Saturday, January 30, 2010

Seeing Through the Apple (and ‘Avatar’) Hyperbole - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

I worry that there is a broader pattern here – an increasingly pervasive cycle, in the press/punditry/blogosphere, to build up outrageous expectations and then savagely and cynically attack when super-human results don’t follow. In some respects, it looks like a journalist/blogger/etc. full-employment act – sustaining a reservoir of timely and titillating topics by artificially creating them when necessary.

There are a few similarities between Wednesday’s Apple announcement and the blockbuster movie “Avatar.” They both cost many millions of dollars and took many years to produce. They both required vast amounts of technology to build, and of course they will both make hundreds of millions of dollars for their respective companies. But they will also share another category: too much hype before their launch, and a result that comes across as intriguing and entertaining, yet sadly anticlimactic.

Seeing Through the Apple (and ‘Avatar’) Hyperbole - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

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