There was this fantastic cartoon in a dutch newspaper long ago, it was a really long train about to leave the station and lots of people were trying to get on it, by hook or by crook, people hanging on to windows, sitting on the buffers etc. A reporter with a microphone approaches one of the people trying to get on the train. "Sir, why are you trying to board the train, where are you going?". The answer "I have no idea but I really don't want to miss it.".

The banner on the train was 'The Internet', the cartoon was published in 1995, right when the dot com bubble started its proper inflationary phase.

These hype-trains occur over and over again around a specific theme, the funny thing is that 'the internet' eventually became at least as revolutionary as those that were trying to board that train hoped it would be. But the bulk of those hyped things are usually not going to make such a huge difference and then, instead of adopting the item and incorporating it we move on.

You can usually get an idea after a year or two when a technology is introduced which way it will go, and a good sign that the life is out of it is when the consultants and writers of books move on to greener pastures.

See also: blockchain, the semantic web, etc, etc...