6 ms·

Lessons from 20 years of hype cycles (2016)

104 points by shandor 5y ago

CalChris 5y ago
The article is from 2016 and plants a premature tombstone on ultrawideband's grave: Ultrawideband: a short range radio technology, ultrawideband reached peak hype in the 2004 hype cycle but was abandoned by 2008 The U1 Chip for Ultra Wideband is in the Apple iPhone 11+12. It can be used for Airdrop, Airtag, car key, ...
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  Also it is fairly popular for ~1cm accurate indoor localization solutions...
  - g-n 5y ago
    better to say ~30cm indoor localisation solutions. I did not see any UWB solutions yet that can provide centimeter accuracy in a real-life scenarios.
    - nxpnsv 5y ago
      Fair enough, I stopped working on this stuff a few years ago and only saw carefully orchestrated demos. (comment too old to edit)
    - CalChris 5y ago
      My watch can ping my phone, and my key fob can ping my car. I find these to be embarrassingly handy location technology. I'm an Airtag skeptic right now but I was a late adopter on other things. I'll wait for the killer app. Late adopter and killer app are 90s phrases if there ever were.
smitty1e 5y ago
Question: if the really good ideas sell themselves (e.g. JSON as a data format), then does the presence of a Hype Cycle count against the goodness of an idea?
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Some of us think JSON has been over hyped.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  JSON is a good example of a good enough idea that came at the right time. It took good points of XML, removed the pain points of XML, and got a layer of C-syntax coating so it managed to ride the javascript hype. And it is good enough. But e.g. no real thought about dates is a pain point that keeps hurting. I would grade it better than average but not really good.
wolverine876 5y ago
It's a very interesting question, but I wonder about some of the understanding of specific technologies: > it’s true that many of the Hype Cycle’s one hit wonders survive today, enjoying minor success or mindshare: Crowdsourcing - 2013, HTML5 - 2012, BYOD - 2012, Podcasting -2005 Those technologies have only "minor success or mindshare"? I'd say they have overwhelming success and they're now embedded in the (computer) culture. The article uses Wikipedia links. > technologies that seem as poorly considered as parachute pants or perms. Just some of the one-hit wonders: ... Folksonomies Isn't #tagging either folksonomy renamed or a direct descendant? > Mesh Networks Aren't those in the 'Emergence' category right now, being explored and developed by hackers and some businesses?
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Mesh networks were for the longest time an interesting solution in search for a problem. The best use case used to be city-wide wifi networks, like the German Freifunk [1]. But now IoT brings a compelling commercial use case, which is why you now hear about e.g. Zigbee (which is also 20 years old) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk
  - samplatt 5y ago
    I'd disagree with the "solution in search of a problem" posit. The problem (that the current "Internet" as a whole was becoming dominated by human-hostile entities) was universally recognised but difficult to define... and unfortunately Mesh Networking has not had nearly the pick-up it needed to resolve some of the fundamental problems of its own.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Parachute pants and perms are peak fashion right now
- mr_toad 5y ago
  If you use the term HTML5 you’re either selling to a non technical audience, or you don’t actually know what you’re talking about - probably because you bought something with HTML5 in it.
version_five 5y ago
> The most hyped technology in 1995 was Intelligent Agents. Two years later, Office 97 introduced Clippy, the enthusiastic, but incompetent assistant which was so poorly received that it effectively killed off the idea for a generation. Today, twenty years later, we’re once again trying to build intelligent assistants, although now we call them Chatbots Chatbots are almost a hype cycle on top of a hype cycle. Deep neural networks gave us AI as a hype cycle, someone imagined what they thought AI could do and thought that could be used to prevent people from talking to a real person, leading to cost savings, and so we have hype around chatbots built on a foundation of hype around AI. The reality is, AI doesn't do what people think it does, and people call in to get a sympathetic human assessment of their issues, not because they're illiterate. So chatbots have no future outside of customer hostile applications that think people will keep paying no matter how disrespectful and unhelpful support is (see Uber). Unfortunately, this seems to work for a lot of companies.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The other answer though is that AI systems only learn what they're taught, and businesses building chatbots only teach them things they've already put on their websites and documentation...which if that was helpful to the customer, they wouldn't be looking for human support.
  - nojs 5y ago
    Equally true for a lot of human customer service!
- poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
  Agreed chatbots have no future in their current crap state but really good chatbot that pass the Turing test (which hasn't happened yet), could I believe take over any human interfacing use case and we'd all actually enjoy it. This is still decades away and is doubtful will involve current AI paradigms.
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  I’m fine with a chat bot as long as it can pass me an actual human. The one that can only blurp FAQ links in loop are terrible
paulpauper 5y ago
Anyway to read without linked in account
- version_five 5y ago
  It worked in a private tab for me. You can also try https://outline.com/kGM8Sp https://outline.com/kGM8Sp

104 points by shandor 5y ago

The article is from 2016 and plants a premature tombstone on ultrawideband's grave: Ultrawideband: a short range radio technology, ultrawideband reached peak hype in the 2004 hype cycle but was abandoned by 2008 The U1 Chip for Ultra Wideband is in the Apple iPhone 11+12. It can be used for Airdrop, Airtag, car key, ...

nxpnsv 5y ago
Also it is fairly popular for ~1cm accurate indoor localization solutions...
- g-n 5y ago
  better to say ~30cm indoor localisation solutions. I did not see any UWB solutions yet that can provide centimeter accuracy in a real-life scenarios.
  - nxpnsv 5y ago
    Fair enough, I stopped working on this stuff a few years ago and only saw carefully orchestrated demos. (comment too old to edit)
  - CalChris 5y ago
    My watch can ping my phone, and my key fob can ping my car. I find these to be embarrassingly handy location technology. I'm an Airtag skeptic right now but I was a late adopter on other things. I'll wait for the killer app. Late adopter and killer app are 90s phrases if there ever were.

smitty1e 5y ago

Question: if the really good ideas sell themselves (e.g. JSON as a data format), then does the presence of a Hype Cycle count against the goodness of an idea?

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Some of us think JSON has been over hyped.
hyperman1 5y ago
JSON is a good example of a good enough idea that came at the right time. It took good points of XML, removed the pain points of XML, and got a layer of C-syntax coating so it managed to ride the javascript hype. And it is good enough. But e.g. no real thought about dates is a pain point that keeps hurting. I would grade it better than average but not really good.

wolverine876 5y ago

It's a very interesting question, but I wonder about some of the understanding of specific technologies: > it’s true that many of the Hype Cycle’s one hit wonders survive today, enjoying minor success or mindshare: Crowdsourcing - 2013, HTML5 - 2012, BYOD - 2012, Podcasting -2005 Those technologies have only "minor success or mindshare"? I'd say they have overwhelming success and they're now embedded in the (computer) culture. The article uses Wikipedia links. > technologies that seem as poorly considered as parachute pants or perms. Just some of the one-hit wonders: ... Folksonomies Isn't #tagging either folksonomy renamed or a direct descendant? > Mesh Networks Aren't those in the 'Emergence' category right now, being explored and developed by hackers and some businesses?

wongarsu 5y ago
Mesh networks were for the longest time an interesting solution in search for a problem. The best use case used to be city-wide wifi networks, like the German Freifunk [1]. But now IoT brings a compelling commercial use case, which is why you now hear about e.g. Zigbee (which is also 20 years old) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk
- samplatt 5y ago
  I'd disagree with the "solution in search of a problem" posit. The problem (that the current "Internet" as a whole was becoming dominated by human-hostile entities) was universally recognised but difficult to define... and unfortunately Mesh Networking has not had nearly the pick-up it needed to resolve some of the fundamental problems of its own.
brailsafe 5y ago
Parachute pants and perms are peak fashion right now
mr_toad 5y ago
If you use the term HTML5 you’re either selling to a non technical audience, or you don’t actually know what you’re talking about - probably because you bought something with HTML5 in it.

version_five 5y ago

> The most hyped technology in 1995 was Intelligent Agents. Two years later, Office 97 introduced Clippy, the enthusiastic, but incompetent assistant which was so poorly received that it effectively killed off the idea for a generation. Today, twenty years later, we’re once again trying to build intelligent assistants, although now we call them Chatbots Chatbots are almost a hype cycle on top of a hype cycle. Deep neural networks gave us AI as a hype cycle, someone imagined what they thought AI could do and thought that could be used to prevent people from talking to a real person, leading to cost savings, and so we have hype around chatbots built on a foundation of hype around AI. The reality is, AI doesn't do what people think it does, and people call in to get a sympathetic human assessment of their issues, not because they're illiterate. So chatbots have no future outside of customer hostile applications that think people will keep paying no matter how disrespectful and unhelpful support is (see Uber). Unfortunately, this seems to work for a lot of companies.

XorNot 5y ago
The other answer though is that AI systems only learn what they're taught, and businesses building chatbots only teach them things they've already put on their websites and documentation...which if that was helpful to the customer, they wouldn't be looking for human support.
- nojs 5y ago
  Equally true for a lot of human customer service!
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
Agreed chatbots have no future in their current crap state but really good chatbot that pass the Turing test (which hasn't happened yet), could I believe take over any human interfacing use case and we'd all actually enjoy it. This is still decades away and is doubtful will involve current AI paradigms.
dopidopHN 5y ago
I’m fine with a chat bot as long as it can pass me an actual human. The one that can only blurp FAQ links in loop are terrible

paulpauper 5y ago

Anyway to read without linked in account

version_five 5y ago
It worked in a private tab for me. You can also try https://outline.com/kGM8Sp https://outline.com/kGM8Sp