Talk:Technology hype
Is it easier to have a list of hyped technologies, or a list of unhyped technologies? :-) Astudent 03:36 28 May 2003 (UTC)
The labeling of particular technologies as "hyped" is probably not in keeping with the Wikipedia policy on maintaining a neutral point of view in articles. It would be better to give particular examples of supposed "hype" claims, the persons who made them, and the persons who consider them to be "hype" rather than factual or well-founded predictions.
It's possibly less problematic to label a technology as hyped if it can be reasonably said to have flopped -- that is, failed to meet specific expectations which were artificially created by hype. This is definitely the case (in your examples) of only the "push technology" and many-but-not-all "dot-coms". Computers, Windows, Java, the iMac, the Internet, and free software are all rather popular and cannot be said to have flopped in any sense.
However, we already have a list of major flops for that purpose. --FOo 04:40 28 May 2003 (UTC)
I've rewritten the article. I hope the changes are not objected to.
My basic claim is that hype does not require that the hype be unjustified.
People hype things all the time, on purpose, in order to cause excitement. That doesn't mean that the hype is unjustified.
Further, there is the phenomenon of the public not getting excited by something that was hyped, but nonetheless important and life-changing.
Consider the adoption of cell phones.
I've removed the list of particular technologies that someone thought were inappropriately hyped. It seems very POV, and certaintly not encyclopedic. (Going into Ubuntu, for example, is a very niche thing. There are plenty of technologists out there who do not know what Ubuntu is, and would be very confused to see it.)