Many journalists have critiqued the recent unveiling of the Segway. "Is that it?" seems to be the mindset. I've recently read two webloggers who think we may be missing the point.
The first is Dan Bricklin , the inventor of the spreadsheet. His recent article mentions that people don't often catch on right away to disruptive technologies. In the first 10 months he only sold 10000 copies of Visicalc, the original computer spreadsheet program. The press considered Visicalc a toy because it ran on personal computers (not business class computers) and wasn't capable of handling the detailed budgets of a Fortune 500 company. Nowadays spreadsheets are part of the "bread and butter" of what people consider a computer useful for.
The second article was by Dave Winer who actually got to use a Segway. Dave was a pioneer in weblogging, a technology whose impact some people don't fully understand even now that they are commonplace. [Hint: this is a weblog]. He just thought it was fun, even if it never took off for its practical reasons. Nevertheless, he thinks there are serious applications of the Segway.
In closing there's also this parody site about the Megway. Amidst a boatload of info and hype, it's good to be able to laugh about the technology. I'm sure by now Dean Kamen (the Segway inventor) has seen the site. Hopefully he can laugh at himself.