What Is 'IT'?
Book Proposal Heightens Intrigue
About Secret Invention Touted as Bigger Than the
Internet or PC
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
Got a clue? Post your guess as to what IT is.
by PJ Mark

Tuesday , January 09, 2001 01:43 p.m.

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 Monterrey, 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. €
DalVision Design
714-960-8327
714-960-8627 fax
www.dalvision.com
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