Okay. I’ve got a bottle of Oban scotch sitting here on my desk. It’s very nice stuff — not too peaty, but with enough bite to make it tasty. It’s a reasonably expensive scotch, probably about $50 a bottle. I love Oban, would prefer to drink this bottle myself.

But you know what? I’ll gladly give to anyone can prove, with documented evidence, that anyone on the planet has ever actually bought a Segway. One. Single. Segway. Has anyone in the known or unknown universe bought one of these supremely useless, blisteringly overhyped, rideable vacuum cleaners? I mean, I keep on seeing news stories about it. Alaska cops have bought a bunch of Segways to use on patrol; Buy.com announces a winner in its Segway giveaway contest; a few students at LA Tech are using them to pick up chicks. But you know what? They all have the distinct whiff of stories planted by the inventor, Dean Kamen, in a desperate attempt to pretend this quintessence of lameosity is actually selling.

And hell, he ought to be desperate. The guy built a factory in Bedford, N.H., that’s capable of cranking out 40,000 Segways per month — and yet which right now is probably alive with the sound of crickets.

It’s a fascinating paean to what can be wrought by the whiplash interia of hype. Remember the hype around the Segway? How Jeff Bezos sank millions of his own investment cash into it? How venture capitlalist John Doerr salivated at the sight of the gyroscopic wonder, and said it would be “as big as the Internet, as far as making a difference”? How author Steve Kemper got a quarter-million-dollar book advance to describe Kamen’s brilliant work on the Segway?

So anyway. That bottle of Oban is sitting here. And I will give it to the first person to prove — I mean prove, with, like, pieces of paper and shit — that anyone has actually used their own hard-earned cash to buy one single Segway.

And hey! While I’m in such a weirdly nasty mood, let’s revisit a column I wrote two and a half years ago about the Segway, back when I was doing a weekly gig for Newsday. I love a good “told you so” moment:

It’s a new Internet! A new gold rush! It’s “Ginger”!
by Clive Thompson

You have to pity high-tech boosters these days. Their fondest dreams have gone bust. E-commerce tanked; the “wireless web” is a non-starter; and according to some recent reports, some long-time Internet users are actually abandoning the Web. Swell. Andrew Wyeth could scarcely have sketched a bleaker picture of modern life.

So I spent the first few weeks of 2001 calling around various high-tech analysts and dot-com braniacs, the folks who own Etoys.com stock that’s now worth 53 cents. They craved a new dream. They needed to find religion again. “We need a new revolution,” said one, morosely. “There’s gotta be something out there!”

Presto.

(NOTE: in addition to reading the full text of this entry, check out the commments area at the end! A couple of Segway owners have already written in. Woo!)