[edent]

OP here! Thanks for replying.

To take, for example, calculators. I can't find any evidence of a massive influx of hyperbolic articles talking about how the calculator will change everything. With bikes, there were plenty of articles decrying how women would get "bicycle face" but very little in terms of endless coverage about them being miracle technology.

People adopted bikes and calculators and electricity because they were useful. Car manufacturers didn't have to force GPS into vehicles - customers demanded it.

The narrative I'm describing is how hype sometimes (possibly often) fizzles out. My contention is the more a technology is hyped, the less useful it will turn out to be.

Now, excuse me while I ride my Segway into the sunset while drinking a nice can of Prime.

[dfabulich]

You have gotta stop cherrypicking. The massive influx of hyperbolic articles about how electricity will change everything started in the 19th century. It became a common theme in fiction (including classics like Frankenstein) and became an enormous media hype war, which historians call the War of the Currents.

Yes, electricity was useful. And it had hyperbolic articles talking about how transformative it would be. Like all prognostication, some of those articles were overblown, but, in some ways, they understated the transformative effect electricity would have on human history.

And cars? Did you somehow miss the influx of hyperbolic articles about how cars will change everything? Like, the whole 20th century?

What was your approach to researching the history of media hype? You somehow overlooked the hype around air travel, refrigeration, and antibiotics…?

[Retric]

There was a great deal of hype around the atom changing everything, but electricity was just too slow to see such breathless anticipation takeoff.

200 years ago the was some hype around how electricity caused mussel contractions in dead flesh, but unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media etc etc.

Public street lights long predated light bulbs as did both indoor and outdoor Gas lighting 1802 vs 1880’s was just a long time. People were burn, grew up, had kids, and become old between the first electric lighting and the first practical electric bulb. People definitely appreciated the improvement to air quality etc, but the tech simply wasn’t that novel. Rural electrification was definitely promoted but not because what it did was some unknown frontier.

Similarly electric motors had a lot of competition, even today there’s people buying pneumatic shop tools.

[socalgal2]

You can find similar hype articles about the Palm Pilot, then all the neighsayers who said most people wouldn't want and had no need for computer in their pocket. And yet here we are.

[unchar1]

Calculators are a particularly bad example for your case. There was absolutely hyperbole against calculators when they were introduced. [1]

With similar sentiment as well "They make us dumb" "Machines doing the thinking for us"

Cars were definitely seen as a fad. More accurately a worse version of a horse [2]

If you looked through your other examples, you'd see the same for those as well.

Some things start as fads, but only time will tell if they gain a place in society. Truthfully it's too early to tell for AI, but the arguments you're making, calling it a fad already don't stand up to reason

[1]: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-item/160697182/ [2]: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...

[qsera]

LLMs will absolutely will have a place. There is no question about it. But it will be doing searching for us, not thinking.

The flip side to this is that a lot of jobs today that appear to require "thinking" is actually just doing looking up aka "search"..

[mkozlows]

The personal computer, laptops, web browsers, cell phones, smartphones, AJAX/DHTML, digital cameras, SSDs, WiFi, LCD displays, LED lightbulbs. At some point, all of these things were "overhyped" and "didn't live up to the promise." And then they did.