Hype List
1. Post-PC
Profit margins on PCs have sunk too low to support the big computer companies. Hence the current hype about PDAs and ubiquitous computing: a desperate struggle to find something new that we all have to have. But the slogans don't work as well this time around - when I see the word "revolutionary" I reach for my dust-covered Casio organizer. I've been told too many times, "No, this gizmo really will make you more efficient," and ended up wasting my week playing with a toy. Sure, these new devices may be useful for some yet unknown kinds of tasks, but I don't want to be a guinea pig for your prototypes.
2. Usenet Moderation
Everyone talks about how noisy the Net is, and everyone has a plan to fix it. The loudest voice in the crowd comes from the well-meaning Dick Depew, a self-appointed net.guardian with a mission. Dick wants to bring retroactive moderation - whereby messages can be canceled or flagged by an appointed set of special users - to news groups near you. To some, this smells of censorship. But just about everyone agrees that some sort of voting or moderating mechanism is needed in order to keep Usenet useful; the volume of messages has just become too large. Expect to see something concrete, albeit flawed, within the next few months.
Current Position Months Position Last Month on List Post-PC 1 - 1 Usenet Moderation 2 - 1 Interactive Education 3 2 3 Methcathinone 4 - 1 Storage Media 5 5 3
3. Interactive Education
The most pernicious and annoying hype about interactive media circulates in the education market. How many schools can afford the powerful PCs required to run the software? And what overworked teacher is going to take on the onerous task of running and maintaining the system? Besides, nobody ever liked those "shoot-the-fraction" games, and fancier graphics aren't going to change anything. As we should know by now, blindly throwing computers at problems helps no one but the computer industry. If all the money that is going to be squandered this year on "edutainment" ventures went instead to hiring more teachers, we might actually see some improvement in our schools.
4. Methcathinone
Methcathinone, or "Cat," yet another easy-to-synthesize drug, is quickly becoming popular. First sighted in the former USSR, Cat is a stimulant with a potency somewhere between cocaine and methamphetamine. And while the popular press loves to claim that just about anything "can be made in the kitchen," it's almost true in this case. The synthesis involves some fairly basic reactions with pseudoephedrine, with no exotic chemicals involved. As meth labs continue to get busted based on the purchase of telltale precursor ingredients, expect Cat's popularity to rise, with a concomitant rise in media hype. And if you notice a programmer in a nearby cubicle putting in longer hours...
5. Storage Media
Why are drive manufacturers sending out weekly barrages of PR releases about new records in disk density? Because people are losing interest in disk drives, forsaking them for solid state. Sure, memory chip prices are soaring at the moment, but their price/megabyte curve is hard to beat, and their speed is unmatchable. On a 100 MIPS/128-Mbyte RAM workstation, a hard drive is useful only for long-term storage. As analysts point out, using secondary storage for "virtual memory" is becoming increasingly unworkable. And disk-array technology is already too late to be exciting. Soon no one will care about drives except the few people in charge of file servers - so stop the hype.
Steve G. Steinberg
