Technology Adoption Cycles

Under Construction.

Technology Adoption Cycles:
There's always a lot of hype for new technologies and predictions they will become mainstream in the near future. I remember right after I started working on Office Automation in 1981 I went to an optical storage talk at the Office Automation Conference in San Francisco and they predicted optical discs would replace floppy disks in 3-4 years. That turned in to 18 years, I think the original iMac in 1998 was one of the first computers without a floppy disk drive.
The Sony reader, a tablet for reading books came out in 2006, 35 years after Alan Kay proposed his Dynabook concept.

The technology adoption lifecycle, a sociological model developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State University in 1981, was a bell curve.

In his 1991 book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists).
This was also shown in some early '80's studies with email at Bell Labs.

In 1995 the Gartner Group coined the term "Hype Cycle" related to Moore's gap.
In his Technology Trend Analysis blog, Udayan Banerjee plots these curves together.

Current Gartner Hype Cycle in 2012:

Source: Gartner places NFC in 'trough of disillusionment' | NFC World

Cloud Computing Chart for 2012
at Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing Shows Enterprises Finding Value in Big Data, Virtualization - Forbes

Links:
Product Life Cycle in finance
Information Processing and Communication Networks - History - Technologies - Overview last updated 14 Apr 2011