Where is your favoured technology? Understanding the "hype cycle"

Assailed by new developments in social networking, even while struggling with the perennial challenges of selling ads and making good magazines, publishers and editors could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed.

You may take comfort (or add to your confusion) by familiarizing yourself with the analysis done by technology market research firm Gartner. It tries to track what it calls the "hype cycle" for emerging technologies. This is the 14th year it has produced its report, which this year looks at 1,650 technologies in 79 different categories. It was reported by Reuters (You can look at a number of "hype cycles" going back as far as 1995.)

Speaking largely of corporate users, the firm finds that, after a "techological trigger" and a fast run up to "inflated expectations", many new technologies fall quickly into the "trough of disillusionment" before some of them emerge onto the "slope of enlightenment" on their way to the "plateau of productivity".

Among those technologies Gartner says are racing up the slope of inflated expectations are 3-D printing, Internet TV and wireless power.

Among those which are peaking or have peaked, it says, are cloud computing, microblogging (e.g. Twitter), green IT, online video and home health monitoring.