On One Bubble After Another, we argue that technology hype cycles are driven as much by narrative as by engineering progress. While the Gartner Hype Cycle effectively describes how expectations rise and fall, it offers little guidance for identifying the next wave before it reaches mainstream attention. This report introduces a complementary framework centered on the "prodromal phase" - the period before a hype cycle begins, when emerging technologies possess enough evidence to support ambitious claims but not enough evidence to meaningfully falsify them.

The report proposes six diagnostic characteristics of this phase: interpretive plasticity, low falsifiability, demonstrability, narrative compressibility, resource attractiveness, and constraint invisibility. Together, these conditions explain why certain technologies become compelling investment and media narratives while others remain niche. The framework is then tested against two contemporary cases.

Brain-computer interfaces are presented as a textbook prodromal technology, exhibiting nearly every diagnostic criterion and approaching a period of rapidly expanding expectations. Quantum computing, by contrast, is portrayed as a technology emerging from its hype peak into a more evidence-driven stage, where milestones increasingly matter more than narratives.

Rather than attempting to predict winners and losers, we encourage founders, investors, and strategists to recognize where technologies sit within their narrative lifecycle and to position themselves for success after speculative enthusiasm inevitably gives way to practical adoption.

Central Thesis

The report's central thesis is that technology bubbles are fundamentally narrative phenomena rather than purely technological ones. Technologies become hype cycles not simply because they are innovative, but because they enter a prodromal state in which uncertainty makes ambitious future narratives both credible and inexpensive to produce. The transition into a hype cycle occurs when expectations cease to be justified primarily by the technology itself and become justified by other people's expectations. By diagnosing this prodromal state through six observable characteristics, it becomes possible to identify the next major hype cycle before it reaches the "peak of inflated expectations" and to develop strategies for the far more valuable period that follows the bubble's collapse.