The Internet of Things Vs. Not Having to Visit Tech Forums For Hours

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This series is commissioned by UPS.

Many new technologies take longer to reach the mainstream than you might imagine.  You have only to look at one of the famous Gartner Hype Cycle charts to see what I mean.  Here’s the Gartner Hype Cycle chart for 2010:

Gartner Inc is a technology research firm, and each year they put out an updated hype cycle analysis chart like the one above.

The “hype cycle” goes something like this:  when an exciting new technology comes along, at first there’s a lot of excitement.  People talk it up.  Early adopters jump on the bandwagon.  Market growth predictions get bandied about.  And the predictions are often rosy (after all, when you have a customer base of 6 for a techno-gizmo, it doesn’t take much to predict tripling or quadrupling that number). The technology reaches a…