Flutterby™! : Hovertrax

I listened to The Planet Money episode on the self-balancing handle-less scooters variously known as "Hoverboard", "Swagway", although the original appears to be the Hovertrax.

Buzzfeed: How to make millions of Hoverboards almost overnight is another take on the same story.

The kicker is that the design for the Hovertrax involves assorted MEMS "gyroscopic" sensors and some intelligence in balancing, the product that's overtaken the market pushes all of that processing back onto the human nervous system, and nobody seems to have noticed.

But this is also a huge reminder, an uncomfortable reminder, that engineering is a commodity. Knowing how to build the product is nice, sure, and iteration in designing the product is super important, but knowing what product to build and how to get that into the channels is far more important.

Sobering, for those of us who've spent decades trying to learn more about how to build it.