Yesterday, I quoted Larry Ellison saying that software is the “only industry that’s more fashion-driven than women’s fashion.”

Peek at the current issue of any IT management magazine, and you’ll probably find an article or two covering “cloud computing” or “virtualization.” These disruptive technologies are deservedly topics du jour. I see Amazon’s EC2 as a bona-fide game-changer. I can’t live without VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro.

However, look past the allure…these “new and hot” technologies will not fulfill their promise for every business. I think this is what Larry Ellison meant by the industry being “fashion-driven.” Many businesses will feel the push to adopt these “fashionable” technologies.

In the world of personal finance, they affectionately call it:

affluenza, n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth.

The problem with “keeping up with the Joneses” is that the Joneses are quickly going broke. Likewise, “technology affluenza” (my term for the uncritical adoption of “fashionable” technologies) is harmful when it doesn’t contribute to business value.

As I’m developing Kinetic, I’m often tempted to incorporate “fashionable” technologies. For me, these “Sirens of Technology Affluenza” come in varied guises: Ajax, Maven, Amazon EC2, Nutch and Hadoop, CouchDB, Google Wave, and on and on…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gael_lin/2670110513/

For example: I’m excited about Google Wave. Not just because of the handsome instant-messaging/email/collaboration client; what really gets my creative juices going are the Google Wave APIs and the underlying Google Wave Federation Protocol.

Wow! If I implement the Google Wave APIs, multiple users can edit the same Kinetic diagram at the same time! Sally can format a box here, while Joseph can add a line there–and they’ll be able to see each other’s edits immediately! It’ll be so cool!

Last week, I officially purged this task from my TODO list.

I now realize: Core functionality must come first. I can’t (yet) justify the business value for using the Google Wave API. Respond to the other Sirens with the same reasoning:  “Wouldn’t it be cool to–”

• –use Ajax to make the website feel more responsive?” Only if the business value justifies it.
• –deploy Amazon EC2 instances, so that my website can scale to a million users?” Only if the business value justifies it.
• –use CouchDB to store my diagram data?” Only if the business value justifies it.

I’m naturally susceptible to “technology affluenza.” So, like Odysseus, I’ll need to plug my ears to the siren calls.

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