Ginger Inventor Stays Mum, Urges Responsibility

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March 14, 2001 (5:57 PM EST)

Ginger Inventor Stays Mum, Urges Responsibility

By Stephen Buel,

SAN JOSE, Calif.—The man at the center of one of the world's most fascinating technology mysteries reproached the IT industry and its recent preoccupations at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) conference Wednesday.

Dean Kamen, the scientist and National Medal of Technology winner behind the highly secret invention known as "Ginger," or "IT," offered no information or insights into the nature of that project.

Instead, Kamen used his new-found visibility to upbraid computer scientists for myopically focusing on technological advancement without considering the social ramifications of their innovations.

"Lots of times, the unintended consequences of what we do turns out to be more important than the intended consequences," he said.

Kamen strived to steer the IT industry away from the short-term and often impractical obsessions that he feels have gripped it for the past several years.

The scientist's own work is characterized by its extreme applicability to actual human needs: He created the first portable insulin pump, a portable kidney dialysis machine, and arterial stents used in angioplasties like the one recently performed on Vice President Dick Cheney.

He delivered his conference address from atop the bully pulpit of his latest invention, the iBot, an all-terrain wheelchair that can climb stairs, cross sand, and effortlessly balance on two wheels, the latter of which Kamen demonstrated during his 45-minute talk.

Yet it is the passionate interest in Kamen's forthcoming project—thought by some to be a new transportation device so revolutionary it will force urban planners to redesign cities in its wake—that has suddenly transformed him into one of the most watched scientists on the planet—and the most eagerly awaited speaker at ACM.

At a conference obsessed with Moore's law, which posits that the processing power of semiconductors will double every 18 months, Kamen offered his own dark theory. He said the unintended secondary effects of technological development occur 100 times more rapidly every 25 years.

"Computation power, storage, and speed are doubling every 18 months, but people don't develop that quickly," he cautioned his audience.

And that lag in mankind's ability to react to innovation is why the secondary consequences of technology are often not evident at the time of invention, he said.

For instance, he noted that carmakers at the 1939 World's Fair boasted that passenger cars would soon surpass 100 miles per hour. However, "The auto industry stopped making cars faster. The legal industry knocked speeds down. ... It doesn't matter what the limits of the car are, other things are going to slow it down."

With the same spirit, Kamen railed against several staples of the ACM conference itself, from attendees' trust in the Internet to their faith in the predictions that each of the conference's 15 scheduled speakers were asked to make during their presentations. Alone among speakers at the conference, Kamen declined to play the prediction game, except to predict that other speakers' predictions would be wrong.

Kamen simultaneously derided his audience as "Internet zealots" and told them they had a responsibility to excite the students of today about the prospects of science and technology education.

He inserted a brief plea for audience members to get involved in his non-profit organization, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), which encourages young people to pursue math and science.

In spite of his occasionally harsh tone, Kamen was welcomed warmly by the conference crowd.

Following his address, the scientist and his iBot were swarmed by reporters and conference attendees, who tried, unsuccessfully, to press the inventor into revealing additional details about Ginger.