Mirage of maturity: How social dynamics alone can generate the Hype Cycle of technological expectations

The Gartner Hype Cycle characterizes the evolution of expectations regarding new technologies, featuring an initial “Peak of Inflated Expectations,” a subsequent “Trough of Disillusionment,” and an eventual recovery. This framework is widely used to assess technological maturity, where the recovery in expectations is interpreted as evidence of genuine progress. We propose an alternative explanation: this pattern can emerge solely from social dynamics. We present an agent-based model, grounded in innovation diffusion and opinion dynamics, that reproduces the characteristic rise, fall, and recovery without assuming technological advancement or adoption. In the model, the trajectory emerges from the coevolution of awareness and opinion: awareness first spreads among optimistic individuals, then among more critical groups, and finally among a small set of isolated extreme optimists. Whether the recovery phase emerges depends on model parameters, consistent with empirical evidence that not all technologies experience a recovery in expectations. Representative survey data exhibit a pattern consistent with the co-evolution of awareness and opinion. These findings motivate a more cautious interpretation of collective expectations, suggesting that the Hype Cycle pattern is neither inevitable nor a reliable indicator of technological progress.