#14 Hype

I've been wanting to write this article for over a decade.

Ever since I watched my first "Did you know?" hype video. Followed by my second, nine years later.

The article was going to be titled "Calm the f**k down", but in my year of #52professionalreflections, Hype is a much more professional title.

If you've not seen the "Did you know?" clips (or for an abridged refresher), now could be a good time to grab some popcorn and watch one:

• https://youtu.be/Gv8pmIr3a7k (2009)
• https://youtu.be/TwtS6Jy3ll8 (2018)

While I do enjoy Fatboy Slim's music, I found (and still find) the soundtrack to these clips unnecessarily hypeful. The music with the clip's message triggers my hype early warning system.

I've always been a sceptic of hype. Which presents quite the challenge for a genuine technologist who first touched a computer at age 2, and who has forged an ICT career in selling, designing, building and running technology solutions and leading teams of technologists using leading-edge technology.

The industry is riddled with hype. The industry's history is riddled with hype. It swirls around us like a magician's distraction techniques do as they pull a rabbit from an empty top hat.

But unlike when those techniques work to produce a bunny and a dopamine buzz of disbelief, when IT hype works its magic, the excitement we feel can interfere with good decisions. And this could see people signing contracts, parting with money, making commitments and taking risks in a context that belies the reality. Just as the bunny does.

It's fascinating that we (and I'll include Gartner and their 'Hype Cycle') in my use of the pronoun) use the term hype so freely and willingly in a positive context when the hazards hype can mask are material. It's also fascinating given the word's origins: As early as 1924 it surfaced as an abbreviation of "hypodermic", and was used to describe a drug addict. It then saw a resurgence of use in the 50s to mean "advertising, news reports, and public praise for a new product or service, which is used to make people excited about buying or trying it" or "to make something seem more exciting or important than it is".

Hype generally swirls around something that's:

1. New;
2. Needs rapid market up-take from a standing start;
3. May be difficult to sell (without the hype);
4. Risky; and
5. Genuinely believed in by the seller.

This is why Goodyear and Firestone don't need to rely on hype to move their regular tyres. But other pundits will draw on it when the conditions above are at play.

I'm not proposing that hype is a bad thing. I'm simply encouraging an eagle eye for spotting it, a caution in processing it and a healthy scepticism before acting on it.

Our job as subjects of hype is to get to the Shoreland of Healthy Scepticism, from where we can make good decisions and do as Public Enemy would have us do: "Don't believe the hype".