Catchy Tech by Carly Rae Jepsen

If you follow it, you may have noticed that “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen was the number one downloaded single on iTunes this week. If you have never heard this song, it falls squarely in the catchy pop musical category. It is not good pop, or even bad pop; it is the worst kind of pop. It’s the type of pop song that you just can’t seem to completely convince yourself has no musical quality and will be forgotten in 6 months.

This is why the word catchy describes it so well. Nobody justifies its popularity with a “oh hey, that song is really well composed”, or “that song is really incorporating a new sound”. No, it’s a catchy pop song and just like a cold, it’s in our nature to be susceptible.

Catchy pop is far worse then terrible pop because terrible pop can be ignored. We can change the radio station, visit someone else’s website, or give it the thumbs down when it comes up.  Most importantly, we don’t need to buy the single. When a catchy song comes up on Pandora though, you find yourself drawn in. It is engrossing and sounds like the next big thing. Before you know it, 2 months pass without hearing anything else but this song: its everywhere.  During this period, the song sucks up all the time that we could be spending listening to good pop, or even newer types of music currently disrupting pop.

In the end though, the song just disappears without a lasting impression. If you return to the single later, it sounds just like every other pop song you have ever heard. It does not move the pop genera forward by introducing something new; it simply exists, absorbs our time and money, and then vanishes.

It is hyperboli to say that this is dangerous. But it is a great analogy to something that really is: catchy technology. Just like music, technology can be irrationally seductive. To those listening, catchy technology sounds like the next big thing. It is engrossing and seems to hold the solution to boundless problems. We see countless startups appear touting their tech and we see large companies start their own internal development efforts or make huge acquisitions to get in on it. But then, 5 or 10 years pass and people look back and ask “why were we investing in that?” or “how does that improve on the state-of-the-art?”.

For an example, lets looks at automotive fuel cells. In the early 2000s this technology was incredibly catchy. Huge sums of money were invested in different startups, many of the top auto manufacturers started their own programs, and the federal government created all kinds of funding programs to get the technology off the ground. Everyone was enthralled. Unfortunately, little progress was made because, just like in “Call Me Maybe”, automotive fuel cells just did not push much against the state-of-the-art. In the end people started asking “so, why is this better than a gasoline hybrid we can build today?”

In this situation, the danger is not in what was done, but in what wasn’t. With all that time and money, what else could we have done? What disruptive technologies could we have brought to market? Or even, what incremental improvements could we have made to gasoline electric hybrids?

I think it really comes down to a social problem. Nobody cares if one weirdo is hooked on Tom Waits. It’s not a problem. But when everybody downloads “Call me Maybe” you have to start questioning. It’s the same for technology and it goes back to social constructs that lead to bad choices. If a new technology is catching it is easy to relax and accept it.  Inherently it’s architecture will look simpler and its markets more accessible. And just when some part of your brain is whispering that the song has no actual value, your finger just wont be able to change the station.