Talk of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is everywhere, with devices gaining new connectivity and fears that cyber criminals will have a field day hacking into people’s lives and homes more deeply than ever before.
So too is Gartner’s newest ‘Hype Cycle’, which has IoT at its peak hype levels, alongside wearable user interfaces, consumer 3D printing, cryptocurrencies, natural-language question answering, autonomous vehicles and big data.
This contrasts with once massively hyped technologies such as speech recognition, which after the last two or more decades of development has finally entered the more serene “plateau of productivity” – effectively graduating into a technology that anyone can inexpensively and productively use.
Gartner’s emerging technologies hype cycle is its longest running, with the paid 2014 report accompanying the graphic giving “strategists and planners with an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than 2,000 technologies, grouped into 119 areas.”
The analyst firm says “New Hype Cycles this year include Digital Workplace, Connected Homes, Enterprise Mobile Security, 3D Printing and Smart Machines.” Jackie Fenn, VP and Gartner fellow said: “The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is the broadest aggregate Gartner Hype Cycle, featuring technologies that are the focus of attention because of particularly high levels of hype, or those that Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact.
“Enterprises should use this Hype Cycle to identify which technologies are emerging and use the concept of digital business transformation to identify which business trends may result.”
So, while the Internet of Things may be at its peak hype powers right now, with activity only going to get more frenetic, it will inevitably enter Gartner’s “trough of disillusionment” at some point over the next year or two.
Then, over the next five or so years, we’ll see the Internet of Things reach Gartner’s “slope of enlightenment” and over the next five years after that, it will reach into the “plateau of productivity”.
Then the Internet of Things will really be something!
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