**1\. Web Agents**
As the search-engine market becomes more crowded, the credo "Build it and they will come" no longer holds true. So, increasingly, search engines are going to users. Posing as Web agents, services such as Excite Live! go out on the Web and fetch new information like a trusty golden retriever. Actually, the retriever metaphor may be a bit too accurate. Because most of what changes daily on the Web comes from newspaper Web sites, Web agents end up bringing back something that looks almost exactly like a daily newspaper - but a lot less conveniently packaged. Meet the new media, same as the old media.
**2\. 3-D Interfaces**
For the last 20 years, computer researchers have shared a dream about the interface of the future. In that vision, the interface is graphical and three-dimensional, and users gracefully "fly through dataspace" (to use a phrase much favored in the late '70s). Now, thanks to graphics coprocessors and VRML, this fantasy is finally within reach. But instead of enabling flight, the technology is mainly being used to create virtual shopping malls. Who would have thought that cyberspace would end up looking so pedestrian?
**3\. Gigabit Ethernet**
Here is a simple way to ensure that your next computer product succeeds: give it the same name as one that's already successful. Look, for example, at C++. Although it's a horrible programming language, C++ was able to ride C's coattails to success. Today the same thing is happening with Gigabit Ethernet. Despite being radically different from what most people think of as Ethernet, its familiar name has allowed it to worm its way into every MIS manager's heart.
**4\. Demise of AOL**
Someday, the history of cyberspace will be written as a chronicle of the predictions of AOL's demise. From claims that America Online would fail because it wasn't "open", to charges that it was inherently unreliable, the service has been the canary in the coal mine for all of cyberspace. Every problem that now afflicts the Internet has already hit AOL. That's why the continued success of the service's chat rooms should be seen not as proof of the sordidness of human nature, but as encouraging evidence that the Internet will triumph over censorship.
**5\. Speech Recognition**
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that as the birthdate of Arthur C. Clarke's fictional HAL approaches, we're seeing a resurgence of interest in speech-recognition systems. Yet despite thousands of research-years devoted to clever techniques like hidden Markov modeling, general-purpose speech recognition remains tantalizingly out of reach. The biggest problem? According to one researcher, it's that most people don't know how to use a microphone. So, in a very _2001_-like scenario, attention is turning to training humans rather than machines.
This Month's Overhyped Memes
Hype Level
Position Last Month
Expected Lifetime
Web Agents
Meme on the rise
Embryonic meme
3 months
3-D Interfaces
Meme on the rise
Meme on the rise
9 months
Gigabit Ethernet
Meme on the rise
Meme on the rise
8 months
Demise of AOL
About to die from over exposure
Meme on the rise
1 month
Speech Recognition
Meme on the rise
Embryonic meme
4 months
