January 17, 2017

Everything is a Fad

In the tech industry, everything ends up becoming a fad.

From Wikipedia:
fad or trend or craze is any form of collective behavior that develops within a culture, a generation or social group and which impulse is followed enthusiastically by a group of people for a finite period of time.

We're constantly thinking, writing, pontificating on how this method or that of communication is dead to the point that everything may as well be considered a fad. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

We should embrace that any piece of technology, communication related or not, is fleeting and call things what they are. Remember the PocketPC and their gray scale counterpart the Palm Pilot?
Remember small cellular phones with extremely long battery lives? Tablet PCs? QR codes?

All useful things that served a purpose at one time.

Choose something in the tech world today that's hot. It will eventually run its course. I'll call one out right now and that's talking to some small, internet connected device in your home, office or conference room. Being an Apple user, I have three devices that I use constantly that have Siri. The only time it's ever been remotely helpful is when I needed to make a call on my iPhone when I was driving. Daily use of Siri, when my hands are free, won't happen. At least without a long, long education curve on my part. I don't imagine that I'm in some extreme minority here.

Imagine the glorious open space floor plan that Silicon Valley seems to adore. A room full of coders with their earbuds in clicking away is pretty quiet. Now imagine them coding by voice command. You can't have an open floor plan with 100 people all talking to their AI device at the same time to order their lunches.

Fads make money, there's not denying it. There's also no problem in products that are fleeting in nature as long as when it goes away you're not stuck with a useless brick. I can still power up my old PocketPC from 2003 and use it like it was new. Unlike Meerkat.

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