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.
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.
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!
An ant is pretty cool. It can lift more than 50 times its weight and handle pressures up to 5000 times its weight.
But, what makes ants interesting is what they do when there's a colony (or swarm) of them.
An ant can only be "so" smart - their heads are tiny - but a colony of ants is a superorganism whose collective intelligence is much greater than the sum of its parts.
Ants release pheromones from glands all over their bodies that can tell their colony an array of things. It can tell them how many ants they need to accomplish a task, it can tell them where there's food or danger, and it can even be used to relocate their whole colony to a new geography.
Clearly, it can also be used to communicate that the best way to survive danger is to create a mass of each other and allow the most possible to survive ... there's no fear or greed, only what's best for the colony.
In a very real sense, this is where technology and trading are starting to move. I say starting, but swarm intelligence has been an area of research in technology since the late 80's.
There are many simple applications of swarm intelligence in creating CGI crowds, telecommunication networks and more, but technological advances are drastically increasing the power and uses of swarms.
Using the communication of various systems in order to gain real-time data from their actions and interactions will create hidden opportunities that we couldn't capitalize on previously.
We're in a golden age of innovation ... How cool is that?
In Part 2, I talked about normalizing your habits and picking consistent, normalized metrics. This doesn't just work at the gym; it applies to life and business as well.
Today, I want to explain how and why this helps. To do so, we will talk about controlling your arousal states.
Chemically, most arousal states are the same. Meaning, the same hormones and neurotransmitters that make you feel fear also can make you feel excited. They affect your heart rate, respiration, etc. ... Though, the outside stimuli you experience likely determines how you interpret what is happening.
In most situations, a heart rate of 170 beats per minute is an indicator of extreme danger (or an impending toe-tag). If I felt my heart racing like that in a meeting, it might trigger a fight or flight instinct. I prefer conscious and controlled responses. So, I train myself to recognize what I can control and to respond accordingly.
One way I do that is by being mindful of heart rate zones during exercise.
My goal is to get as close to 170 bpm as I can, then stay in that peak zone for as long as possible.
Here is a chart showing a Fitbit readout of a recent exercise session.
As you can see, every time I reach my limit ... I get my heart rate back down. It becomes a conscious and controlled learned behavior.
It's a form of biofeedback; it's not only gotten me better at controlling what happens after my heartrate reaches 170 but at identifying when I'm close even without a monitor.
Now, when my heart rate is at 170 bpm(regardless of the situation), I don't feel anxious ... I think about what I want to do.
This is a very useful tool.
It's the same with trading ... Does a loss or error harsh your mellow – or is it a trigger to do what you are supposed to do.
Getting used to normalized risk creates opportunity.
When you are comfortable operating at a pace, or in an environment, that others find difficult – you have a profound advantage and edge.
Even if I'm not an expert in a field, based on context and patterns, I quickly see the big picture – and recognize the bottlenecks and leverage points that impact transformative results.
A scrambled cube presents an insurmountable challenge to newbies. It almost seems that there are infinite possibilities ... and most lead towards chaos and failure. In reality, a Rubik's cube is pretty easy to solve if you understand a few simple algorithms (and match the positions of a couple key blocks in relation to the decisions you need to make next).
As more people learn to solve standard cubes, the game evolves. There is new generation of "Cubers" that attempt to find new creative situations to add difficulty, solve it faster than the next person, or try crazy variations of the cube that barely resembles the original.
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)
Reblog (0)