While necessary to raising the profile and attract allies, disappointments are also likely because of the specific structure of the expectations. Early technological expectations are in many cases technologically deterministic, downplaying the many organizational and cultural factors on which a technology’s future may depend. In this way, expectations of technology are also seen to foster a kind of historical amnesia—hype is about the future and the new—rarely about the past—so the disjunctive aspects of technological change are often emphasized and continuities with the past are erased from promissory memory. As Luhmann puts it, ‘modern society produces its own newness by way of stigmatising the old’.

mads borup, nik brown, kornelia konrad & harro van lente

Borup, M., Brown, N., Konrad, K., & Lente, V. H. (2006). The sociology of expectations in science and technology. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 18(January 2012), 285–298.