I think I disagree about the nature of the "hype cycle." Too often it's portrayed as a negative thing, or some kind of grift pulled on the hapless public. More optimistically it's like a period of brainstorming. Not all the ideas work out, not all the promises are delivered on (world peace is a big ask), but eventually the good ideas survive and come to fruition.

It's easy to be cynical about new technology in a world of nonstop bullshit marketing and incremental improvements sold as the Next Big Thing. But in the long run I don't feel like I've ever been truly let down by a "hyped" technology. Even Segway, the textbook example of reality distortion, eventually produced descendant technologies that found their way into a number of widely-used PEVs.