Why Boring Technologies Are Exciting
There’s a cacophony of noise around Artificial Intelligence (AI), crypto, Web3, the metaverse, genetic engineering, DNA technologies. All clamouring to be seen as the one that will change the world and usher in a new age of utopia. Thing is, the hyped technologies only really become interesting when they become boring.
And most of the biggest innovative outcomes from hyped technologies in the coming decade or two will be in rather boring sectors of economies. Manufacturing, transportation, energy grids, pharmaceutical manufacturing, transportation. In places that are as mundane as we can possibly make them; business and industrial parks.
Behind these bland, uninspiring edifices built not for aesthetics, but for economic efficiency is where the really exciting innovations will happen. They will change our lives, often in subtle ways that we don’t think about because they just make life better. Quietly.
Few of the originating companies that ride on the tsunami of the tech world hype machine will last over the long haul. Google followed Yahoo! in the world of search and Yahoo! today is a secondary player. Blockchain would change everything, today it languishes in a swamp of sunken technologies along with Web3 and the metaverse. Someday, they may resurface. Perhaps when they become boring.
The companies that invent and then sell or acquire and sell these technologies need hype at the start of the cycle. This creates market awareness and they hope, inspires innovators who find ways to use the technology to drive new business models and that shows shareholders and the market that they’re not yet boring.
It is when the heady vapours of the hype machine have washed away that the tech companies and the industry that lives off them, start to make more meaningful advances and more serious money. Part of the value of the hype acts like a wind vane to the companies that put them out. A sort of experiment to test the deeper sociocultural and market waters.
An example of this is Virtual Reality (VR) devices and applications. VR did get a little boost from the now all but lost idea of the metaverse and then Apple’s launch of Vision Pro earlier in 2023. But overall, VR has failed to gain any serious mass consumer market traction. This doesn’t mean that VR isn’t valuable or interesting.
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