Just about a year ago, you might recall, inhabitants of the rarefied realm known as the high-tech cutting edge were all agog over a secret new invention nicknamed "Ginger," or sometimes just "IT." The brainchild of U.S. gizmo wizard Mr. Dean Kamen, the device was described by those who got a sneak peek as having the capacity to change the world.
Apple's CEO, Mr. Steve Jobs, thought Ginger would permanently alter the way cities were designed. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mr. John Doerr predicted that it could be "bigger than the Internet." Mr. Kamen himself said modestly that it would "profoundly affect our environment and the way people live worldwide." Hopeful investors coughed up accordingly.
That was last January. Something has indeed changed the world since then -- but it wasn't Ginger or anything else from the high-tech redoubts of California. It was the low-tech terror unleashed from a mountain hideout in Afghanistan by a man named Osama bin Laden. The innocent, sunlit world in which a frivolity like Ginger could seem important has passed into shadow. People have more serious things on their minds now, and when they do look for relief, it tends to take simpler and certainly cheaper forms than anything remotely resembling this pricey plaything. (How pricey? Oh, around $8,000 a pop. If this gadget is still going to change the world, it's not the world most of us live in.)