The hype itself is integral to innovation, which thrives on ingenuity, enthusiasm, and imagination. The productive result of inflated expectations is energy, required in abundance if one hopes to seek the freedom to develop, prototype, and gain knowledge in order to help the rest of us distinguish between real and imaginary potential. If some librarians take emerging tools at face value, as I did in the case of video calling, over time and in the community of our colleagues we can develop insight into their actual value: the actions and interactions they facilitate.

It is tempting to veer off at the trough of disillusionment in search of the next best thing. Problematically, this is when a platform or device starts hitting its productive stride among the non-librarian or non-tech obsessed population. Technology hype requires media coverage–Twitter, blogs, etc.–which, in this field and many others, tends to be most avidly created and consumed by early adopters. Implementation, on the other hand, is a drawn-out process, and the true test of any innovation is its day-to-day plateau of productivity.

The video kiosk was a relative bust, and the Skype a Librarian call-in service a modest success. The same simple evaluation can be made of any of the library services profiled in this issue: some worked, others didn't. What matters is how you learn from this information and apply it in your own context. Instead of taking a new application and running with it blindly, we can create a layered perspective on how and why it suits our needs:

• Utility–First understand a product's technical foundation.
• Application–Then, examine how it is hyped, adopted, adapted, and rejected.
• Insight–Finally, implement with a critical understanding of its capabilities and caveats.

It is this process that transforms the hype cycle into an innovation trajectory: A strategy of investigating utility, discovering application, and implementing insight can and should be applied to any emerging technology as a means of understanding its holistic development rather than its superficial promise. I have found that VoIP provides two principal benefits for libraries–reducing costs and enabling rich virtual communication experiences. These insights are derived from VoIP's proven, long-term characteristics:

• VoIP is a mature technology. New uses of VoIP still emerge, such as Skype's 2010 integration with HDTV, but the devices, programs, and services it enables are no longer strictly beta.
• VoIP is a stable technology. Unlike some bleeding-edge tools that require watching and waiting to determine their usefulness, VoIP has had time to perform in a number of contexts, from virtual instruction to video interviews.
• VoIP is an intelligent technology. The adaptable nature of IP communications means that its end-use products can continue to develop with other emerging technologies, such turning a mobile wifi device into a free Web phone by simply installing a Skype app.
• VoIP is a converged technology. Rather than representing a wholesale departure from fixed-location use, VoIP is part of the fixed/mobile convergence that characterizes next-generation computing and communications.¹ Wired and wireless combine to create the seamless, high-capacity connectivity that allows users to interact in many ways.
• VoIP is a bellwether technology. Organizations that switch from plain old telephone service to some form of IP calling can do so only if their communications infrastructure is up to speed. When broadband connections are robust enough to support end-user demands for quickness, coverage, and reliability, VoIP adoption is indicative of superior service and an early-adopter IT orientation.²
• VoIP is an equalizing technology. The one piece of hardware virtually all librarians share–a desktop or laptop computer–allows you to take advantage of multiple communication modalities, no matter how behind or ahead of the technological times you or they might be.

One negative consequence of hype cycle thinking is the tendency to see a particular technology as either in or out, but it's never as simple as SMS over IM or landline versus mobile. The communications and connectivity landscape has become fundamentally enmeshed– wireless and wired, analog and digital transfer and route over a complexly interoperable network. VoIP, in its infinite adaptability, has become widely distributed across and instrumental to this network. Independent silos are no longer viable: a software VoIP user needs to be able to connect with an analog user and a mobile user, which requires mutually enabling standards and protocols.

This modulated chaos is the hallmark of modern communications: why you can call your grandma's Google Voice number from her old Princess Phone, or use Skype to text someone from your iPad. The reality of device proliferation and interconnectedness requires wider knowledge among users: understanding not only how “your” gadget works but how it meshes with others is now an important aspect of technological literacy. Three related trends provide insight into the explosion of formats and gadgets: interoperability, unified communications, and fixed/mobile convergence. Together, these form the “next-generation network”, in which universal, always-on connectivity is becoming a reality.

I have looked closely at VoIP to examine the balance of prediction and realization in library technology innovation. In her 2007 VoIP-isn't-sexy post, Sarah Houghton-Jan speculated whether VoIP was a slow-to-adoption tool whose time had finally arrived.⁸ She was right on both counts: VoIP arrived, but sometimes with a whimper instead of a bang. My intention in this issue was to challenge the library hype cycle, but over the course of this project I have come to view the hype cycle itself as fundamentally necessary: the coexistence of bang (evangelism and overzealousness) and whimper (crash and burn) is instrumental to a more productive, localized dissemination of emerging library technologies. The key to this process is open communication and rationalized expectations–by co-experiencing the hype cycle, we speed our collective slope of enlightenment.

The video reference revolution may not have come to pass, but I am sharing the lessons learned from my own failed coup attempt in order to arm others. The kiosk and similar proof-of-concept projects are how we define the library affordances of VoIP tools, but these are only beneficial if they are widely understood. Those of us with the flexibility to experiment can contribute hugely to the field by shining a critical light on our efforts and outcomes, positive and (especially) negative. Those of us without flexibility who still manage to pull things off can contribute just as hugely by doing the same. Ours is a collaborative profession, and there are countless viable outlets for communicating our experiences–it is crucial, however, that we lend our voices frankly and view even “failures” in a positive light. Productive knowledge sharing takes candor: without it, misinformation goes viral. It also takes creative analysis: underexamined experience too easily becomes smoke and mirrors.