The Gartner Hype Cycle
Technologists only need two tools to understand any tech
Being a technologist is unlike any other profession. But it’s a very necessary societal contribution. The two tools technologists use to assess any technology are Diffusion-of-Innovation theory and the Gartner Hype cycle.
Understanding how technology is created and transmitted across society is critical to our species' survival. New technology interacts with our physical health, emotional wellbeing, and ability to earn a living in dramatic, and sometimes frustrating ways.
Modified from Gartner.com. ©Todreamalife, 2021
I’ve written previously about the rapid and sustained technological change we’re all living through.
The shift to digital living is an event-horizon in our species' evolution. Disruptive technology throughout history has terraformed society. Nuclear power completely changed geopolitical power. And the internet, like the printing press, will likely have radical effects on class and society by democratizing education. The book Guns, Germs, and Steel discusses in depth how geography, resources, and biota interact with technological adaptations and consequently history.
It’s unavoidable, technologies are coming at us hard and fast, and no one can afford to ignore them.
New technology is traumatic
If you’re feeling traumatized by talk of new technologies there’s a reason. They are scary.
It took 50 years to replace horses with cars. Humans domesticated horses in 3500 BC and horses lost their jobs about 1917. Prior to that, it was donkeys — dogs in North America. Basically, a 25000-year relationship with beasts-of-burden ended within 50 years. Anyone met a horse? Felt a kinship? Do we really think our neurobiological subconscious changed that fast?
Horses aren’t the only ones who lost their jobs. Farriers, harness makers, carriage drivers, stablehands, and courier services did too. Everyone had to adjust.
It used to be, that you did what your parent did. Names like “Smithson” show us dad was a blackssmith, you were too, they had to tell you apart. Now very few careers are carried down father-to-son. Everyone has to forge their own way, and keeping abreast of new technologies is an ever-present source of subterranean stress among all modern adults.
There's a word for this stress. Anomie is a word coined by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and it’s directly related to the mental health concerns being reported across the Western World.
It’s the collective strain we feel when our previously-held values fail to guide us in novel circumstances. We feel adrift, unmoored, and our family structures experience strain as parents struggle to guide their children in circumstances they couldn’t predict, and often don’t understand themselves.
We’re certainly not going to resolve all these problems in one article, but what we can do is help you get your moorings in this turbulent sea.
As technologists, we have several go-to models that help us keep our heads with new technologies and comfortably make decisions about when, and how we will interact with them.
The Gartner Hype Cycle as a tool
The Gartner Hype Cycle is a simple visual, that cuts through the noise and volatility of early-stage tech and helps the general public gain instant traction on it’s usefulness today.
Gartner publishes some of these analysis behind a paywall, some publically. Lots of people publish their own using the same curve. But you don’t really need to see a high-end analysis to apply the theory intuitively.
The Amish do it all the time :)
My intuitive application of the Gartner Hype Cycle
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ” — W.C. Fields
Here’s my quick-and-dirty guide to evaluating the usefulness of any technology:
Have I heard of it before? I’m pretty plugged in, and I usually end up in the visionary category on diffusion-of-innovation theory so I’ve sort of heard of most things coming down the pipeline. (You’d have to know your category to apply the same metric.) Generally if I haven’t heard of it, its either vaporware (fictitious software), or just emerging — so the Innovation trigger phase.
Is everyone saying I HAVE to get into it because I’m going to make a gazillion dollars? I’ve been through enough gold-rushes in high-tech to know its statistically better to sell shovels than stake a claim. Every once in a while I’ll participate in an emerging market if I have an unfair advantage, but usually I tend to run the other way when I see a frenzy. Thats the Peak of inflated expectations phase and they generally play out the same way as a Ponzi scheme, some people do make money, and a lot more lose their shirts.
Is everyone saying its a scam? This is the Trough of disillusionment and I try to avoid rubbing salt in the wounds of all my friends who really got their hearts broken. If you don’t get your heart broken once or twice, you haven’t really been involved in high-tech. Incidentally, this is usually about the time I bother to start researching the tech. Now that the bugs are much clearer.
Is everyone saying its been around forever but no one will ever use it? Now my work is cut out for me. I got to figure out what this tech is actually good for, and convince all the hardened hearts that it will all be okay one day. THEN I got to fix the problems, which are now readily apparent to everyone involved. Or if they can’t be fixed, find another application for it that’s beneficial. This is the Slope of enlightenment when real gains can be seen.
Is everyone saying that they use it all the time? Then its the Plateau of productivity and everyone benefits, especially the people that hung in through all the previous phases.
The point is not that I’m the smartest, the point is that I know where I fit in the development ecosystem and I don’t lose my head during the highs-and-lows because I saw them coming a mile away. I didn’t come up with this on my own, I applied these theories and they made me feel better about the century I’m living in.
Conclusion, Gartner Hype Cycle
High-tech is pretty predictable —if you’re using the right models. Part of the ethics of being a technologist is displaying kindness, and practicality about new technologies and the people swept up in them.
I like being a phone-a-friend people call when they are evaluating a new innovation. I hope that if you know more about the Gartner Hype Cycle you will too.
