Monday 29 May 2023

hype cycle (10. 776)

Though never claiming to have the pulse on any trends, we’ve regularly pinned to formerly Twitter and now on Mastodon what we’ve posted one year, two and more years ago for comparison on what’s the latest obsession and really appreciated this thoroughgoing analysis—via the Verge—from the Columbia Journalism Review on how the breathless cheerleading of media coverage for ChatGPT and spin-offs has strong resonance with the valuation and enthusiasm and uncritical reporting that was accorded to the gig and sharing economy, cryptocurrencies and NFTs not so long ago. The coverage follows a particular pattern—promising redundancy and utopia, catastrophe and revolution, playing on the FOMO and belated adpotion principle—before rather than taking a more circumspect turn on the deliverables of said technology but go through a period of sober and rapid withdrawal, pushing instead a narrative of counterfactual bias (wokeism is not baked into to algorithmic suggestions and quite the opposite is the case) over unexamined efficacy.