Research as Resistance: Recognizing and Reconsidering HCI's Role in Technology Hype Cycles

TL;DR

Technology hype cycles in information technology and AI drive capital accumulation at the expense of long-term sustainability and social welfare. The paper uses a critical, theory-informed lens to connect technology-capital entanglement with generative AI’s hype, highlighting externalities such as environmental harm, IP concerns, labor exploitation, and misinformation. It then proposes Research as Resistance, a set of concrete strategies for HCI researchers to interrogate, deconstruct, rename, reread, alarm, redirect, and co-opt tech discourse to steer development toward human well-being and policy-relevant outcomes. By positioning HCI as a boundary-spanning field that translates ethics and social science into practice and policy, the work argues for a proactive, human-centric governance role in technology development.

Abstract

The history of information technology development has been characterized by consecutive waves of boom and bust, as new technologies come to market, fuel surges of investment, and then stabilize towards maturity. However, in recent decades, the acceleration of such technology hype cycles has resulted in the prioritization of massive capital generation at the expense of longterm sustainability, resulting in a cascade of negative social, political, and environmental consequences. Despite the negative impacts of this pattern, academic research, and in particular HCI research, is not immune from such hype cycles, often contributing substantial amounts of literature to the discourse surrounding a wave of hype. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between technology and capital, offer a critique of the technology hype cycle using generative AI as an example, and finally suggest an approach and a set of strategies for how we can counteract such cycles through research as resistance.