Ginger: Marketable myth or monster of misinformation?

The original story was published by tech news website inside.com last week, low on facts and high on speculation. Within days the information had spread around the net and onto the pages of the UK weekend newspapers.

As one of a number of industry heavyweights invited to a top secret demo of Ginger by inventor Dean Kamen, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, is alleged to have said that cities will spring up around it. Other high-profile attendees were just as happy to wade in with their own share of hyperbole.

The 'facts' filtered through slowly but surely. It's not a medical invention. It's a mass-market consumer product. During the demo, Kamen managed to assemble two Gingers in 10 minutes from parts that fit into a couple of duffel bags and some cardboard boxes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches.

Since we published the story on Friday, silicon.com has been inundated by comments from readers that range from exhilaration to exasperation.

The majority of readers who think Ginger actually exists believe it's some kind of motorised scooter - a view supported by the release of a US patent filing in Kamen's name with a dodgy illustration of what appears to be a woman riding a grass strimmer.

Neil C reckons it might be "a machine that can nullify the inertia due to gravity via gyroscopic electromagnetic radiation", either that or a banana-peeling machine.

A revolutionary hair-grow formula that restores barren scalps but is only available in ginger, says Chris D. We can see the metropolis springing up now.

Theories about transportation devices abound, but maybe that's just a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of modern rail travel in the UK. Could we be about to see the introduction of Star Trek-style teleporting machines, some people muse. No, of course not. But we live in hope.

Gordon W suggests it will probably be a "one-person hover scooter based on a gyroscopic force field". OK. A scooter is the favourite theory. Hardly epoch-shattering stuff and hard to see it overtaking the PC or web in the Top 10 of great inventions in technology. After all, whither the Sinclair C5?

Then there are the huddled masses of web-weary readers who claim it's hype, hype, hype all the way. And therein, of course, lies the real story behind Ginger. It's about the way information spreads throughout the wired world. Speeding down ISDN and leased lines and plinking into your mailbox, flooding news wires and commanding 72-type headlines in Sunday newspapers.

One speculative report with unsubstantiated quotes from industry figureheads and a day later you have a (new) media phenomenon to join the hallowed ranks of web culture that includes Turkish journalists offering to kiss all and sundry and digital bopping babies that slip into TV shows and toy shops in time for Christmas.

But the comments we received reflect something other than wild hopes for a technological nirvana. They're loaded with an understanding of the online medium and a fair modicum of irony. So what if it is just a scooter? At least we're dealing with the dizzying world of modern communications on a level footing with a mixture of outright disbelief and moderated excitement. We're coping with information overload.

Some people call Ginger an elaborate hoax. Hoax maybe, but this started off as one story on a tech news website, the internet did most of the elaboration. The web doesn't discriminate, it disseminates.

Keep the comments coming to editorial@silicon.com or click add comment at the bottom of this story. Whatever your take on Ginger, we'd like to hear it. But please, no more emails about Chris Evans and his plans for world domination. It's starting to frighten us.