Hype, Hype, Everywhere
Eric Dumont
AI Strategy and Business Transformation Leader | Driving Adoption of European Technology Products & Services
(Last updated July 2024)
Hype is a form of information violence. Hype serves to aggrandize egos, to portray the illusion of knowledge and to make a handful of people richer than they should be.
Responding to the hype surrounding quantum computing in 2022, physicist Sankar Das Sarma wrote the following:
"..., I was often asked when I thought a real quantum computer would be built. (It is interesting that I no longer face this question as quantum-computing hype has apparently convinced people that these systems already exist or are just around the corner).? My unequivocal answer was always that I do not know. Predicting the future of technology is impossible—it happens when it happens. One might try to draw an analogy with the past. It took the aviation industry more than 60 years to go from the Wright brothers to jumbo jets carrying hundreds of passengers thousands of miles. The immediate question is where quantum computing development, as it stands today, should be placed on that timeline. Is it with the Wright brothers in 1903? The first jet planes around 1940? Or maybe we’re still way back in the early 16th century, with Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine? I do not know. Nor does anybody else." - Article Quantum Computing has a?Hype?Problem. Sankar Das Sarma, 2022, MIT Technology Review.
Replace Quantum Computing in this paragraph with any other technology and you come to the same conclusion: nobody knows what will happen.
Nobody knows what will happen.
But an expert can't say, 'I don't know,' right?
Here's a breakdown of some of the most overhyped technologies since 1990, along with their promised and actual impacts.
Hype doesn't mean the technologies on this list are failures.
Many offer real benefits and have the potential for transformative impacts as they continue to develop.
This list focuses on the disconnect between initial expectations, the media frenzy surrounding the technology and the current reality. The disconnect often fuels unwarranted public anxiety and resentment because their over-hyped promised impact.
20 Technologies Hyped Too Soon
Virtual Reality (VR)
Hyped Since: The early 1990s.
Promised Impact: Revolutionize gaming, entertainment, education, and social interaction by creating fully immersive digital worlds.
Indicative Quote: "VR will be bigger than the PC." – John McAfee (1992), the creepy tech guy who gave us the anti-virus.
Actual Impact: While VR has improved significantly, it remains niche. High cost, limited content, and potential motion sickness issues present barriers to widespread adoption. VR has found success in specialized areas like training simulations.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Hyped Since: AI has been hyped since the 1950s with recurring hype cycles over the decades.
Promised Impact: Solve humanity's most complex problems, replace human jobs across industries ushering a life of leisure and prosperity for all, lead to a super-intelligence - the Singularity - that will surpass human capabilities and allow for transfer of human consciousness to machines.
Indicative quote: "..machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do." – Herbert Simon (1960), political scientist and Nobel laureate.
Actual Impact: AI, especially machine learning, has made huge strides. However, the hype of sentient robots and mass job displacement hasn't matched reality. Current AI is mostly task-specific and requires ongoing human input - training.
The Semantic Web
Hyped Since: The semantic web has been hyped since the early 2000s
Promised Impact: Transform the web from documents to linked data, enabling computers to understand and process information the way humans do.
Indicative quote: "The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of the Web, creating an environment where software agents...can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users." – Tim Berners-Lee (2001), he who invented the World Wide Web.
Actual Impact: While progress has been made with structured data elements, the full vision of a machine-understandable web hasn't been realized due to complexity and difficulty of standardizing knowledge. Too much noise so little signal!
3D Printing
"Makes you wonder when they'll finally print a unicorn that doesn't glitch and disappear into cotton candy."courtesy of DALL-E.
Hyped Since: The early 2010s
Promised Impact: Disrupt manufacturing, allow anyone to create complex objects at home, revolutionize prototyping and customized production.
Indicative quote: "I think it will drop the costs of developing new products by 70 to 90 percent. In the long term, it will change the way almost everything – from braces to cars to houses – is designed and manufactured.” – Avi Reichental, CEO of 3D Systems (2012)
Actual Impact: 3D printing has become valuable in industrial settings for specialized parts and rapid prototyping. Consumer-grade 3D printing, while accessible, hasn't attained the initial 'manufacturing revolution' hype.
Nanotechnology
Hyped Since: Nanotech has been hyped since the early 2000s
Promised Impact: Super-strong materials, targeted drug delivery, miniature machines working at the atomic level.
Indicative Quote: "Nanotechnology has the potential to change the way we make almost everything." – Mihail Roco, National Science Foundation (2002)
Actual Impact: Nanotechnology has produced meaningful advances in materials science and medicine, but the most ambitious visions like self-assembling nanomachines remain far off.
The Metaverse
Hyped Since: 2021
Promised Impact: A fully immersive, interconnected virtual world blurring lines between physical and digital reality, becoming a new platform for work, socializing, and commerce.
Indicative Quote: "The metaverse is going to be the biggest opportunity for modern business since the creation of the internet.” – Mark Zuckerberg (2021), man-child extraordinaire.
Actual Impact: While interest is high, and some potential exists, current platforms are unimpressive. Long-term adoption and impact depend on overcoming technical and social hurdles. Meta's recent layoffs are the best sign that this hyped thing was a complete fiasco.
Self-Driving Cars
Hyped Since: the early 2010s
Promised Impact: A revolution in transportation: safer roads, less traffic, increased mobility for the non-driving population.
Indicative Quote: "[Full autonomy] is a software problem... we'll have complete autonomy approximately two years from today" – Elon Musk (2015), the creep who runs Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
Actual Impact: Significant progress in autonomous driving, but fully driverless cars in complex environments remain elusive. Level 2/3 autonomy is increasingly common in new vehicles, aiding drivers rather than replacing them.
Wearable Technology
Hyped Since: the 1990s.
Promised Impact: Seamless integration of computing into everyday life, revolutionizing communication, health tracking, and augmented reality overlays.
Indicative Quote: "Project Glass is one step into this future where technology doesn’t require your full attention.” – Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, promoting Google Glass (2012)
Actual Impact: Smartwatches and fitness trackers are popular, but haven't achieved the must-have status that was predicted. Concerns about privacy and limited use cases outside of health remain common. Will you ever be a glasshole?
Blockchain
Hyped Since: Introduced in a 2008 paper, Blockchain makes it to top of Gartner Hype Cycle in 2017
Promised Impact: Decentralization of finance, secure digital voting, revolutionizing supply chain management, disrupting countless industries.
Indicative Quote: "Blockchain… it’s the second coming of the internet.” – Don Tapscott (2016), the guy who popularized the term "Paradigm Shift".
Actual Impact: Blockchain found success with cryptocurrencies, but wider adoption has been slower. Scalability issues, regulatory uncertainty, and limited use cases outside cryptocurrency hinder broad impact.
Gene Therapy
领英推荐
Hyped Since: the early 1990s.
Promised Impact: Permanent cures for genetic diseases, personalized medicine, and potential human enhancement.
Indicative Quote: "Once you can edit genes, you pretty much have the potential to change what it means to be human." – Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (1999)
Actual Impact: Significant progress but is still in its early stages.. Successful treatments for rare diseases exist. However, safety concerns, high costs, and the complexity of targeting multi-gene disorders remain challenges.
Quantum Computing
Hyped Since: Separately proposed by Yuri Manin and Richard Feynman in the 1990s, the hype took off in the late 1990s.
Media Coverage: Mainstream publications began highlighting the potential of quantum computers, often exaggerating their capabilities and near-term impact.
Promised Impact: Solve problems too complex for classical computers, break current encryption, revolutionize drug discovery and materials science.
Indicative Quote: "Quantum computation will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.” – David Deutsch, Physicist (2001)
Actual Impact: Quantum computers are still in early in development. While they show theoretical promise, practical applications are still limited, and error correction remains a significant challenge.
Personalization Algorithms
Hyped Since: Early 2000s.
Promised Impact: Perfect recommendations for products, news, and entertainment, tailoring the online world to each individual.
Indicative Quote: "These algorithms will know how we feel and what we will want, better than we do ourselves." – Kevin Kelly, Wired Magazine (2007)
Actual impact: Algorithms have made our experience more personalized, but filter bubbles, manipulative recommendations, and privacy concerns raise ethical questions. Polarized societies anyone?
Internet of Things (IoT)
Hyped Since: Early 2010s
Promised Impact: Fully interconnected homes, "smart" cities optimizing energy use and traffic, widespread automation.
Indicative Quote: "The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so." – Kevin Ashton, pioneer behind the IoT term (2009)
Actual Impact: IoT devices are widespread, but the vision of seamlessly integrated systems hasn't fully materialized. Security concerns, interoperability issues, and unclear benefits for average consumers slow adoption. My dishwasher is calling.
Brain-Computer Interfaces
Hyped Since: Late 2000s.
Promised Impact: Direct control of computers and prosthetics with thought, restoring lost abilities, ushering in new forms of communication.
Indicative Quote: "One day, being able to control your environment and communicate by thought alone is going to be as easy and commonplace as blinking your eyes is today.” – Miguel Nicolelis, Neuroscientist (2011)
Actual Impact: Research is promising, but practical applications are primarily limited to those with severe disabilities. Invasive interfaces present significant hurdles for widespread use.
Biofuels
Hyped Since: Mid-2000s
Promised Impact: A sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, reducing carbon emissions and combating climate change.
Indicative Quote: "Ethanol is a renewable fuel that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 86% compared to gasoline" – George W. Bush, US President (2007)
Actual Impact: Biofuels play a role in the fuel mix, but production costs, scalability, and competition for land with food crops present limitations. Nearly sparked another Mexican revolution in 2007 when the cost of the staple corn flour rose 400%.
Fusion Energy
Hyped Since: 1950s, with recurring hype cycles with each no incremental advance.
Promised Impact: Unlimited, clean energy solving the world's power problems.
Indicative Quote: "Fusion is the energy of the future... It should be commercially available in about 50 years." – Edward Teller, Nuclear physicist (1971)
Actual Impact: The science has progressed, but the engineering challenges remain immense. If achievable, commercial fusion power is still decades away.
Personalized Medicine
Hyped Since: The early 2000s.
Promised Impact: Tailored treatments based on a person's genetic makeup, revolutionizing disease prevention and drug effectiveness.
Indicative Quote: "Personalized medicine will revolutionize the delivery of healthcare, making it safer, more effective, and vastly more efficient." – Leroy Hood, Geneticist and pioneer (2003)
Actual Impact: Progress has been made in targeted therapies but widespread adoption is slower than anticipated. Costs and the complexity of analyzing individual genomes are key obstacles.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Hyped Since: began in 2010s.
Promised Impact: Ubiquitous overlays of digital information onto the physical world, changing how we shop, learn, and navigate.
Indicative Quote: "I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you” – Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta/Facebook (2017)
Actual Impact: AR finds use in gaming and niche industrial applications but hasn't become the daily tool that was initially envisioned. Technical limitations and a lack of compelling consumer use cases impede popular integration.
Flying Cars
Hyped Since: Flying car hype begins in the early 20th century with recurring hype cycles over the decades.
Promised Impact: A world of personal airborne transportation, revolutionizing commuting and reshaping our cities.
Indicative Quote: "There's something that just stirs the emotions when you think about flying cars. The idea of just stepping outside and going where we want..." – Larry Page, Google co-founder (2014)
Actual Impact: Prototypes exist, but safety, regulation, noise, infrastructure changes, and high costs remain massive hurdles to widespread adoption.
Space Tourism
Hyped Since: Space tourism hype begins in early 2000s
Promised Impact: Democratized space travel, regular trips to orbit and beyond, opening a new age of exploration.
Indicative Quote: "I'm a great believer in space tourism... within 20 years, we will have regular folks going to space stations." – Richard Branson, the Virgin guy (2004)
Actual Impact: Space tourism remains restricted to the extremely wealthy. Costs and safety risks make the experience highly exclusive.
This list was, in part, compiled with the assistance of #googlegemini and ChatGPT 4.0. All text is original. AI-generated suggestions were fully revised, corrected, and updated with references by the author, a human.