I'd (generally) agree. About 5 minutes of using Flux, Claude or Suno would have provided more net new value than I've yet to get out of blockchain, self driving, gig brokers, metaverse, 5G, AR/VR, quantum computing, hyperloop, and whatever people were trying to make web3 be combined over the years. Not that I don't think all of these things will always perpetually fail to deliver (hell, if I had a chance to try Waymo already then self driving probably wouldn't be on the list), just the hype cycles were unrelated to when that delivery occurred (if ever).
The hard part is, despite actually having some "real" value delivered, you still have to sort through the 99% of bullshit that comes along with it anyways.
I will personally say that if you ever get the chance, definitely try a Waymo. I did recently for the first time and it's a hell of an experience. You can very vividly imagine it being the future.
I'm also going to stand up for AR/VR here. I'm in a long-distance relationship and me and my partner spend an hour or so in VRChat around two to three times a week. The power that has to reduce the badness of an LDR is well well well well worth the three hundred bucks I paid for a Quest. That and some of the golf games on it are fun.
I am super stoked to try a Waymo when I'm in a city with one. It's hype failures have more to do with 10 years of hype about its public availability yet not being available to 99% of the world's population 10 years later. Hype is useless without the result.
I've had an HTC Vive and an Oculus Rift 3 (Walkabout Mini Golf is one I tried!) and while I wouldn't try to argue NOBODY has found a use for it (somebody somewhere found uses for all of the things I mentioned, just not me and just not the majority of people like big new things are promised to) it never really ticked the "new value" box before they ended up in the closet for me.
That's totally fair. The tech is only barely coming out of the enthusiast adopter phase and there's not a critical mass of content on there to keep most people putting on the headset daily.
That and the ergonomics do still suck, even if I've mostly gotten used to them.
I do think VR will make it, though - starting with the kids. Apparently Gorilla Tag broke 1.5 million players recently, and those are mostly under-15s. The next generation is going to have a strange relationship with computers.
The hard part is, despite actually having some "real" value delivered, you still have to sort through the 99% of bullshit that comes along with it anyways.