HYPE

The internet changed everything. Now information spreads much faster, and making a big buzz is almost free — you just need a viral post or a loud headline. But here’s the interesting part: even with all these changes, the basic pattern of every tech breakthrough stays the same. We still follow the same old cycle — just like the Gartner Hype Cycle: first a trigger, then a peak of high hopes, then disappointment, and finally, things become stable. Nothing new, only the setting changes.

Take blockchain and cryptocurrencies. They seem to be in a more stable phase now — or at least it looks that way. But Bitcoin’s price tells a different story: the hype keeps coming back. In 2017, it went up like crazy, then crashed. In 2021 — another big rise, then another fall. It’s like not one cycle, but a spiral, where each new round is bigger than the last. Maybe we need to rethink the Gartner model — maybe it should include these repeating waves, powered by new people, new money, and new excitement.

Now, let’s talk about AI. What’s happening now reminds me of the dot-com era in the late 1990s. Back then, the internet felt like a new world — it promised to change everything from shopping to talking. Today, AI is the new “future ticket”, and we are probably at the top of the hype. Companies like NVIDIA are getting rich, startups are raising billions, and the media is shouting about a revolution. But I think a crash is coming. Not because AI is bad, but because hype works this way. After a big rise, there’s always a fall — disappointment, losses, and rethinking. But like how online shopping changed retail forever, AI will change the internet and many parts of our lives. This is not the end — it’s just the beginning.

I look at this with experience. All the posts saying AI will replace all jobs — especially software developers — are too much. Honestly, those posts saying “AI is better than a junior developer” are just funny. People who say that don’t understand how learning works. A human learns much faster than AI and needs way less money and power to do it. Think about it: it took billions of dollars to teach AI to tell the difference between a cat and a dog. But a child does that naturally, without data centers or big electricity bills. Sure, our brains can’t hold terabytes of data, but in flexibility, intuition, and creativity, humans are still far ahead of AI.

Soon, we’ll enter the disappointment phase. The hype will calm down, silly investors will count their losses, and companies will start hiring engineers again. AI will just become another tool. It will help us move faster and work better.