Among the many things for which whiz-bang American inventor Dean Kamen is famous is an automated wheelchair that can ride over uneven ground and climb stairs. That particular breakthrough device was code-named "Fred." Now, as everyone this side of the grave must have heard, there is also "Ginger." Some people, however, seem to have missed the message in the names. Of all the world's iconic couples, Fred and Ginger -- Astaire and Rogers, that is -- must figure among the coolest, airiest and most elegant. Yet the fuss about the mysterious new Ginger has been hot, heavy and extremely inelegant.
Ginger, otherwise referred to as "IT," is Mr. Kamen's latest invention. You can already preorder IT on Amazon.com, even though no one but a favored few (including Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Steve Jobs) yet knows what IT is. Since Ginger's existence -- but not its nature -- was disclosed on the Internet less than a month ago, speculation has soared, spilling over from the Net into the mainstream media and taxing the brains of the bored and underemployed with the urgent question: What is IT? Lurking behind the question, naturally, is the prospect of outlandish profits: Credit Suisse First Boston, said to be an early investor, predicts that Ginger will make more money in its first year on the market than any other product in history.
There are several appropriate responses to the question. The first, as Fred and the device's namesake would surely have said as they twirled off into the wings, is: Who cares? If Mr. Kamen has come up with some cool new invention (cooler, say insiders, than pantyhose, cold fusion and the World Wide Web rolled into one), then nothing on Earth will stop us finding out about it when the market decrees it is time. We will find out whether we want to or not. In the meantime, leave us alone, we have some dance steps to practice.