GARTNER HYPE CYCLE AND THE HIVE CULTURE

Gartner has been publishing its Hype Cycles since 1995. The latest one is out. See below. It describes a Hype Cycle as:

A graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies. They characterize the over-enthusiasm or "hype" and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of new technologies.

You can see in the 2009 chart below that we are at the top of the cycle for cloud computing, and e-book readers, but microblogging is heading downwards to the trough of disillusionment. I'm not sure of the scientific objectivity of this as a study, but I kind of agree with its findings.

The two hype charts below are 2005, and 1995. 1995 is the really interesting one. Speech recognition seems to be eternally at the plateau of productivity. I'd love to know what's holding it up. Business Rule Engine was two posts behind Speech recognition in 2005 on the plateau of productivity, but seems to have come and gone.

The interesting part of these hype charts is not the latter stages, but what is being hyped at the peak of inflated expectations. The information superhighway was hyped in 1995, and is here. Intelligent Agents were also hyped, and they are not here.

The peak of inflated expectations is due to the hive culture we all work in. We read the same things, write about the same things, and produce the same things. Yesteryear - in a more fragmented age - we worked as part of smaller creative cultures. Now we are all linked by that once hyped, but now here, information superhighway. Everybody is having the same ideas. It's all about execution now. It's no longer the Devil we see in the detail, but as Mies van Der rohe said: God is in details. In a more interlinked world, ideas are spouting from everywhere. They are now the commodity, its how you execute them that counts.