Inventor tries to quell wild speculation over 'It'

Maybe It’s not as earthshaking as people think It is.

"It" — the unknown invention that’s the subject of a proposed book from Harvard Business School Press in 2002 — has spurred wild speculation, from the Net to national talk shows, in recent days.

Inspired by sound-bite-sized endorsements from such forward-thinking folk as Apple’s Steve Jobs and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — it’s "so revolutionary you’ll have no problem selling it," Bezos is quoted as saying — pundits have imagined everything from personal flying machines to superfast scooters.

The inventor, millionaire Dean Kamen, 49, of Manchester, N.H., had avoided public comment. But in a statement posted Friday on the Web site of his firm, DEKA Research (www.dekaresearch.com), Kamen asked the world to cool its metaphoric jets, decrying the "unfortunate, unapproved leak" of his book proposal.

Whether Kamen’s protestations will quiet the buzz remains to be seen.

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