Revolutions are events that change the way a lot of people do things in a short amount of time, and very few deployments of NFC have actually done that as they usually end up as gimmicks replacing QR codes or other such poor UX ways that consumers interact with products or services because there is a mad arms race to monopolise the only significant use cases of NFC worth caring about (payment/public transportation ticketing and customer loyalty systems) meanwhile the scraps that can't be monopolised like "smart" posters and other forms of interaction that do little more than signal a user to open a URL with their device provide little incentive for the overheads and poor device support. Whilst some may think it's amazing that "bonking" (in El Reg parlance) your device against a sticker can check you into foursquare, millions in Japan are using a contactless coupon system that ties into devices to buy their meals and from the same device pay for the meal through a separate payment system and require no interaction from the user apart from placing their handset on the reader.
East Asia succeeded in its deployment of NFC like systems because the monopolisation of payments systems were worked out with carriers long before major deployment, because (at least in the Japanese market) carriers have the tightest stronghold on the hardware specifications in the devices sold for their networks and because transportation services, carriers and the companies creating the technology are all stake holders. (Felica Networks).
There's currently lot's of "potential" being seen in western trials of NFC technology, but still a very big chicken and egg problem: not enough devices support it, not enough carriers and transportation authorities seem to care about it, and consumers see little benefit.