Tag: predictions

De-hyping the hype cycle

One of the useful tools in describing how technology is accepted by the market and society is the Gartner Hype Cycle.

Developed by the consulting firm, it describes the typical pattern of a technology product where at first it is ignored, then hyped before falling into the ‘Trough of Disillusionment” before maturing to find a productive role in the marketplace.

The curve though isn’t perfect – many products crash without making the ‘plateau of productivity’ and every technology has its own unique timeframe. Gartner’s role as technology analysts as commercial considerations come into play as well.

Given those imperfections, it’s worthwhile tracking how some of the technologies did on the hype cycle and how Gartner’s predictions went and on Imgur, Anton Tarasenkno has posted all the the Gartner end of year hype cycles from 2000 onwards to give us that opportunity.

PDAs and Smartphones

The ‘Personal PDA’ illustrates how technologies evolve and the original concepts become a dead end.

In 2001, the Personal Digital Assistant – devices like the Palm Pilot, Sharp Zaurus and HP iPac – were the productivity must have for connected workers and Gartner flagged them to be on the ‘Plateau of Productivity in between three to five years.

They never made it. The entire category crashed due to to poor product releases, confusing software wars – the buggy mess that Microsoft Windows CE scared many consumers away – and the rise of smartphones.

PDA’s vanish from the Gartner cycle in 2003 and three years later Smartphones make an appearance grinding their way up to the ‘Plateau of Productivity’.

There is a fair argument that smartphones are an evolution of the PDA – although not one of the PDA vendors or operating systems actually made it onto successful smartphones – but it does seem a bit of a sleight of hand simply to substitute one for the other.

As it turns out though, the 2006 prediction for the smartphone was spot on given the iPhone was released the following year.

Cloud computing

The evolution of ‘cloud computing’ is an interesting tale in itself. At the time of the 2000 Gartner hype cycle is was being described as Application Service Providers (ASPs) although the concept and technology could claim to be the descendent of the much earlier time shared mainframe computing systems leased out primarily by IBM.

In the 2000 Hype Cycle Gartner has ASPs just past the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ and this was a fair call as ASPs were dragged down by the general ennui following the Tech Wreck a year later which saw the technology close to the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’.

ASPs then vanish for four years before reappearing as ‘Software as a Service/ASP’ in 2005 on the grind up to the ‘Plateau of Productivity.’

Portal mania

In the early days of the World Wide Web, portals were hot. On the public web, Yahoo! and MSN were expected to be the go-to destination for surfers while within large organisations, the intranet page was expected to be the centre of all corporate knowledge and the first place employees were expected to log into in the morning.

For the 2003 hype cycle, Gartner’s analysts certainly believed in portals with twelve different types of portals or related technology listed. The following year, the number had grown to fifteen.

Interestingly, the most advanced portal technology on the curve, ‘mobile access to portals’, was stuck climbing out the trough for both of those years. That probably indicates even Gartner’s enthusiasm for the term and the technology was enough to prevent the idea being overtaken by search and social media.

Looking to the future

While it’s entertaining with the benefit of hindsight to look at where Gartner’s predictions of more than a decade ago, it is worthwhile considering what the company’s analysts are predicting this year.

Virtual reality is the tech clawing its way up out of the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ while augmented reality is hurtling towards the depths. Both are flagged to be mainstream on a five to ten year horizon.

At the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ sits Machine Learning with the connected home and Blockchain approaching the top. Towards the start of the curve are technologies like Quantum Computing and human augmentation, both are flagged to be more than ten years away from gaining mainstream adoption.

Picking apart the Gartner Hype Cycle is a useful exercise in understanding the limits of the idea as well as reminding us of just how difficult it is to predict how technologies will mature and be accepted by society and industry.

 

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The Economist’s World in 2015

The Economist’s predictions for 2015 are a mixed bag

One of the annual features in The Economist is it’s World In… edition where the magazine makes predictions on the year ahead.

For 2015 the magazine has its usual wide range predictions; some safe, some risky and some out of left field, like Papua New Guinea topping the world growth lists for next year on the back on a new LNG plant comping online.

Economy: The fastest-growing economy in the world in 2015 will be Papua New Guinea, where GDP will expand by nearly 15%. China will drop its growth target to 7% (from 7.5%). Overall, global growth will be higher in 2015 (3.8%) than in 2014 (3.2%).

Business: Singapore tops the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global business environment rankings for 2015. Watch out for Xiaomi, a Chinese mobile-phone maker, as it continues its meteoric rise and goes global. And expect a welcome return, at least in some places, to the nine-to-five culture in the

Interest rates: In the United States and Britain, where growth is relatively robust and unemployment is coming down, interests rates will start to rise in 2015, ending a long period of ultra-low rates. In the euro zone and Japan, by contrast, central banks will continue to ease monetary policy, to battle against deflation. The diverging paths of the main central banks will lead to more volatility in equity,

Statistical landmarks: It will be a year of striking “crossovers”, as America overtakes Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest oil producer, China overtakes America to become the world’s biggest economy (measured at purchasing-power parity) and Facebook overtakes China in terms of its

Elections: Britain will have another hung parliament after its general election in May, with David
Cameron probably remaining prime minister. But Canada’s leadership is likely to change hands in an October election, with the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau taking the helm.

The environment: A deal of sorts will emerge from the Paris summit in December 2015. Hydrogen- powered cars will hit the road, as Toyota and Honda launch the first mass-market fuel-cell models. And Australia will be in the global spotlight as the UN decides whether the Great Barrier Reef should be put on the endangered list.

Technology: “Wearable” technology will be all the rage, thanks to the launch of the Apple Watch and other devices. Virtual-reality firms will overcome the cost and technology problems that have prevented their products from becoming mass-market hits. And mobile phones will become mind-readers, thanks to “anticipatory computing”, which enables them to trawl their users’ data to predict events

Sport: Australia will win the cricket World Cup, New Zealand will win the rugby World Cup and the United States will win the women’s football World Cup.

Space: America’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly by Pluto, after a journey of nearly nine years – maybe igniting a campaign to reinstate Pluto as a fully-fledged planet from its current “dwarf” status.

Some of the predictions are obvious while others may be a bit longer term than 2015. Overall it’s an interesting range of predictions and in the next few days I’ll post an interview with two of The Economist’s editors, Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran and Daniel Franklin, justifying their forecasts for the year ahead.

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