance on two wheels. A prototype iBot was showcased by
wheelchair-bound journalist John Hockenberry at last year's TED
conference in Monterey, Calif.; the demonstration was greeted by wild
applause.
IT/Ginger won't be revealed until 2002, the proposal
says. No one has seen the project except Kamen, Kemper, the engineers
and the investors -- which include Doerr, a partner in the venture
capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which helped launch
Netscape, Amazon, Juniper Networks, Excite, and @Home, among others;
and Michael Schmertzler, managing director of Credit Suisse First
Boston. Others who have seen the invention and signed confidentiality
agreements include minor investors Paul Allaire, CEO of Xerox; and
Vern Loucks, recently retired CEO of Baxter. Bezos, Jobs and
writer/venture capitalist Randy Komisar sit on the advisory board.
Kamen retains 85 percent of his new company, according to the
proposal.
Why the secrecy? Kamen fears, as he states in a letter
to Kemper that is included in the proposal, that ''huge corporations''
might catch wind of the invention and ''use their massive resources to
erect obstacles against us or, worse, simply appropriate the
technology by assigning hundreds of engineers to catch up to us, and
thousands of employees to produce it in their plants.''
But such secrecy may have been enough to turn publishers
away. ''The Internet changed the world, too'' said one editor who
considered the project, ''but books about it don't really sell.'' As
for the quarter-million-dollar price tag for North American rights: on
the one hand, it doesn't seem to be a lot for a book about an
invention which has mesmerized such well-known technology moguls. On
the other, $250,000 is a lot to pay for a story about a product that
hasn't been seen, defined or named.
''We were well aware of Kamen,'' says book editor
Heimbouch, who says she's been publishing in this technology circle
for a long time. (The bestselling The Monk and the Riddle: The
Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur by Komisar is hers.) So
jumping on board for the book wasn't such a dilemma. Besides, says
Heimbouch, Harvard Business School Press had intended to approach
Kamen about doing a book anyway. ''He's an inventor of great
technologies that make people's lives better,'' she says.
Harvard Business School Press, a division of Harvard
Business School Publishing, is a wholly owned, nonprofit subsidiary of
Harvard University. The Sagalyn Agency retains all but North American
rights to the book.
by PJ Mark
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=20218&pod_id=8