*Maybe the worst issue with the Gartner Hype Cycle is that practically everything we do now is "obsolete before plateau." Blogs, for instance.
*Nicolas Nova:
http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2010/10/03/deconstructing-gartners-hype-cycle-myth/
Using this Sunday afternoon to work on a book chapter, I was brought back to this peculiar tool created by Gartner called the “Hype Cycle“… defined in Julian’s comments the other day on the near future laboratory blog as:
“The Gartner Hype Curve, where whatever the future is, it is sure to be oversold and overpromised, leading to the *trough of disillusionment and despair, after which the future sort of becomes more reasonable than the hype and slowly productizes itself. ((I’m still waiting for the Jet Pack future.))“
The underlying point of this cycle is that products/technologies have a peak of inflated expectations and it’s only after a period of disappointment that “they are adopted by people”. Although the idea is promising a first, there are various problems with the cycle itself. The first one is that it doesn’t look like a cycle at all, it’s as if products/technologies only go through one disillusionment phase before becoming a success… which is utterly wrong. Some products fail several times, some never succeed… and what’s a success anyway? We see it’s about “visibility” but what does it mean more seriously? A second general problem is of course the idea that progress can’t be stopped and that every single piece of tech will find its way to what other people call “the market”. I’ve collected other problems below...
