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Technology

The Technology Hype Cycle 193

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-article-perpetuates-the-cycle dept.
jira writes "What does it take for a new gadget to be succesfull on the market? Which technologies will become part of everyday life in the future? BBC investigates the Techology Hype Cycle."
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The Technology Hype Cycle More

The Technology Hype Cycle

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  • Easy! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pedestrian crossing ( 802349 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:16AM (#10118481) Homepage Journal
    Just get a "review" posted on /.

  • 90% marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Megaweapon ( 25185 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:16AM (#10118486) Homepage
    The usefulness of a gadget is irrelavent as long as the public buys them. Some tennis shoes are still over $100, right?

    • Re:90% marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:27AM (#10118605) Homepage Journal
      The usefulness of a gadget is irrelavent as long as the public buys them.

      Keep in mind that you'll only be selling them up until your competitor makes a more useful version. Anyone remember that the Rio player used to be king before the iPod came along?

      Make it useful. Your pocketbook will thank you in the long term.

    • Re:90% marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sg3000 ( 87992 ) * <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:31AM (#10118669)
      It's more than marketing. If it were just marketing, we wouldn't have grocery stores any longer; we'd all be using that home delivery service that Whoopi Goldberg was plugging to pay $10 for a six pack of coke.

      Marketing can make people aware of a new type of product or make people aware of a problem they didn't know they had before (this was really successful back in the early 1900s when razor companies convinced American women they had to shave their legs and armpits), but it's not the only problem.

      It seems to me that what is successful (for the products they showed) is related to a simple, distinctive product that offers something tangible. The iPod can play music and store a lot more than Walkmans. You actually pay for it, so you know what you get. When you buy a song on ITMS, you buy it; not you have the right to listen to it until you stop paying your bill. This is why Apple's ITMS was more successful than the other record companies' earlier attempts.

      They talked about satellite radio not being as popular. I think the problem is you have to buy the product (the head unit), plus get a subscription. Barriers of entry are high, and then its one more bill that you pay every month. With DVRs (which are cool, but didn't get adopted as fast as DVDs), many consumers aren't quite sure what they're getting because the category and pricing schemes aren't able to overcome the idea of just going to the store and buying a DVD. Aha! Tangible.

      Because of subscriptions and other ways of extracting reoccurring sources of revenue from the consumer, it's the business model that drives product adoption just as much as marketing.

      • Re:90% marketing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by oliverthered ( 187439 ) <oliverthered@nOSPAm.hotmail.com> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @12:04PM (#10119052) Journal
        1: the dvd.... people were pissed off with tapes jaming and pops and hisses on vinal. They liked the compact medium and durability of cd. DVD was ripe for the picking, it had already been sold when they sold the CD.
        For next gen (bluRay/holodisk) to take of there will either have to be a huge improvement in quality, drop in cost, or some other compelling reason to switch.
        (how may music albums are sold on dvd?)

        2:... Satalite radio, never heard of it, sounds crap, I have an Ipod with shite loads of music, I have internet radio piss off I'm not buying that crap.

        3: Ipod £200, a bit expensive, I'm going to wait for the price to come down. Maybe I'll get a pda.

        Top tip if you want to make a few bucks. Ipod x ICE (in car entertainment).

        1 micro pc case (£40)
        1 mothor board (£40)
        1 100 gb hdd drive (£50)
        1 amp or two (£80)
        1 display, 1 wifi usb card. (unknown)

        ~£300, or about the same price as a crap incar multi change unit with mp3 support.

        If it runs linux then...

        You should be able to link up usb or bluetooth to you phone for hands free.

        Link to you ipod, portable mp3 player, usb keyring etc..

        Link to the house, or another car, or the internet with WiFi.

        Add a usb CD drive if you like, inface add just about any usb device you can think of.

        It's a killer because:

        It's the same price as current munti changer systems.,

        It's interoperable (try mixing and matching current ICE components).

        Current systems in the market are crap.

        Mp3 playes are just taking off.

        Do it well, and no-one will have a standard radio or cd/tape player in the car in 5 years time.
        • For next gen (bluRay/holodisk) to take of there will either have to be a huge improvement in quality, drop in cost, or some other compelling reason to switch.

          Drop in Cost? Whoa! Hold on there, sparky. If you drop the cost from the approximately $20 we pay for a DVD movie today, that will hurt the profit margins. That would mean all of the incredibly important Hollywood people, like: publicists, lawyers, agents, hair & makeup artists, personal trainers, executive producers, marketers, graphic desig

        • ~£300 ... and in real money that is?
      • ...(this was really successful back in the early 1900s when razor companies convinced American women they had to shave their legs and armpits)...

        Thank god.
    • but price that same shoe at $200, and you goose-egg, my friend.

      That's what happened to This little piece of equipment. [audreyhacking.com]

    • You are presuming that $100 tennis shoes are not a cost effective investment. One could however make the argument that $100 tennis shoes are useful because of the social advantages gained by owning such a status symbol.
      • You are presuming that $100 tennis shoes are not a cost effective investment. One could however make the argument that $100 tennis shoes are useful because of the social advantages gained by owning such a status symbol.

        That, and the fact that they make me jump higher and run faster, hell, $100 is a bargain!

    • Re:90% marketing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @12:34PM (#10119465)
      The 90% marketing thing doesn't seem to have anything to do with the body of the post, but I agree with the post and not the subject.

      The post implies that culture of the market depends on the "hype" of the product. And I agree with this. Yes, I assume there are tennis shoes that go for $100 or so. Currently, I am wearing a pair of sandles that I found at a music festival after I lost my flipflops in the mud :) However, I own an HDTV that I paid over $1,500 for. I would guess a younger, more jock type of person would pay $100 for the tennis shoes ($5 for the shoes and sweatshop labor for the shoe, and $95 to the thug athlete who's name is on the shoe). However, a geek like me is paying $1,500 for a TV that could be purchased for $100 or so (about 700 for the TV, and a good percentage of the money going to pay for engineers, etc like me for the TV).

      My point being that culture determines the maket, this culture can be influenced by marketing via ads and whatnot, but take another example -- cell phones.

      Here in the US, we can't figure out why there are phones with cameras, text messaging, etc. Most everyone I know has a cell phone. I can't think of any of them that have a camera phone. The only time I've seen or heard of anyone get text messages here is when a friends phone got spambombed with porn text messages until her phone's memory was full.

      I saw on TV where Avril Lavine was doing a tour in Japan, and _everyone_ had a cellphone with a camera in it and they were all taking pictures of the girl with their phones up in the air as far as their arm would reach. I understand that in Japan text messages are used for things other than porn spambombs.

      Marketing has to preach to the choir. I don't think that marketing has convinced that senor citizens here in the US "need" a 4x4 suv to drive 25mph to church and to visit their grandkids, I think its more culture.

      • Re:90% marketing (Score:3, Insightful)

        by iantri ( 687643 )
        However, a geek like me is paying $1,500 for a TV that could be purchased for $100 or so (about 700 for the TV, and a good percentage of the money going to pay for engineers, etc like me for the TV
        That's a bit different, isn't it? There are clear, measurable tangible benefits between an HDTV and a regular set. I think a better analogy would be to buy a $4,000 Sony HDTV set instead of a $1,500 JVC HDTV set because Sony is 'better'.

  • Patents (Score:4, Insightful)

    by essreenim ( 647659 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:16AM (#10118490)
    Which technologies will become part of everyday life in the future?
    'Which patents will prevent certain technology (and as a result promote others) and become part of everyday life in the future.
    • Wah wah patents.

      Patents aren't nearly as bad as slashdotters make them out to be. Even software patents.

      Why? They expire. Relatively quickly. As in, within my lifetime.

      Bezos can keep his one-click patent, milk it for all it's worth, because he's only got a couple years left.

      In 7 years anyone can make an iPod, complete with it's little jog wheel. And so on, and so on.

      Patent law isn't nearly as fucked up as copyright law. It's fucked up, sure, but it's really not that bad.

  • Simple! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Step 1. Get slashdot to announce your product.
    Step 2. ???
    Step 3. Profit!!!
    • I think your Step 2 is "Produce some of the product before it becomes obsolete". Tough one to pull off, though.

  • the routine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlexTheBeast ( 809587 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:17AM (#10118498)
    The hype cycle isn't just for electronics. Think about IPOs.

    Here's the referenced chart...
    hype chart [bbc.co.uk]

    Here's the yahoo 5 year IPO chart...
    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=YHOO&t=5y&l=on&z=m &q=l&c= [yahoo.com]

    Same pathway...

    The is the pathway of ANYTHING new being introduced into the world. First, it's sexy and popular, then it's over done, and then it either levels off or dies.

    • Unless, of course, you are SCO. hahaha...

      DOWN, Down, down...

      Chart of SCOX [yahoo.com]...

    • Re:the routine (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dave420 ( 699308 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:33AM (#10118691)
      Even candy bars... start eating, and they taste great! Keep eating, and you get sick. Then, the attraction decreases rapidly, until you've not eaten them so much that they start to be tasty again, but you don't eat so many so you don't get ill.

      ok, maybe I think about candy too much.

    • Re:the routine (Score:3, Interesting)

      by halothane ( 200070 )

      I second that. I don't have an online reference, but if any of you can get your hands on a textbook "Clinical Pharmacology" by DR Lawrence, you will find a similar graph plotting the popularity of any new drug that is introduced into clinical practice.

      First, it is the panacea for every disease under the sun; then it becomes evil incarnate for all the side effects and adverse effects it causes. Finally, it finds its place in the spectrum of known drugs, with its own benefits and risks.

  • Before something is hyped... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thrill12 ( 711899 ) * on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:17AM (#10118502) Journal
    it must be researched, developed, tested, and proven. Proven technology like MP3 could never have evolved if Fraunhofer wasn't so wise to invent and release the technology. From thereon, it went it's own way (more or less) and evolved into what MP3 is now : mainstream and accepted.
    Before all those people leap into the "why does this work and why this not" they should start at the bottom: research and development. With those two magic words, we are likely to see a whole lot of hypes more. Without it, we can just wait on the next company that goes bankrupt because noone would buy it's proven, but old, products...
    • It became popular because it did something nothing else did. It allowed us to compress audio on our PCs/macs/whatever relatively fast, and let us play it back, also relatively fast, and leaving us with a small-ish file. There wasn't anything else out there that could do it. Now, you get lots of products that do exactly what another product does, but slightly similar, and everyone bitches when it isn't supported, or conversely everyone bitches when it makes an appearance on the scene. It seems, on a tech
  • "Some of the best known innovations, like the net, have swiftly become part of the furniture for millions,..."

    I've tried to interpret that in different contexts but nothing works out. part of the Furniture? I think their editors were alseep.

  • The next big thing? (Score:3, Funny)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:19AM (#10118526)
    With the trends I would have guessed that the double beer hat [drinkstuff.com] would have been big.

    I guess if I came up with some technobabble name for it and claimed that NASA had something to do with it's construction it'd sell big.
    • I guess if I came up with some technobabble name for it and claimed that NASA had something to do with it's construction it'd sell big.

      That's the old way of making a piece of crap cool. Now you just paint it white and put a half eaten apple on it. Then the prentitious will flock to it like bees on honey... I'm just bitter 'cause I can't afford an iBook.
  • 1. Get pop stars to wear it or use it...

    2. Roll around in your new found wealth

    *sigh*

  • In a nutshell (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CodeMaster ( 28069 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:20AM (#10118530)
    1. Get a new technology that has not matured yet.
    2. Apply it to a maturing retail area (see iTunes and the music market).
    3. Packaging and usability is king if you want to get the mass audience (and no - slashdot readers are NOT the mass audience!)
    4. Profit!

    (5. Putting the little apple logo on it usually helps jump a few steps in the process...)

    Get your free iPod! [freeipods.com][it really works! - my buddy got his after I signed up, I have just 2 more referrals to go...]
  • The "technology hype cycle" is fairly easy to shortcut if you have independent testers *use* the product instead of just releasing it to the market. For example, anyone who *used* the Audrey for any period of time could have told you that it would be a complete flop. It was underpowered, slow, and overall useless. OTOH, Apple made sure that people (especially Jobs himself) *used* the iPod before release. Changes were made based on that usage, and the product was better for it.

    Of course, that's no guarantee of success. It's quite possible that the product will fail because people don't "get it". In that case you have to watch what your focus groups do. Do they sort of bumble with the thing, with no idea what they're doing? Would they actually keep using it if they weren't forced to? Do they make use of most of the features, or do they ignore them? Most of this can be found by quiet observation of the user with the device. Don't answer questions. Just let them figure it out.

    If there's little that can be done about the complexity, then you're going to need a good advertising campaign. Manuals will help, but they only come *after* the purchase. It's much better to explain why they need the device before purchase so that they'll jump right in with the designed goals in mind.

  • It's not just technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:22AM (#10118556)

    From the article:

    "Something new would happen, there would be tremendous excitement, followed by disillusionment."

    Sounds like the entire course of human history to me.

    • Thanks, that's exactly what I thought. Typical buzzword stuff when consultants want to sell new methodologies to managers who have too little time to think about it. The "hype cycle" is really very obvious, and there are other life cycles that look exactly the same.

      Now what I would pay Gartner for is what the /. blurb erroneously said they had done: predicting what it take[s] for a new gadget to be successful on the market. The hype cycle only shows where a product is in the cycle. It does not explain why
    • Then, the real applications come years or decades down the road, often from completely other sources.

      Sort of like the wheel. I'm sure it was a very exciting thing at the time, but we really didn't get around to getting full use of it until the last five hundred years or so, and it's really took off with the advent of the internal combustion engine.

      That's what I have to say to the people who criticize research on quantum computing and space elevators and such. Sure, its not going to turn a profit by next q
  • A gadget with 256 MB usb,bluetooth,wifi,a screw driver, a nail file [ geeks definitely need one ],
    scissors,a GPS,LCD screen,mp3 player,cellphone and a pda...
    did i miss something ?

  • Caw! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It also helps to have a foot in the door... companies that already have a good relationship with a big box store like Wal-Mart would be more likely to swing deals. For example, they could get priority placement in Wal-Mart stores by the cash as "impulse buy" items. Of course it depends on the type of product, but existing ties to industry make it difficult for the new guy to get into the game.

    Why do you think the iPod is the most popular and well-known HD MP3 player around? Big advertising budget and good
    • well, that and the sweet amount of storage. I went MP3 player shopping the other day and the majority of the players were 128 or 256 Mb. Granted, the iPod is like 4x the price, but for 20gigs as compared to 128mb? totally worth it.
    • my roommate got an iRiver a few months after I got my iPod.
      His iRiver had trouble accessing the harddrive a few months after that, and tech support kept him on hold for over 30min multiple times (he assumed it wouldn't be that long so he called before having to go to class). Eventually it started working again, and then tech support started answering calls (funny how that works, isn't it?)

      Simply put...I'd never get an iRiver...
      but I am curious, did anyone else have problems with an iRiver, either the hard
  • The majority of people are followers... the key is to get endorsement to hype the "cool factor". Once you have the "cool factor", the followers will line-up!

  • Shiny parts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cplusplus ( 782679 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:26AM (#10118595) Journal
    Lots and lots of shiny pieces. Or smooth pieces. Shiny + smooth = success.
    I think there's some truth to that. If Gadget A catches your eye and is aesthetically pleasing it will probably sell better than an uglier but more functional Gadget B.
    Apple tends to blend form and functionality rather well.

  • So what's after the "Plateau of Productivity"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maestro4k ( 707634 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:27AM (#10118608) Journal
    I noticed the chart ends at the "Plateau of Productivity" but that isn't where all technology ends. Just look at things such as phonographs (you can barely find them anymore). On a more pertinent note the Internet seems to be going a bit downhill from that plateau thanks to spam, popup ads, malware, virus, worms, etc.

    So while it's an interesting article I don't think they've accounted for everything or, more likely, they don't want to talk about the next step which is probably a slow (or fast) death for technology which is ursurped by the next new thing. Also while the idea seems to be this "Hype Cycle" can help predict the path of a technology the article itself throws cold water on that idea. They readily admit the iPod threw off all their predictions for the Mp3 player market (now called simple digital music players). The hype cycle seems more of a hindsight tool than a forward looking predictor.

  • Blame the Press (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plasticmillion ( 649623 ) <matthew@allpeers.com> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:32AM (#10118689) Homepage
    I find it ironic that Gartner came up with this concept (it's been around for years, incidentally), since analysts and journalists are the ones who propagate this system.

    It goes something like this: some new technology starts to look like the next big thing. Journalists hype it to the moon since it gives them something "truly revolutionary" to talk about. As a result, expectations get all blown out of proportion.

    Then when the technology inevitably fails to live up to the hype within some ridiculously short timeframe, they have yet another big story to promote: "Is XYZ a hopeless failure?". Two stories for the price of one!

    The moral is not to believe what you read in the papers. Sure, there are plenty of revolutionary technologies emerging, but these things take much, much longer than the press would have us believe.

    • Something revolutionary...

      This thing has started in the 70's.
      Colleges were on it from the 80's.
      Early 90's it was still fairly private, until..
      They opened it up to public use.

      Now, mail travels through it, voice and pictures travel through it..

      No, all our information travels through it.

      It is the Internet. That is revolutionary.
    • Agreed. The media likes to follow this pattern with lots of things, not just technology. A great example is how they will hype up celebrities to no end, but will also later relish in the same celebrities' decline and fall, using that as a source of endless stories as well.
    • Sure, there are plenty of revolutionary technologies emerging, but these things take much, much longer than the press would have us believe.

      I'd made another comment something along these lines: The world is too keyed to the quarterly report. Projects that go for two or three years without turning a profit or producing research material have a sad tendancy to get the axe.

      Projects like the supercollider, space elevators, and quantum computing, space travel (especially manned), and so forth are heavily cri

  • Re: The technology hype cycle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:33AM (#10118690) Homepage Journal
    There was not an absolute iota of information in that article that I could make use of, or carry over with me. It smacks of absolute useless-ness, like a number of other articles

    1. A graph with different tehnologies/device listed against the time it took for them to "mature", with funny names given to each trough and crest of popularity, does not make an insightful report.

    2. There has been no mention of whose definiton of "product maturity" has been used. It is a term widely open for interpretation

    3. It is hilarious to compare the effectiveness, acceptability and market penetration of such varied products as DVD players and PDAs, and so on. There are host of factors that come into play, least of which is the sense of an inane need within the target customer segment.

    I bet that article concludes something. Though I certainly wish it was something more focused than a wannabe "we will have more power in our hands in the future"!

  • What _really_ matters? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RsG ( 809189 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:35AM (#10118724)
    Porn

    No, seriously, new technology is frequently propelled forward by its capacity for smut. Show of hands: How many /.ers got broadband or upgraded their modems in order to meet more women named .jpeg or her lovely sisters .mpeg? As far as that goes it's an often overlooked fact that porno movies go back to the beginning of film. The "hype circle" is just another way of saying "lookit that, no nipple pixels!" :-)

    (And yes I realized how it's ironic to ask for a show of hands WRT porn. At least I didn't ask you to show both hands.)
    • I also got broadband to personally email bomb making instructions to children everywhere!
    • Actually, a lot of people have been observing that very thing over a bunch of years.

      And a lot of people have concluded that if the porn people (always looking for new markets) can't figure out HOW to make use of it, or can't figure out WHAT to use it for, then it's not going to work as a technology.

      How many of us remember grainy, orange, animations from the mid-late 80's? You know, the ones that relied on EGA graphics or whatever. These were the precursors to actually doing FMV on a computer, and only e

    • When will this cliche end? Porn is *not* the reason for all technology, it just happens that VCRs and computers enabled people to view it in the privacy of their own homes instead of wearing trenchcoats to seedy theatres with sticky floors.
  • And when some company comes out with the cell phone that doubles as an mp3 player (downloads songs as easily as ringtones), bye-bye iPod. Why carry two gadgets when one will do, and doesn't require a computer?
    • when some company comes out with the cell phone that doubles as an mp3 player (downloads songs as easily as ringtones), bye-bye iPod.

      I wouldn't say it's quite as easy as having an iPod, but Nokia [nokiausa.com] has multiple mp3 playing phone models. And the original N-Gage plays games too.

    • Lol, you are joking or an idiot or ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @12:22PM (#10119326) Journal
      Lol, you are joking or an idiot or never seen either of the two techs you descibe.

      The iPod got about 40gb of music and about half an hour playtime. The phones got 32mb and about 2-3 hours playtime.

      iPod market will never be replaced by the phone market. Same reason the real hifi component market is not replaced by the boom-box market. iPod buyers will always want the extra quality that a dedicated product can give them. A gadget that tries to do everything will always end up doing all of them less.

      Two different markets.

      • > iPod market will never be replaced by the phone market.

        I disagree: phone manufacturers have been able to embed a camera (low quality ok), but do you really think that they won't be able to embed instead mini-hard drives?

        As for the quality, which quality, the interface? the sound quality? Both should be ok (with headphone for the sound of course).

        The only problem I can foresee is the battery: people don't like to have the battery totally discharged on phones as it means they can not be joined anymore

  • Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)

    by karmatic ( 776420 )
    Somehow, it seems appropriate that while I'm writing this, the Microsoft TCO of Linux ad keeps showing.

    What I think is most unfortunate is when a company hypes a product, with features people actually want, delays it, then finally releases it, but not as good as promised. Microsoft has done this in the past, but it looks like they may be taking the time to get Longhorn up to snuff.

    It will be interesting to see if Half-Life 2 lives up to the hype.
    --
    Complete an offer, get a free Orkut invite, Gmail invite [freeipods.com]

  • Segway? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MojoRilla ( 591502 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:49AM (#10118884)
    Sometimes, according to Ms Behrens, a technology can be so hyped it may never meet expectations.

    It seems like the Segway fits here. Vast hype, vast expectations, little impact two and a half years after introduction.
    • It seems like the Segway fits here. Vast hype, vast expectations, little impact two and a half years after introduction.

      And things come and go too.

      Apple introduced the 1st pda in 1993 or somewhere around there, and noone bought them.

      Then in the couple of years before and after 2000, PDAs were very desireable devices.

      Now they are coming out of fashion.

  • I didn't write this, but it's appropriate (Score:3, Funny)

    by Buran ( 150348 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @11:57AM (#10118971)
    I got a good laugh out of this when I first saw it.

    Apple Product Life Cycle [misterbg.org]

  • The *TRUE* technology hype cycle (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordOfYourPants ( 145342 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @12:17PM (#10119248)
    -5 months: You "discover" a technology at a conference that no one seems to have picked up on.

    -2 months: You read about it in the newspaper 3 months later. The article is done by a guy whose speciality is discussing nothing but gadgets.

    0 months: The technology appears in stores in limited quantities, geeks foam at the mouth trying to acquire it. The girlfriends of geeks shake their head wondering why they would need it.

    2 weeks: The geeks who can't find it in stores buy it on ebay for 3x the store cost. No girlfriends to shake their head at these guys.

    1 year: Regular people begin buying the product.

    1.5 years: Mainstream newspapers report on the popularity of the product.

    2 years: Your girlfriend buys the product.

    2.5 years: Your mother finally hears about the product.

    3 years: Families begin buying the product. The product is finally mainstream.

    5 years: The product begins appearing between the shaving razors and chocolate bars at the check-out counter.

    7 years: The product/technology finally peters out and your grandmother goes around telling people that she knew it was a fad from the start (1 year ago, from her perspective).

    8 years: Slashdot reports on the product.

  • word of mouth (Score:5, Funny)

    by spoonyfork ( 23307 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [krofynoops]> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @12:31PM (#10119420) Journal
    1991: "Don't call, send me an email."
    1992: "$10 for a CD? What a deal!"
    1993: "$3,000 for a 486? What a deal!"
    1994: "Check out this webpage."
    1995: "I'll be out, call my cell."
    1996: "I bought it all online."
    1997: "The number's in my PalmPilot. What? No, it's better than the Newton."
    1998: "MP3s on napster.com? No problem, I've got a cablemodem now."
    1999: "Y2K? Yeah, I've got my bunker stocked."
    2000: "Yeah, I finally got a DVD player."
    2001: "Check out my wireless network. Yeah, all the way to the patio."
    2002: "It costs more but this LCD monitor is the shiznite!"
    2003: (unemployed)
    2004: "Would you like fries with that?"

    • 1993: "$3,000 for a 486? What a deal!"

      Boy, those were the days. my $3K got me:

      -a 486DX66 with DOS (6.0?) for Doom + Windows 3.1
      -a 15" 1024x768 noname monitor (that actually lasted a long time)
      -8MB RAM for ACAD
      -2MB video card
      -2X CD-ROM
      -40MB hard disk
      -TOL Soundblaster card

  • Californians Beware! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by anubis__ ( 168382 )
    "Are all the other devices essentially slaves to the PC - which is the Microsoft vision - or do the functions become spread out to smart consumer devices through the home?

    The article uses the word "slave" when referring to something dealing with technology. Attempting to read the article in California may result in you breaking county law in your locality. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/25/001425 7&tid=133&tid=103 [slashdot.org]

  • The 'Lead In' (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Alpha_Traveller ( 685367 )
    The technology hype life cycle has essentially been pioneered by Microsoft.

    1. Announce a technology "idea", that someone else pioneered, that's nowhere near complete in terms of development.
    2. Develop it for months, maybe years, producing a lull in the market.
    3. Finally release it, but in Beta.
    4. Finally complete the beta, making the thing gold while it should still be nothing more than a beta.
    5. Start "round 2" of producing a product that should still be in beta, and call it version 2.
    6. Announce version
  • ...'successful' correctly helps a lot.
  • "BBC investigates the Techology Hype Cycle"

    "Longhorn will be the best yet!"

    "Longhorn will be out in 2003."

    "We won't be doing WinFS over the network."

    "We won't be doing WinFS".

    "Longhorn will be out in 2006."

    "We won't be doing Avalon" (next month).

    "Longhorn will be out in 2008."

    "We won't be doing Longhorn."

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