The five Levels of Hype

MARKETING CLAIMS

This is your standard marketing speak. They‘re focused on what existing technology can do for you almost immediately. Though exaggerated, they‘re still grounded in reality.

Marketing claims work on an immediate time scale, meaning whatever they promise can be realized almost instantly. The technology already exists.

EXAGGERATED CLAIMS

Here the effects and impact of existing technology are greatly exaggerated and oversold but still informed by its real capabilities. The focus lies on the returns to come by investing now.

These claims oversell the present capabilities of technology, often skirting the line to fraud.

A good example might be tesla selling their driving assistance systems as “full self-driving”

UTOPIAN FUTURES

The technology is the key to a utopian future or the avoidance of a dystopic one. Claims are solely focused on the “potential” of the technology, less its benefits in the present.

Here the focus of the hype is solely on the future, though the time-scale is still concrete, promising the technology will arrive at a fixed time from now.

Example: Carbon capture technology, though it already exists in the form of prototypes, it‘s still in its infancy

MAGICAL THINKING

The technology has left grounded reality and takes on magical properties. The problems it is expected to solve simply by existing are growing in number and scale while criticism gets ignored as minor hurdles, to be overcome soon.

With magical thinking concrete predictions are becoming less and less important, though the development might still be expected at a fixed date.

Example: the blockchain industry, which has been overselling the capabilities of the technology for years — pitching it as a solution to every imaginable societal problem and challenge.

OTHERING

The technology has become a group identity for its boosters. Claims are exclusively utopian, and critics are painted as defenders of the old, to be left behind.

This is the most aggressive and annoying form of hype. Notably, the time of arrival is less important at this level, simply that the technology will arrive at some point in the future.

Example: The cryptocurrency scene which has been pretty good at othering critics as “no-coiners” or with the phrase “have fun staying poor”.