technology

Let’s Talk About the Hype Cycle

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I saw someone post about the “AI Hype Cycle” on Mastodon. Against all odds, I’m not going to talk about AI – I’m going to talk about the “Hype Cycle” and the fact we are really too used to it.

You probably have seen this for years – the Hype Cycle for this, the Hype Cycle for that. It’s burned into our brains, probably in part because Gartner actually tried to build a model for it. But we’re now used to the idea that the next Hype Cycle is here, coming, or sneaking up on us.

The thing is a big part of the Hype Cycle is utter bullshit and terrible disappointment. The fact that the Hype Cycle is part of our vocabulary means that we have normalized the idea that we’re being lied to and everyone is going to be bitterly unhappy later, and some lawsuits are going to fly around. We just sort of accept this, it’s been worked into our worldview and our vocabulary.

Everyone even has their roles in this play. There’s the evangelists (who probably made money last Hype Cycle), the skeptics who jump ahead to disillusionment (either understandably or because that’s their role), and so on. Sure some people believe honestly and some disbelieve, but too much of this starts seeming a lot alike.

I’m sure a big part of the Hype Cycle’s existence – and prominence – is because people WILL make money in the latest round of Hype over the Latest Thing. Venture capital streams in, people rush in with the hope of making it this time, and of course the evangelists from last time are on top of it. I also noted the last Hype Cycle for Crypto and NFTs that political actors got on top of it as well, which just amplified things further.

Of course with Crypto it’s still going, but it also seems that every week some techbro half my age goes to jail forever or gets sued for the GDP of a medium-sized country.

But some people make money in the Cycle, a lot of people loose money, and here we go again. Recently in Hype Cycle discussions, I saw a person honestly and sincerely discuss how to prosper in a Hype Cycle bust as a “cleanup consultant” which is brilliantly depressing. I myself have been in IT 30 years and have navigated many a Hype Cycle and I’m kind of done with them.*

But sadly, I think we have to discuss the Hype Cycles to ask why we have to discuss the Hype Cycles. Maybe we need to ask if we can move beyond them into something focused on real results early, on actual caution at the right time, and getting things done.

Steven Savage

* Oh and my secret to Navigating Hype Cycles? Stay aware of trends, don’t get caught up, stick with useful skills that will carry over, and put yourself in a place with real deliverables.

Into The Nothing That’s Everywhere

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I observed a discussion of AI art online, and someone made a chillingly accurate comment. They said people were using AI art to get clicks on message boards. Using a tool to make “art” that you didn’t make, to post to a board of people you don’t know, so they click on the post so you feel good. Nothing actually happens or means anything. It’s just automation wearing the clothes of human interaction.

I began asking just how much of modern interaction, infused by market-driven technology, is just meaningless clicks. How much is nothing.

Not much later, I was listening to a podcast on game and game development, and how some people courted controversy. You could make an utterly crappy game, but get the right people to scream about how great it is, cite culture war B.S. and you’d sell your game. You’d get “reviews” yes, but the reviews wouldn’t be about the game you made, just who you annoyed. The tools to make a game, the social media to discuss it, the ways to distribute it, but the game itself means nothing.

Doing something to get something else to happen over something else, while everyone pretends something meaningful is going on. Human interaction as a Mousetrap-style game to get clicks, sell adds, or just annoy someone you’ll never meet. Meaningless. Nothing.

These experiences helped me get a feel for the profound alienation that seems to have settled on many in our high-tech supposedly connected world. The system of clicks, views, reviews, etc. means something else than it says it is, if it’s about anything else anymore. Yes, some – a great deal – is about ad revenue, but that’s you doing something so someone else pays you to shill an unrelated product. Even then it’s still so abstract from what you say is going on.

The Enshittification of human interaction. People can’t even hate each other properly without worrying about follower count and ad revenue.

The thing is we expected the Internet to connect us – it can and it has. Yes, it lets you build a bubble, but humans always do that. As I look over this phenomena of human abstraction and clicks and numbers, I think a way to look at it is that we’ve added middlemen.

Ad revenue companies, many big tech companies, etc. Even crypto is really a kind of middleman, an unregulated stock market of the imagination that you eventually have to cash in for real money. All of it is inserting yourself into the human experience to charge a toll and getting people to click, maybe paying them in a cut or just giving them a number to watch go up.

And now, nothing means anything except clicks and who’s getting paid. Sometimes no one is getting anything but is hoping to or doing it out of habit. Worse, so much started pretty good.

Now I wonder how sustainable it all is – and I honestly don’t know. We’re in unexplored territory at scale while the climate changes and the world careens forward. But wherever we are now, I don’t think it’s going to solve our problems. You can’t solve anything with nothing, and there’s a whole lot of nothing right now – a complicated nothing.

We need less of this nothing.

Steven Savage

Wondering What Won’t Be Here

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As of late, I’ve started wondering what technologies we’re used to are just going to go away. That’s also a great way to close out the end of the year.

Of course technologies always fall by the wayside. Some don’t work, some get replaced, some get improved, some aren’t practical. There’s a lot created in human history that’s not in widespread use in Western society. Technologies going away is normal (as is reviving them, but that’s another story).

I wonder as of late how many technologies we’ve created are a mix of unsustainable and actually just useless. How many will just go away or could because there’s no reason to keep them or we can’t.

Mostly I’m thinking about “computer stuff,” because that’s what I’ve worked on almost all of my career. I just feel like the last decade or so things have gotten faintly ridiculous.

  • Embedding computers and wireless into everything. I’m missing simple electro-mechanical solutions, cable connections, and of course I wonder about security issues. Plus how sustainable is “microchips everywhere.”
  • So-called “AI” which is really just large language models and or algorithms. There’s a ton of hype around it, while it consumes resources and creates all sorts of legal and information issues. AI hype also eclipses really good tools for things like image analysis and searching that aren’t as sensational.
  • The ads in everything. Yes, we can put ads in everything, but it feels like it’s gotten overdone. Also how much web technology has grown around serving damn ads.
  • Social media. I think we’ve started to see people rethinking how it’s used – let alone the social, security, and technical issues. Also it seems everyone keeps trying to undermine everyone else. Oh, and ads.
  • Streaming. Maybe I’m old but I’m starting to miss cable.
  • Graphic cards. Do I need the latest particle effects when some games run on the CPU? Also, this stuff is getting used for crypto.

And so on.

I’ve been wondering if what we see in technology is basically a lot of people made money, so they can “make” things succeed by investing their word and considerable money into it. Others already had a lot of money so they can try to “make” a market. Combined together I wonder how much of our technological world is just propped up by money, hype, and newness.

And I wonder how much of that is going to be around because what’s the value proposition. Streaming is nice and all, but it’s hard to keep track of everything and it gets pricey. Computer everything doesn’t seem sustainable between costs and the fact it seems we’re well on the way to see refrigerators infected with malware. How much of the technology out there is needed versus just hyped, and we race to get ahead? How oversaturated are markets?

Also can any of this survive our various crises in the world? I mean stuff is kinda shaky right now.

I don’t know. But I have the gut feeling that there’s changes coming as some things can’t be sustained or that no one wants them, needs them, or can pay for them.

Steven Savage