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23.01.06

Hype and Reality

The Gartner Hype Cycle is ’a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies.’ A Hype Cycle is divided into 5 phases, each representing specific risks and opportunities (linked with the timing of those technologies). On Vinnie Mirchandani’s blog you can find such a cycle for emerging technologies (released 2005).

The interesting point, however, is on which information this graphical presentation is based. According to Gartner, it represents the assessment of CIOs around the world. This leads me to a recent publication from Peter Mika. In the paper, the author describes the extraction of a community-based ontology (based on the data available through del.icio.us). The striking result shows that the individual-related ontology beats the object-related ontology (which is an experts’ ontology). This outcome proves the importance of social processes within complex issues (such as forecasting). I would be highly interested to oppose Gartner’s Hype Cycles with a community-generated forecast.

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