Discover Magazine has a good piece about what happened to the overhyped Chaos Theory

"From The Simpsons to Jurassic Park, chaos theory became fashionable and funny, terrifying and true. In the 21st century, chaos theory, for all its previous pomp, makes barely a peep on the mainstream radar. Still, it hasn’t gone away—far from it, says Harvard University physicist Paul Martin says. “It’s a collection of tools, and it’s a way of understanding phenomena that occur over a wide range of fields.” "

Why do I blog this? overhyped phenomenon in science and technology is a very interesting topic to me. I am often amazed by how certain topics (fractals, web 3D, artificial intelligence, neural networks) gain some incredible attention and then leads to intriguing judgments, decisions and actions. I don't mean here that this topics are not good or interesting but instead that the overemphasis/over-expectations lead to some failures or sometimes hide the genuine importance of what they bring to the table.

However, should such a hype be dismissed? personally I would say no and when it pervades pop culture (the simpsons, sci-fi novel) it can also be a way to bring people to work on these issues. That may be the flip side of the coin.