The last couple of years saw three massive tech hypes in very quick succession, and we are currently in the middle of a fourth. The first was Blockchain- cryptocurrencies skyrocketed in value and popularity, and it was even suggested that it may replace the dollar. Then it faltered and fell; news of tragic investors who lost billions of dollars worth of crypto spread worldwide. Then even those last articles about blockchain turned their focus to other topics that suited public interest. The other application of Blockchain, NFTs, followed this pattern. They started getting huge amounts of news coverage, and tech leaders from around the globe discussed the future of this technology and the world. CryptoKitties were traded for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the most expensive NFT to be sold, Everydays: the First 5000 Days set a record of a staggering 69 million dollars. Then it was forgotten. CryptoKitties today are sold for a handful of dollars at best, although not many people are willing to pay even that much. Immediately the public’s interest shifted towards the Metaverse. Despite it being a very old concept by technology’s standards (the term was coined in a very imaginative 1992 Sci-fi novel about smartphones), it was taken as a novel idea. Services like Roblox and Zoom flourished during Covid 19, when people were separated physically and needed a means of digital connection. Mark Zuckerberg, expecting a world akin to Ready Player One, renamed his massive conglomerate ‘Meta’ after the metaverse and started investing huge amounts of resources into the project. However, the metaverse hype took a large hit when the pandemic ended- most of the population was still accustomed to face-to-face conversations and metaverse platforms were still very clumsy and had the tendency to have avatars that ram into the nearest wall. The event that finally stomped out the last embers of the metaverse hype was when a company called Open AI published a massive language model: Chat GPT. Today, we find ourselves immersed in thousands of generative AI models that will produce love sonnets, oil paintings, cheesy catchphrases, realistic drawings, videos and even music on command. News articles were, for a long time, practically filled with editorials and stories about the new language model. So? Is Chat GPT going to follow the footsteps of the Metaverse- of CryptoKitties and Bitcoin?
It turns out that it’s a bit more complicated than that.
“An innovation is merely a point where a very gradual change begins”
That is to say, change takes time to settle in; and hypes are not the only times when a technology can advance. In fact, the main purpose of a tech hype is to provide a massive amount of support and interest so that later on, the technology can settle in.
A hype is characterised by unusual amounts of interest and support for a certain idea- we know what this looks like from the Metaverse hype, as well as NFTs and Blockchains. During these periods, a massive number of ideas are suggested. The amount of investment capital that is available for these ideas also increases drastically, meaning that many of these ideas are realised using these funds. The chances of stumbling across a useful application of the technology are much higher during a hype than otherwise. However, it also means that there is a lot of inappropriate applications. For example, the metaverse turned out to be most effective when it was used for group communication (gathertown, Zoom, and the like) or in games (Roblox, and pretty much every RPG game out there). People, however, have tried to apply it to so many different things, ranging from formal gatherings to bank consultations- not many of which went entirely well. This is one of the things that triggers the end of the hype. As certain sectors of the market outperform the others, the underperforming sectors and those who invested in them decide to draw out. This usually leads to only a small group of remaining services that successfully managed to find a way to use the technology to its full potential continuing beyond the hype. Most importantly, these businesses become normal companies- and slowly the new idea that was introduced becomes part of normality; of what we collectively call modern technology.
This also signifies another thing: technologies introduced over a range of time influence each other. Just because two ideas were introduced in two different hypes does not mean that they keep themselves two different technologies. They interact, inspire, complement, sometimes even combine with each other to produce better outcomes. Roblox, for example, which is one of the few metaverse platforms to survive the hype, currently uses NFTs for its assets- the fact that it allows its users to produce items on their own makes it difficult to manage the items, and the necessity for a way to stop duplication of resources became necessary, and NFTs happened to be perfect for just that. This process, where a small number of successful and appropriate applications of a certain technology make gradual progress, while keeping in full touch and familiarity with the public, is where the actual development happens.
It is still undoubtedly a fact that public interest in the metaverse, as well as funding, are not at the levels during the hype. Development may appear sluggish and technologies a bit too familiar. But in return, we will have technologies that are more useful that actually merge into and become part of our lives. The same applied for NFTs and Blockchain- and perhaps we’ll find ourselves taking AI-generated RPG games with Blockchain-encrypted NFTs for granted.