My first thought on seeing this thing in one of the hundreds of mail order catalogues that comes to my house–I buy a lot of stuff online, which apparently means that my address ends up on a lot of “hot prospect” lists or something–was “damn, that’d be pretty cool”.
My second thought, upon seeing the price of the thing ($17K US, before), was “Damn, who has enough money that they can afford to throw away that much on a whim?”. Now, I know the answer to that question, but still I think it says something about the class disparities in our society that there are enough people willing and able to buy that sort of thing at that price point to make producing it profitable. I suspect this is something like the modern version of candied lark’s tongues–not something you want for itself, but something you want as an indicator that you can have it. When the Romans did that, we called it decadence. What do we call it now?
Still, if somone came by this afternoon and dropped the winning lottery ticket in my mailbox, I might buy one. Just because I can see a societal problem doesn’t mean I’m immune to the wild call of the hover scooter.
Levitating Hover Scooter at Hammacher Schlemmer
Levitating Hover Scooter
Hailed by The New York Times as a “miniature flying saucer with handlebars,² the hover scooter provides an unprecedented experience in personal transportation, levitating inches above the ground and speeding a single rider across level land on a cushion of air.
