Keeping Up with What's Hot and What's Not

Randy Bass, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English at Georgetown University, was the keynote speaker at the Regis College 2014 Fall Faculty Conference. During his presentation, Bass mentioned a data analysis tool called the  Gartner Hype Cycle. The hype cycle tracks technologies through their life cycle using scales based on visibility (hype) versus maturity (time).

Bass used one such scale, the Hype Cycle for Education, to illustrate MOOCs and their rapid rise and fall. Only two years ago, the 2012 Hype Cycle for Education had MOOCs as an Innovation Trigger, otherwise known as “On the Rise”. However, the 2014 Hype Cycle for Education has MOOCs sliding into the “Trough of Disillusionment”, having become virtually a non-player with little to no impact on tuition-based institutions.

That got me to thinking about other emerging technologies and the sustainability of their hype over time. First, take a look at the Gartner hype cycle ratings methodology and scale, then take a gander at some of these well known technologies:

2009

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
3D printing	Internet TV	Web 2.0
Augmented reality	Cloud computing	Public virtual worlds
3D flat panel displays	Microblogging	Video telepresence

2011

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
Human augmentation	Image recognition	Gesture recognition
Social TV	Internet TV	Virtual worlds
3D bioprinting	Augmented reality	E-book readers

2014

On the Rise	At the Peak	Into the Trough
3D bioprinting	Autonomous vehicles	Gamification
Digital security	Internet of Things	Augmented reality
Connected home	Wearable user interfaces	Mobile health monitoring

Other resources

• Gartner Hype Cycle main page and other "hype" categories. 
• The Randy Bass blog