Talk:Bleeding edge technology/Archives/2013

Comments
Curious question: How mature must a technology be for it to be regarded as having outgrown the classification, "bleeding edge"?

Usual answer to such a question is, "how long is a piece of string?", but that's not a terribly useful answer. I understand that the length of time a technology is regarded as bleeding edge is contextually calculated, but if there were some performance indicators, % adoption, or level of sophistication that were enumerated in a response to the question, this would be more useful.

For instance, can we regard the use of wiki in a corporate environment as truly "bleeding edge", given the technology has been in development for a period of in excess of a decade, it has achieved wide corporate acknowledgement as an effective knowledge base, and where Wikipedia is itself 4.5 years old?

No. The wiki technology is proven and there are no genuine risks associated with adoption. It is no longer bleeding edge. -Gavin (talk) 21:18, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought that bleeding edge means the open end. Like when you are looking at a time frame depecting the process and you finally reach the edge and you see that its end is not closed meaning that there is still stuff to come. In design, this is called to be bleeding into the page. I used to think of it as bleeding into the future with infinite possibilities.

But this was only from my understanding of the expression. It is not something I know as a fact. --Ahmad Alhashemi 10:26, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My interpretation of this expression was also informed by the design term "bleed." (As far as I know, elements bleed "off" the page, not "onto" or "into" the page, but that's an aside.) I always considered the bleeding edge to mean so close to the edge of the page, it's almost off the page. Since the "edge" would really be technically just arbitrarily close to the edge, the "bleeding edge" would mean at and off the edge (as it does in design.) 24.110.87.113 23:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The design reference is interesting, but the etymology clearly comes from the contrast between "leading edge" and "bleeding edge". Accordingly, in my view, the important element to understanding the expression is to recognize, first, that the technology must be cutting edge, and second, that it exposes the early adopter to risk associated with the adoption. The reference to 'blood' also relates to red ink, metaphorical blood to the technology investor. "Bleed" in design comes from the ink bleeding through or off the page, and is related to "creep" as in "scope creep"... I don't think it has the association with risk or with red ink that the "bleed" in "bleeding edge" does. -Gavin (talk) 21:18, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Origins
Apparently, this term dates back to the 1980s, and there's a documented reference to it being used in a Computerworld article in 1983. See Random House's Word of The Day, "cutting edge", February 29th, 2000. "Environmental management is an organization that addresses change and manages that change so the DP community can be state of the art without being the 'bleeding edge'" (Computerworld, 1983). So, the February 1994 reference is not correct. - — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.0.66.228 (talk) 07:38, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi there (I know *you*!!) Here's a sourced example that traces to earlier than the uncited one in the article, yet later than yours; Bleeding edge technology. (Sequoia Systems Inc.) (company profile) Forbes, September 2, 1991 - A l is o n  ❤ 07:57, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Isn't the web wonderful? Here's a citable reference, dating back to March 21st, 1983, in the New York Times: We ended up on the bleeding edge of technology, instead of the leading edge, one computer systems executive at a major bank said sarcastically. tvleavitt (talk) 08:27, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ -  A l is o n  ❤ 00:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)