Will All the Wearables Hype Crash and Burn?

If you've heard it once in high tech, you've heard it a thousand times: the hype machine. Companies desperate for the unyielding growth demanded by the industry's investors seize upon a new product category and ride it to victory. Or into a ditch of disappointment.

It's happened many times. The so-called paperless office of the 1980s. Pen-based computers in the 1990s. Revenue-less Internet companies at the end of the '90s and beginning of the 2000s. There were Windows Vista, Net PCs, push technology and smart appliances.

Sometimes trends fall short because the underlying technology falls short or because no one...