The popularity and sustainability of technology depends to some degree on its favorable use by consumers. Often the “next new shiny thing” bursts onto our radar and we get excited, which feeds the hype, creating momentum, until we drop it for the next new shiny thing. Unless we judge it to be valuable and necessary. So it is with social media. And marketers today must understand this technology cycle if we are to properly and efficiently communicate our marketing messages.
Analyst firm Gartner Inc. (@Gartner_inc) describes this process as The Hype Cycle. It identifies peak points in visibility over time for technologies, highlighting the common pattern of over-enthusiasm, disillusionment, and eventual realism that accompanies each new technology and innovation:
· The technology trigger
· Peak of inflated expectations
· Trough of disillusionment
· Slope of enlightenment
· Plateau of productivity
It’s a useful chart to understand both the trajectory of technology and the actions of consumer behavior.
In the 2011 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle, activity streams, wireless power, Internet TV, NFC payment, and private cloud computing are some of the technologies that have moved into the Peak of Inflated Expectations. And ebook readers are moving up the Slope of Enlightenment. (Compare the 2011 Cycle with 2010 and 2009 above.) Gartner dissects 4 themes in current technology trends:
The connected world: Advances in embedded sensors, processing and wireless connectivity are bringing the power of the digital world to objects and places in the physical world….
Interface trends: User interfaces are slow-moving areas with significant recent activity. Speech recognition was on the original 1995 Hype Cycle and has still not reached maturity, and computer-brain interfaces will evolve for at least another 10 years before moving out of research and niche status. However, a new entry for natural language question answering recognizes the impressive and highly visible achievement of IBM's Watson computer in winning TV's Jeopardy! general knowledge quiz against champion human opponents. Gesture recognition has also been launched into the mainstream through Microsoft's Kinect gaming systems, which is now being hacked by third parties to create a range of application interfaces….
Analytical advances: Supporting the storage and manipulation of raw data to derive greater value and insight, these technologies continue to grow in capability and applicability....
New digital frontiers: Crossing the traditional boundaries of IT, new capabilities are reaching levels of performance and pricing that will fundamentally reshape processes and even industries. Examples on this year's Hype Cycle include 3D printing and bioprinting (of human tissue), and mobile robots….
Read the news release in full.
Read the Hype Cycle Special Report.
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