Internet, Blockchain, AI, Amara's Law and the Gartner Hype Cycle

3 points by bernardlunn 2 years ago | 2 comments

Amara’s Law (coined by Roy Amara, scientist, futurist and President of the Institute of the Future) is:

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

This is true for game changers such as Internet, Blockchain & AI. Some hyped technologies never make it through all five phases of the Gartner hype cycle:

1 Technology Trigger

2 Peak of Inflated Expectations

3 Trough of Disillusionment

4 Slope of Enlightenment

5 Plateau of Productivity

So it is possible that Blockchain & AI never make it big in the real world. The Internet has clearly made through all five phases. However I believe that Amara’s Law will also be true for both Blockchain & AI. While Blockchain is clearly deep in the Trough of Disillusionment, AI might be just starting that journey after spending 2023 at the Peak of Inflated Expectations.

What do you think?

muzani 2 years ago |

I think one thing missing is that these hype cycles can be stacked on top of one other. The Internet isn't simply one cycle; there's two other cycles including cloud computing and mobile.

Blockchain goes through a few. First with Bitcoin as a currency, then things like contracts, then NFT. It likely fails at some - we're still not seeing Bitcoin as a currency. But the overlapping cycles tend to mess with it; people who get excited over NFT also get excited over Bitcoin.

IMO Peaks can only occur when a tech has gone past the Early Majority market into Late Majority. Something can still peak while it's in Late Majority, but never earlier.

How do we measure this? I normally assume HN is in the front of Early Majority. I'd say universities and Fortune 500 are at the end of Early Majority. People who hang around TikTok and Discord are at the start of Late Majority. FB users are at the end of Late Majority. That relative who doesn't use Internet and gets all her news from TV is in the Laggard phase, though arguably not in the market at all. I could be wrong though, these are just random samples from the market I'm in.

Ride hailing, banking apps, SMS, and GPS maps are in the Laggard phase. In my country, QR payments have just entered Late Majority.

ChatGPT and Midjourney is probably in the Late Majority phase - that rando comic artist who still draws for newspapers is already playing with Midjourney.

Most people don't know about GPT-4, though. That's another hype cycle. Asking GPT via photos is still in the Early Majority phase, so it'll likely go up a lot higher. GPT-4 can answer exams and take home interview questions via your phone, but most exams aren't built against this.

bernardlunn 2 years ago |

Makes sense. Innovation stacking explains speed of market penetration