I was thinking recently about the nature of fallow periods in tech and wondering if they're actually tied up with emotional cycling in the general public. It's impossible for millions of people to remain excited forever. Instead, we get bubble years where new innovations are coming out fast and furious, sentiment is rising, people are happy and excited, prosperity will go on forever; hype years, where the public unconsciously knows the innovations being hyped aren't useful but companies still have money to burn; and then we get bust years where everyone gets disillusioned, there are predictions that everything useful has already been invented, much teeth-gnashing about the decline of innovation, and an increased focus on politics, social ills, and gaming or other distractions (none of which ever get solved or go away, we just forget about them during bubble years).

Thinking about tech cycles in my own lifetime, we had bubble (1981-1987, driven by the PC & GUI), hype (1987-1991, driven by AI, 3D graphics, CD-ROMs, speech recognition), bust (1991-1995), bubble (1995-1998, Internet), hype (1998-2001, dot-coms), bust (2001-2004), bubble (2004-2007, Web 2.0), hype (2007-2008, when everybody and their mother had a social network), bust (2009-2010), bubble (2011-2014, mobile), hype (2014-2015: AR/VR, AI, smartwatches, self-driving cars, Theranos, Juicero), bust (2016-present). Bust cycles seem to last 3-4 years, so we're probably nearing the end of this one, but it's still unclear what round of innovations will kick off the next bubble.