Market cycles tend to occur in waves, and technology companies have become an increasing part of recent market waves. Since about 1989, many technology companies have made their way into the top-ranked companies in terms of capitalization, earnings, and investment success. In the early days, it was just IBM and Microsoft. As Internet developments matured, success became much more widespread, with companies such as Bing, Amazon, and Yahoo joining. This was the First Wave, and it gave us the internet boom of the 1990s and those wild boom-and-bust investments in the tech sector.

The first wave was exciting: a time of wild speculation, but the innovations eventually caught up with consumers, in a very big way, and the profits started rolling in, also in a very big way. This paved the way for a second wave.

The iPhone was the catalyst and symbol of the second wave, as all technology companies strive to greatly improve their communication networks and the convenience of being constantly “in touch.” Great efforts are also being made to make information more convenient, more personal, and more manageable. Making sense of all the available data is a big challenge, as there has been a huge data wave recently. IBM estimates that 90% of the data in the world has been produced in the last 2 years, so how do we know what to read, what to believe, what to trust?

One part of the solution is to make data more personal, so that systems know about it and vice versa. Examples include:

• NEST thermostats that learn when you’re home or away, and what temperature you’re comfortable with when you’re home
• Music systems like SPOTIFY and PANDORA that learn your listening preferences and help you discover new music you’re likely to like
• Travel planning websites that learn your travel adventure interests and motto specific travel plans just for you
• GOOGLE Home and Amazon Alexa/Echo devices that personally interact with you and go out of their way to help you through your busy day

And then there are all those APPS that help us manage our day, like UBER, LYFT, the Weather Channel, or communicating with others through Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Everyone is trying to scale back and worry about everyday tasks, yet there is growing concern about the delivery, theft and mismanagement of so much of our personal information – advertisers, scammers and governments want more every day. day. When technology does its job well, users benefit because they spend less time managing tasks and tasks and more time doing the things they really love. As the second wave matures, innovations emerge that help and support us in decision-making, critical thinking (discernment of information) and time management. The second wave brings us a plethora of helpers that make our everyday lives easier with small, helpful touches.

So what about the next wave, the third wave? We are now seeing this wave begin to form. Each wave starts with an innovative catalyst, leading to more opportunities for innovation, speculation, and investment. There will be winners and losers along the way, but when the wave breaks, those with the best data and analysis will reap huge profits. A possible catalyst to start this Third Wave is Augmented Reality (AR), with innovations that could transcend the iPhone and all Smartphones, making them obsolete. AR is different from virtual reality (VR) in that AR overlays graphics and images on top of the real world around you, kind of like the Pokemon Go game that became very popular on smartphones a few years ago. AR is also the technology fighter pilots use for Heads-Up-Displays (HUDs) in the cockpit of their fighter jets. If you put advanced AR capability in a pair of glasses, with voice, gesture, or eye movement controls, then all of today’s smartphone capabilities can be achieved with a pair of glasses. Google glasses first appeared in 2013 and the project morphed into Google Glass Enterprise in 2017. Recently, a highly valued private company, Magic Leap, released an AR headset called Magic Leap One. These are first generation devices and still they have to achieve significant consumer adoption. Like waves one and two, the innovations of the third wave may sound like science fiction, but we always tend to underestimate the speed of progress and the depth of the amazing ideas and devices that are sure to change our lives.

Stay tuned!