There's a lot of "hype" these days. Social media and tools like Kickstarter would have you believe that every new idea is the "next big new thing".
In contrast, Gartner's Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies. It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct, contextually understandable, snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit on the hype cycle.
Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like "How will these technologies impact my business?" and "Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?"
What's a "Hype Cycle"?
As technology advances, it is human-nature to get excited about the possibilities we imagine ... and then to get disappointed when those expectations aren't met.
At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where in the product's timeline we are, and how long it will take the technology to hit maturity.
This year, according to Gartner, there are three overarching "mega-trends" to watch.
AI Everywhere shows the transition towards a ubiquitous AI experience, from self-driving cars, to machine learning, and to smart robots. Consider the impact on traffic/accidents with the adoption of autonomous vehicles, or the ability of machine learning to process more data faster.
Transparently Immersive Experiences shows our transition towards human-centric contextual and fluid technological experiences. - like Connected Homes or Virtual Reality. Consider the impact of Augmented Reality on advertisements or gamification.
Digital Platforms shows the transition of emergent platforms into adoption. Platforms like Blockchain, IoT, and Quantum Computing. Consider the effects of bitcoin and other blockchain initiatives, as well as the opportunity for new business models centered around these platforms.
Here is the chart. You can click the image to see it larger.
The hype cycle gives us an idea of which of these technologies will likely survive the market hype and have a potential to become a part of our daily life.
Peak of Inflated Expectations (Success stories through early publicity),
Trough of Disillusionment (waning interest),
Slope of Enlightenment (2nd & 3rd generation products appear), and
Plateau of Productivity (Mainstream adoption starts).
Which technologies do you think are over-hyped ... and which ones might survive the hype?
I find this stuff fascinating. Consider some of the interesting technologies just starting their hype cycle:
Human Augmentation has the potential to enhance our bodies and minds using electrical currents, chips, or exoskeletons, but also raises ethical and legal questions.
Smart Dust opens up the possibility of monitoring essentially everything by creating a vast network of minuscule sensors that can detect various inputs.
Yesterday was Yom Kippur, one of the High Holy Days for Jews, otherwise known as the Day of Atonement.
As part of the holiday, we read down a list of sins (text available here), apologizing for the ones that we committed, and asking forgiveness. In addition, we promise to do better next year.
It's really interesting how little human nature has changed in the past several thousand years. The list of sins is just as relevant today as I imagine it was back then.
Normally, we see stores and warehouses organized by section - Cereals, Cheese, Fruit. This makes sense because as humans, it's easier to find everything if it's organized logically for us.
Amazon is changing that.
Their new service, "Prime Now," promises thousands of items delivered to you in around an hour.
That level of immediacy and activity creates an interesting set of logistical problems. For example, how would you organize the warehouse to enable that level of service? The answer might surprise you.
The answer is you don't. If you walked into one of Amazon's PrimeNow warehouses, you'd see a bunch of pods with random items next to each other. You might find cleaning supplies next to a children's toy, or maybe even an adult toy.
While this may seem weird or counter-intuitive ... with numerous "shoppers" all going through the warehouse at the same time, if the warehouse was organized by category or popularity, the result would be traffic jam bottlenecks and less throughput.
By organizing items randomly, and having the list of items ready ahead of time, Amazon's computers can create an optimum path for each "shopper" that takes into account the position of the items, where the checkout is, and where other shoppers are grabbing items.
That optimum path is critical in getting your order on time. This is another example of organized chaos – where human logic (or common sense) is not the most efficient or effective path to an optimal solution.
We're in the midst of a revolution, and no, I don't mean a political one.
Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950's. But, we are at an inflection point. It is no longer an "if" ... it is a "when". And the answer is probably "Now!"
AI technologies are expanding into broad and diverse markets.
Artificial Intelligence is no longer seen as a massive R&D effort – it is becoming a core competency.
Here is a chart showing AI adoption in various industries. (replace image with non-blurry one)
While AI is promising on many fronts, this "revolution" elicits fear from many.
For example, Elon Musk told the National Governors Association that the risks posed by A.I. are so great that it needs to be proactively regulated before it's too late.
What about you? Are you afraid of Skynet turning on, becoming self-aware and setting out to destroy the human race.? Or, are you looking to benefit from the new capabilities and possibilities AI creates for us?
It's hard to argue with results ... and sometimes the answer doesn't have to be creative (it just has to work).
It's the same with modern computing. We can perform better and faster than ever before, and a lot of it is because of prettier code, and smarter tools, and more skilled employees. But, sometimes, what it takes is an elegant use of brute force!
With the Equifax breach, I was reminded of something else he told me.
"It's not whether or not you've been hacked ... because you have ... it's whether you've been targeted."
As data becomes more valuable, and IP more coveted, security concerns grow, but the biggest security concern isn't where you would expect it to be.
When people think of hacking they often think of a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack or the media representation of people breaking into your system in a heist.
In reality, the greatest weakness is people, it's you ... the user. It's the user that turns off automatic patch updating. It's the user that uses thumb drives. It's the user that reuses the same passwords.
via xkcd
Whether it's malicious or unintentional, humans are often the biggest security weakness.
As proof, watch the first few minutes of the video below to watch a social engineer find out this man's email and gain access to his cell phone account. She locks him out of his account at the same time.
I started the video at the interesting part so you don't have to search for it.
As for passwords ... I recommend not knowing them. You can't disclose what you don't know. Consequently, I recommend a password manager like LastPass or 1Password.
How many cyber security measures you take comes down to two simple questions ... First, how much pain and hassle are you willing to deal with to protect your data? And, second, how much pain is a hacker willing to go through to get to your data?
It doesn't make sense to put all your data in a lockbox computer that never connects to a network ... nevertheless, it might be worth it to go to that extreme for pieces of your data.
Think about what the data is worth to you, or someone else, and protect it accordingly.
You probably heard that one of the biggest credit-reporting bureaus got hacked recently. It was pretty bad.
Equifax, TransUnion and Experian are the big three providers of credit scores (and other data, including: social security numbers, full names, addresses, birth dates, and even drivers licenses and credit card numbers for some) to potential lenders and consumers.
Hackers have had access to this information between May and July, and it's taken five weeks for the company to disclose the breach.
Regardless of whether or not you were affected, they are offering "Trusted ID Premier" monitoring free for a year as an extra layer of protection. But, beware, TechCrunch has pointed out that agreeing to their ToS seems to waive your right to sue Equifax.
Situations like this are reminders to pay even more attention to your own online security.
Gartner's 2017 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Innovations Worth Monitoring
There's a lot of "hype" these days. Social media and tools like Kickstarter would have you believe that every new idea is the "next big new thing".
In contrast, Gartner's Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies. It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct, contextually understandable, snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit on the hype cycle.
Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like "How will these technologies impact my business?" and "Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?"
What's a "Hype Cycle"?
As technology advances, it is human-nature to get excited about the possibilities we imagine ... and then to get disappointed when those expectations aren't met.
At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where in the product's timeline we are, and how long it will take the technology to hit maturity.
At this point in time, Machine Learning/Deep Learning and Connected Homes are at the peak of their hype cycles ... Meanwhile, Augmented Reality and Blockchain have matured past the hype phase (with Self-Driving Cars following close behind).
This year, according to Gartner, there are three overarching "mega-trends" to watch.
Here is the chart. You can click the image to see it larger.
For comparison, here is the chart from last year; and you can check out my article on 2015's hype cycle here.
The hype cycle gives us an idea of which of these technologies will likely survive the market hype and have a potential to become a part of our daily life.
Here are the five regions of Gartner's Hype Cycle framework:
Which technologies do you think are over-hyped ... and which ones might survive the hype?
I find this stuff fascinating. Consider some of the interesting technologies just starting their hype cycle:
We live in amazing times!
Onwards.
Posted at 03:18 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Ideas, Market Commentary, Science, Trading, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
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