What we get if technology hype becomes reality...

The Gartner Hype Cycle is always a great source for up and coming technologies, technologies on the downswing, and those that are ramping up to become mainstream. The latest 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies does just that.

In Gartner’s post “Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies ‘Tipping Point’ Technologies That Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios,” Gartner analysts provide some high level insights into what I will call buckets of opportunity. The buckets include:

Any Channel, Any Device, Anywhere — Bring Your Own Everything
Smarter Things
Big Data and Global Scale Computing at Small Prices
The Human Way to Interact With Technology
What Payment Could Really Become
The Voice of the Customer Is on File
3D Print It at Home

So what is all hype, and what is likely to become reality? In order for these buckets to tip (become reality), spilling all of their opportunities on the market, there must be tipping points – technology dependencies that each one of these buckets have in order for them to become real. Gartner believe the tipping points in each one of these buckets are:

Any Channel, Any Device, Anywhere — Bring Your Own Everything: HTML 5, hosted virtual networks and silicon anode batteries. In other words, a faster more multimedia rich internet, software based networking, and longer battery life.
Smarter Things: machine-to-machine communication services, mesh networks: sensor, big data, complex-event processing and activity streams. In other words, more data created and analyzed than ever before.
Big Data and Global Scale Computing at Small Prices: cloud computing, big data and in-memory database management systems. In other words, faster more efficient (cost effective) data creation, management, and utility via a cloud infrastructure.
The Human Way to Interact With Technology: natural-language question answering and NFC. In other words, we can talk to our technology, it can talk to other technology, without any breakdown in communication.
What Payment Could Really Become: NFC payment and mobile OTA payment technologies. In other words, the cash we carry is no longer paper or plastic, it’s zeros and ones.
The Voice of the Customer Is on File: privacy backlash and big data. In other words, like it or not, your data footprint is only getting larger, and protecting yourself does not stop at the physical level.
3D Print It at Home: None – 3D printing will take more than five years to mature beyond the niche market. In other words, printing stuff has to become a lot more compelling in this digital ages we live.

So if all these buckets tip…what we end up with is…

A world where cloud computing means a faster, more economical and multimedia rich internet, where, to our concern, more data about us is created and analyzed than ever before, our voices enable mobile devices speak to each other in the universal language of zeros and ones and our purchase power is wielded using simply a smartphone. And regardless of how cool printing stuff gets, we will still prefer to see it on screen..

Sounds pretty good to me because words like faster, multimedia, rich, analyze, data, etc. all point to more storage.

What do you hope tips first?

Why is the gap widening? Connected devices to storage devices.

Will a richer photo experience on the web drive bigger, faster storage?