Has Tech Gotten Boring?
Finishing up my reading for the evening, I came across this serendipitous tweet.*
Intrigued (well done, Mr. Rosoff!), I clicked the link, noting it was to Business Insider, a publication for which I have decidedly complicated feelings**. In any case, the story was great, if single sourced. A reporter wandering the halls at CES found a desultory Accenture booth, manned by one Charles Hartley, a “company representative.” A quick Google search (done by me, but I digress), tells us Mr. Hartley is a PR executive focused on analysts and global media?—?an appropriate resume for manning a booth at CES, to be sure.
In any case, what Mr. Hartley shared with the BI reporter was rather counterintuitive to our esteemed industry’s current view of itself, and the reporter’s subsequent writeup made no bones about it. The headline: “Consumers are bored with today’s tech and nervous about tomorrow’s.”
In short, Accenture has released the results of a comprehensive (one imagines, 28,000 respondents worldwide, after all) study of consumers’ views about the tech currently on offer?—?mobile phones, VR, wearables, you know, all the stuff CES is on about. And it concluded that, well, consumers kind of think mobile phones are good enough, and the new stuff?—?VR, wearables?—?are interesting, but…they seem rather creepy.
The BI article doesn’t give us a link to the actual study that is being quoted, so I put in triple-time Google duty (it took one Google search plus two clicks to find). Here it is. Did I download the full report? Yes. Have I read it? No, but I did give it a thorough skim. Nevertheless, I can sense a clever marketing campaign when I see one:
Step 1: Gather insights. In this case: The most important industry in the world is poised for …. a boring year with slow growth and no consumer excitement. That sucks!
Step 2: Pick them lemons! Issue a report noting the preponderance of bad news, garnering the attention of the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and VentureBeat, among others (we hope?—?it’s only been two hours since the first piece went up!).
Step 3: Make the lemonade! Create a landing page that promises insights that just might fix the problem.
I’m loving this in ways that would take 1,000 words to explain, but that’s orthogonal, and my original story is not finished. Almost, but not quite.
Just yesterday I wrote my predictions post. I’ve not really admitted this before, but my predictions are nearly always based on gut feelings, slow baked with conversation and whiskey over several months, then composed in one two-to-three hour sitting***. So when I wrote prediction #8: “Apple Endures a Boring Year”?—?I had no idea Accenture was about to release the aforementioned study.
Man, what luck! Had I tarried even one day, I’d have been branded derivative. But even more, I wish I had really taken my gut feeling to its logical extreme. It’s not that Apple’s going to have a boring year. It’s that the entire industry may well be heading into a Cycle of Boring. Not that boring is terrible?—?great work is done during boring times, entire industries take root and prosper. Perhaps, in fact, we’ve already been in a Boring Cycle?—?I mean, what really changed your life in the past few years? Slack? SnapChat? I love em both but…they ain’t the iPhone.
I guess my point is this: When the most exciting thing you can imagine happening next year is VR from Facebook, or another Apple Watch?—?well, that’s just kind of disappointing.
I didn’t go to CES this year, but I’ve been to about 20 or so over the past 25 years. Perhaps by not going, I’m missing something Big, something that will truly Change the Game.
I sure hope so. What do you think?
Cross posted from Searchblog. Follow stories like this with the NewCo Daily.
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- * (serendipitous mainly because I tend to not read my Twitter stream, rather I depend on surrogate algorithms to cull it?—?this tweet just happened to be at the top after Chrome crashed and restored my tabs).
- ** Admiration, fondness, nostalgia, and some others.
- *** “one two-to-three hour” just seemed too wrong to not write.
Broadcast Media Professional
8 年I do not have ipad nor the new technoligy phones nither I would not know how to use those I get emails from twitter as well I dont play internet games any more not sure what one you would want them to change I was not able to go to Utah 2014 as my ESTA application ran out I do not use credit cards nor Direct debit nither but had help November 2014 so I was able to go August last year 2015 and September 6th this year for my birthday Wednsday 14th September I guess you might go next year cant plan that far though
Senior Solutions Architect at InnoVent Rental & Asset Management Solutions
9 年I don't think it has gotten boring at all... think it's just starting to mature. With that specialization will start to happen. Now most consumer technology is still stuck in the mature range and most people in their board rooms use this maturing technology, hence why you perceive it to be getting boring. Unless you are an early adopter or enthusiast who plays with technology, you'll always get bored once you realize the buzz in the buzz words have disappeared.
Testing, testing
9 年If "tech" means gadgets, then they were always boring. If "tech" means technology (the practical application of science)then it's saving your life on a daily basis.
Chicago, USA
9 年Tech has traditionally always been "boring" as it was an industry created by nerds for nerds. The over-hype is just that, hype. It will never last... Real tech innovation comes from researching and re-researching a few thousand page document with the most dry logical language possible. ... The "wow-factor" is just marketing fluff to sell stuff to people who don't really need it. As consumers get smarter, that will dissipate more and more. The future tech's marketing plan will be much more boring than yesterday's because of this intellectual momentum building up. That's not to say that it's a bad-thing though! ... As a Tech-Dev myself, I think it's a wonderful and great thing to see happening as people are becoming more educated and the real excitement moves from fluff to real world solutions! ... VR, and Wearables are already outdated too btw... by decades. If companies want to be known as "exciting" again, they will have to try harder than a Dick Tracy watch.
Interimspecialist Actuarieel at Talent en Pro
9 年I think writing a whole year off on only the 13th day of said year is a bit quick based on a study of only 28k responses. I guess there are more then enough problems just waiting to be solved. That said, while 'regular' businesses take 2-3 years to innovate tech still needs at least half a year of notice so while the fall of 2015 may not have done something for humanity, spring 2016 might bring in a big hitter.