HN Explorer

Ask HN: (Over)hyped technologies that delivered

5 points by rich_sasha ↗ HN
With technology, there is always hype - and that's great, we all want it to be exciting. And then, for any hyped technology (AI, self-driving cars, energy production, etc) there quickly form two camps, arguing whether the technology will deliver on the hype.

So I'm trying to gather some data! How many hyped technologies since, say, 1940s, actually delivered on the hype, mostly at least? The examples I can think of mostly didn't, but I must be missing some.

Some things that IMO didn't deliver (so far at least) include:

- nuclear fusion

- quantum computing

- nuclear power, as the too-cheap-to-meter power source

- self-driving cars (so far - we have great technology but nothing resembling an autonomous car for the masses)

- space travel for the masses (as predicted in 60s and 70s)

- social media, which seem already in decline

On the flipside the Internet delivered far, far more than anyone could imagine in it's early days. So I wonder how good are hypes as predictors of future performance.

18 comments

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mkaszkowiak
Smartphones immediately come to mind.
rich_sasha
Weren't smartphones seen as a gimmick for a long time? As in, why would you merge the iPod with a phone.

Clearly they delivered, I don't clearly remember a common conviction that they will change the world.

scrapheap
The microprocessor certainly delivered on the hype it got in the late 70's and early 80's.
AnimalMuppet
And more broadly, the integrated circuit. And before that, the transistor.
0xEF
"Hype," to me, has always and only had a negative connotation that roughly described it as an empty promise, and nothing more. Be it words on a page or some frontman on uppers jumping around in front of an audience, hype is always absent of any concrete proof that what is claimed is also true.

The Mechanical Turk (not the Amazon one) turned out to be a guy in a box. Yet, the mythos that presumably surrounded it was only possible because it was also designed to fool casual examiners. So, even if we argue that the tech demonstration at Conference X shows the product living up to the hype, there is a solid chance it is still an illusion designed to get us to buy in. So, from where I stand, hype is an empty promise intended to deceive.

In the spirit of the original question, I find myself much more curious about how other people define hype.

rich_sasha
To me, hype means great hopes of revolutionizing, or at least materially changing the rules of the game. As opposed to a marginal improvement.

We're debating how AI will sweep away whole professions, put people out of jobs and increase inequality. It's totally possible. But I wonder how other things fared in the past, where we thought they will definitely change the world. In other words, is such "hype" a meaningful signal.

You can call it something else, essentially it comes down to great expectation of revolutionary impact.

0xEF
I guess I have trouble seeing it from a profit perspective. I understand where you are coming from for sure, and rather like your position to be honest, but I am, perhaps, too jaded to accept it. I'm not sure we're in the era of great thinkers doing great things for humanity anymore, which makes any hype feel like a salesman making a pitch.

Admittedly, it is depressing.

austin-cheney
Upcoming things full of hype that look promising are the game Skywind and UltraRAM.

Things worth the hype:

Hubble, JWST, power steering, airbags, antilock brakes. Actually the only things I can think of are material sciences, safety mechanics, construction techniques, and scientific observations. These are all things hyped in a professional venue that are boring in general contexts. I can’t think of anything in the mainstream that was worth the hype.

codegeek
I m not old enough but seen old newspaper articles that internet was supposed to be a fad as late as early-mid nineties.
lfciv
Given your timeline (since the 1940s) I'd say cell phones in general come to mind as meeting the hype

I also think Cloud Computing has generally met the hype

stephenr
> I also think Cloud Computing has generally met the hype

You forgot the /s

thinkharderdev
Off the top of my head

* The Haber-Bosch process (for creating synthetic fertilizers)

* Fracking (strictly in terms of the promise to unlock previously un-usable petroleum reserves, whether or not that's a good thing depends on how climate change affects humanity in the longer run)

* Solar cells

* Penicillin (and antibiotics more generally)

* Vaccines in general

* mRNA vaccines in particular (maybe too early to tell, we'll see if the COVID vaccines were a one-hit wonder)

* Semaglutide (again, maybe too early to tell)

Ezra
Vaccines!
thrwwycbr
The rabies would disagree with you.
VoodooJuJu
LLM's are nice. Overhyped, but definitely nice.
a2code
The Internet is one example of a hype that delivered, despite the dot-com bubble.
3minus1
yeah, I remember reading an article once where someone claimed ordering a pizza off the internet was stupid and people would still just keep ordering by phone.
fragmede
Self driving cars are here, we just have to wait for it to scale up to the rest of the planet. I don't know where that puts it on the understatement-hype scale, but it works.