# All Aboard the Hype Cycle By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-06-10 When a new technology arrives, the initial perspective is it will change the world. Everyone is very excited. It gets much attention, and pundits hypothesize how it will revolutionize our lives. Sometimes this is scary, and other times it is inspiring. But the hype is real and significant in the early years. This is the current state of content-generating AI - tons of hype, excitement, and dread. Just over ten years ago, Big Data was having a similar moment. The vague Big Data idea was that technologies were arriving that could collect all the data and explore it cost-effectively. The promise was endless hidden insights and ways to profit or improve the world. Finally, all the data in the world would have meaning! Enterprises rushed to build their Big Data systems, and "experts" published thousands of books to cash in. Some people were worried about how they might be manipulated via this data and technology. Organizations dreamed of new revenue streams and opportunities to serve their customers and investors better. Today, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone pitching the Big Data idea. It didn't live up to the hype. All the world's data doesn't generate meaning unless someone looks at it. However, this doesn't mean that practical elements of Big Data are not part of our daily lives. The best part of the Big Data technologies is incorporated into our regular "tech stack." It's just not changing the world in the ways people thought it would go beyond the apparent privacy and deviant behavior people were worried about. However, I suspect this behavior was bound to happen as soon as the internet was created; Big Data enabled it to happen sooner and at a much larger scale. It's the price we pay for nearly instant communication and information access. Big Data has gone through the technology hype cycle often attributed to Gartner, Inc.: early excitement and hype followed by rejection as the hype doesn't pan out and finally acceptance of the middle reality. Content-generating AI is early in the hype cycle. It will change everything! Let's see what the middle reality looks like ten years from now. #### Related Items [[Hype]] [[Technology]] [[Artificial Intelligence]] [[Big Data]] [[Organization]] [[Business]] [[Culture]] [[Progress]]