Segway Goes to War

The Segway, for those who remember the golden, glorious promise of those halcyon days of the 20th century, was meant to completely change our transportation grid and revolutionize human society by providing people with a new brand of souped-up motorscooter for those days when we didn't need to carry anything, the weather was perfectly pleasant, and we didn't mind standing up for the whole trip. Doubtless because of the sinister stranglehold of the auto industry, it failed to win many converts, selling only around 6,000 so far.

But now the U.S. government is stepping in to rescue this relic of the attempt to kill the demon auto, by adopting the Segway as a platform for developing battlefield robots, the Associated Press reports.

Genius inventor Dean Kamen, confused by actual human's rejection of his brilliant scheme, is thrilled: "My personal reason for liking (this program) is we would love to get more Segways at universities. The more we have our technology among the tech world, particularly the young geeks, it could only help us."

The groundwork Segway promises to lay for our future has changed from a Wellsian (in an upbeat mood) socialist utopia of clean, well-planned, and onerous personal transportation to a Terminator vision of relentless killing machines, but it's all the same to Kamen, as long as someone buys into his clouded vision.