Do users give a **** about underlying technology?

There is always some buzzword and hype around a concept/technology that is the next big thing that would change the world. Take for instance, blockchain is the next thing after internet; AI is the next shift after invention of wheels; Virtual reality is like totally a whole new world without limits;

All these are definitely great and they potentially bring in a new paradigm or a shift in existing way of doing things. But, the key question is — What does all it mean to a common man ? An average non tech person when they hear all these ?

In my humble opinion, none of the buzz word mean a **** to the common man, unless it changes

1. simplify user experience (communication/purchase/interactions/perceptions)
2. reduces cost (for something they already are paying)
3. reduces time (reduction in time, say travel time reduced from 10 hours to 1 hour, this also is relative to what it takes today against what it takes with the new tech)

If a technology is novel and great, but solve any one or more of the above axis, then in theory it sounds great, but when it comes to mass adoption, people have lot more other things in day to day life to worry about.

If you look into deeper of each of those angles, technology is meant to simplify and make life bit more easier and accessible to things.

Augumented/Virual Reality

This has great potential as it has all the above three aspects covered. There are some areas this could potentially turn the area upside down in short term like eduction, tutoring, travel, games, etc., where as in long term it could be huge across the board

Blockchain

This tech is positioned as next internet as it fundamentally brings in trust in an untrusted environment.

But, the range of apps that can use in short term is limited till a good amount of technology is developed for sharding and the likes. Again, not all applications need a global replicated database. At this time, apps that are gaining popularity and solving a real user problem are ICO an Currency (not surprised to see that these have elements of (1)/(2)/(3) in them).

Could it be a replacement for my database in my enterprise world ? I think that is far fetched at this time as you can see, it doesn't solve any of the three aspects we discussed above.

Artificial Intelligence

This is another technology whose potential is very huge, but less understood. The whole technology sector is moving from a perfect science to heuristic / approximate science. This would be applicable where the dimensions space is very huge and as humans we have to apply some heuristics to identify patterns to make decisions, these would come in very handy.

It has potential for improving (1), (2) and (3) elements in large scale applications, but the level of improvements go down when the scale reduces.

Summary

In a nutshell, all three at this junction of time have a significant future. But, when you look at an app today and think it would be a fit, you should be thinking of atleast one of (1)/(2)/(3) being addressed by it rather than in-terms of its technical underpinnings.

Innovation is anyways relative to what is there today. If it doesn’t solve any of the three, then its more a novelty than becoming common.