1975
Roy Amara warns we misjudge technology timelines
Roy Amara — president of the Institute for the Future — coins the observation later called Amara's Law.
Quote
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
What it was for
Every hype cycle proves Amara right: VRVirtual reality — immersive 3D environments viewed through headsets with motion tracking. in the 1990s, blockchainA distributed ledger where records are chained cryptographically — designed for tamper-resistant shared state. in 2017, generative AIModels that create new content — text, images, audio, or code — from learned patterns. in 2023. Short-term disappointment hides long-term transformation — and vice versa for overhyped quarter-to-quarter bets.
People
- Roy Amara — researcher
Why it's here
The best one-sentence antidote to tech hype and despair.
Why it mattered
It reframed how futurists and policymakers talk about adoption curves.
What it solved
TeamsMicrosoft Teams — chat, video calls, and Office integration for workplace collaboration. swung between panic and euphoria without a model for delayed impact.
Media
ImageRoy AmaraRochester Institute of Technology, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons