Interesting analysis and visualization of 25 years of Gartner hype cycles by Mark Mine, Director of the Technology Innovation Group at the Walt Disney Studios:
As Cory Doctorow pointed out in his post (where I first saw this), “His key insight is that while the Gartner Hype Cycle isn’t much of a predictive tool, it’s a fantastic historical record: looking back on it sheds a lot of insight on how we felt about technology and what those feelings meant for each technology’s future.”
Keep this in mind when you’re looking at the next hype cycle: although Gartner may be intending to predict (and even drive) the future of technology, they’re not all that accurate. However, the history of the data is a fascinating look into technological culture.