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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   12232 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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"The current environment of mania and hype shares a lot of traits in common with previous tech bubbles that ultimately failed to really pan out for one reason or another, like crypto, blockchain, NFTs, VR, Metaverses, augmented reality, 3D printing, etc."

Definitely does, but some hype bubbles do pan out (smartphone, social media, internet/ecommerce [with a bust along the way], arguably solar power).

Definitely does, but some hype bubbles do pan out (smartphone, social media, internet/ecommerce [with a bust along the way], arguably solar power).

Sure, these are all true to some extent. Like, social media is obviously very important, but I remember some people claiming it would end all wars since people would empathize with one another too much. The most extreme claims never come true.

Also, the 3 tech examples you posted all mostly occurred during the 2000-2010 decade, whereas a lot of the flops (crypto, blockchain, NFTs, VR, etc. ) are considerably more recent. Maybe there's a recency bias or availability heuristic going on that makes people excessively discount tech-based hype now.

Also, the 3 tech examples you posted all mostly occurred during the 2000-2010 decade, whereas a lot of the flops (crypto, blockchain, NFTs, VR, etc. ) are considerably more recent.

In 1998, well into the internet boom, we had a Nobel(-Memorial)-prize-winning economist claiming that

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law' — which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants — becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

Sometime it takes a while to be sure something really isn't going to flop.

Conversely, when something really flops, we tend to forget about it. I'd have pointed out the Segway (2001), which was supposed to revolutionize cities before it became relegated to weird tourists and mall cops. Anybody else remember the CueCat?

And sometimes it's still hard to tell which category something is in. I'd have counted VR as a 1990s flop (I first put on a headset for an arcade game circa 1992), for instance, but 2020s VR is a niche but actually kind of fun, and at this rate maybe 2040s VR/AR will be ubiquitous and useful. Electric cars were a 19th century invention and a 20th century joke before we finally accumulated the technology to give them good performance.

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