What's up with hoverboards? Not the ones from Back to the Future, I mean these new devices that look like the spawn of a Segway and a skateboard. A lot of people have decided that it's the thing we're going to Cabbage-Patch into a Christmas obsession this year.
For a start, that's a bad name, since it doesn't hover. I know, I shouldn't expect the name of a commercial product to be accurate. But there is a problem with promising that much more than you can deliver. Lots of car companies exaggerate their products' performance, but no one just suddenly decided to call their engines "warp drive." And yet, despite the pathetic attempt to oversell a product by piggybacking on a pop-culture favourite celebrating an anniversary this year, the public seems to be eating it up.
But somehow, I don't think this is a big breakthrough in wheeled conveyances. Yes, it looks clever and useful. But often new inventions turn out to be just stepping-stones to more profound achievements. For instance, people in the 70's probably thought roller skates were here to stay, but now it seems they'll just be remembered as an evolutionary step towards inline skates. Similarly, this "hoverboard" just looks like an invention that someone in the future will turn into something else.
(I just looked it up, and apparently the first roller skate was inline-style, so never mind.)
I don't just mean actual hoverboards - even with today's technology, I'm sure we could do better. I mean take a look at Orbitwheels. Doesn't that look cooler? And I know they have robots that balance on a single ball. And since Sergways/pseudo-hoverboards use the same sort of technology, why not a platform with a ball in the middle, so you can move in any direction?
I'm going to get to work on that right now, out at least after I check Amazon for Black Friday deals on hoverboards.
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