You could argue that 2008-2009 was actually the beginning of the last cycle. Aside from including an economic crash (which usually, but not always, accompanies a shift in the tech cycle), it also included a shift in delivery mechanisms from web to mobile, and a shift in predominant business types from social, content-driven businesses (Web 2.0) to marketplaces and on-demand services.

Before 2001-2003 was 1991-1993, which (aside from the recession) featured intense investor interest in VR, tablet/pen computing, WebTV, etc. That period of uncertainty ended with Netscape's introduction and the rise of the WWW.

There was a mini-shift around 1985-86, with the introduction of Windows and Steve Jobs's ouster from Apple. That changed the paradigm of desktop apps from 8-bit PC apps hand-coded in assembly to more slick GUI apps written in C or Pascal that used OS frameworks. Like the other cycles, it was also accompanied by a lot of hype and malinvestment, but largely in the B2B world: the big buzzwords in 85/86 were AI, 4GLs, and 3D computer graphics.

Finally, the PC revolution started in the mid 70s. This also had a similar period of uncertainty, coupled with a recession - take a look at old magazines from the late 60s and early 70s. But instead of computing, the hot technology areas then were flying cars, supersonic transports, and home appliances. Makes me wonder if the next big thing might be something not computer related at all, perhaps aviation (again), rocketry, or material science.

I would recommend the book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages [0] by scholar Carlotta Perez. She studies longer cycles though (~50 years) but the mechanism she describes seems pretty sound for the matter at hand.

It goes more or less like this:

- capital in search for long term returns goes to early moves of a big technological shift

- as successes from the new technology get more and more apparent, it attracts a much larger slice of capital available, and eventually gets over-funded (the real opportunity of this technology is limited)

- a bubble forms, most capital is in for a quick speculative return

- back to square one with a new technology (and former bubble bursts)

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-C...

If you are a student of history, you start seeing these things. I was in tech in 1995, and at the start of the Internet boom it was not obvious to everyone what was happening. You should read Bill Gate's "The road ahead". He (and many others) predicted things like Netflix and the information super highway but they got the delivery mechanism dead wrong - people were convinced it was going to be over cable TV networks.

I've heard similar things about the boom/bust days of Commodore in the mid-80s.

I agree with the general thesis that (a) people are searching for the next big thing, and (b) we'll likely get it wrong a few times.

Not proof that this happens every time, but some evidence from the 1980s: http://reactionwheel.net/2015/01/80s-vc.html

It's all based on the idea of The Business Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle

People apply that idea to how tech works. You're right to question the evidence for it. The business cycle itself is just a bunch of ideas and theories people use to try and make sense of a chaotic, unpredictable system that is never the same twice. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not.

And "theory" in this case refers to the layman's idea of theory. Not the scientific meaning like the "theory of gravitation".

Cyclical behavior in business and economics has been noted for a long time, certainly since the Industrial Revolution, and arguably before.

I think it's very dangerous to speak of cycles of predefined lengths, which recur regularly. I think it is useful to look at dynamics, how they occur, how they differ, the specific technological mechanisms driving these, and what the future implications are.

The questions are deep, vast, perplexing, and far from settled. Carlotta Perez's book is mentioned here, I second that. Paul Mason's Postcapitalism argues based on Kondratiev cycles, and has a lot of strong anecdotal data though I question Mason's economic instincts. Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth is an excellent look backward at the period 1870-1970, and onward to the present, though I think his view forward is somewhat clouded. It's not that I disagree with his headwinds and projections of harder times ahead, it's that he's missed some far more fundamental drivers and dynamics.

Alvin Toffler's Future Shock also deals in technology cycles and their dynamics. I've only skimmed bits but suspect that would be insightful.

There's a bunch of crud written on the topic as well, but if you're interested in the question, you're not going to be short of content.

Back in college, a professor of mine talked about cycles and used the NASA boom of the '60s as an example. When it ended, engineers just abandoned their houses in Cape Canaveral and moved back to their hometowns.

I wish I could remember more of that lecture; all I remember is him describing a 7-year boom/7-year bust cycle with the NASA example as an example of how suddenly a boom can end.

It's very easy to confuse an autoregressive time series with a wave.