Amara's Law

There's a quote from futurist Roy Amara—who among other things ran a think-tank called the Institute for the Future, for a spell—that has since become an adage within the tech world that goes something like this:

"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

This adage ebbs and flows in popularity, often dropping off the radar during "exploit" periods of technological development (when much of the industry is coasting on previous eureka-moments, iterating rather than revolutionizing) but then pops back up when something seemingly groundbreaking occurs and everyone's scrambling to figure out how to get involved and what the implications of that fancy new whatever might be.