It ends up being binary because of the extreme positions usually taken up by those who believe in the technology -- or, truly, those who are absolutely against it. However, the "solves a problem for me" only works when there are enough "me" type people out there to justify it. While we want to believe our individual use case is important (and it may be from a relative point of view) the reality is that many of those individual use cases are too highly specific to be shared by enough people. That's one reason why customization ends up being such a big thing and even then there are people who want customization to extremes.
Yes, and you're right about that. Starry-eyed dreaming is a big part of the funding process and plays a role. I still remember the first MacWorld expo where Steve came back in Boston. I was at that one. Saw all sorts of "ooh" and "aah" stuff that Apple R&D was working on. Everyone said it was a glimpse of the future (it wasn't). Same when Kai's Power Tools was first unveiled there. It was a gotsta-have instabuy. Even I bought it. Then I realized it was largely useless for practical use...
You do need the dreamers but the dreamers also need people with wisdom.
We could go back and forth on this forever, and I doubt we disagree in fundamental ways - more likely a difference in the weight we each give to concepts like "dreamers" and "wisdom" at any given time, for any given idea.
Wisdom can prevent folly or kill a great idea dead in its tracks. Dreams can lead to wonders or waste.
To me, "wisdom" might be to say, "It's a lousy, Rube Goldberg execution, but the underlying concept is intriguing." Or, "It's not economically feasible as it stands, let's see if we can bring the costs down." Since wisdom is rooted in experience, we should remember that, "Past performance may not predict future results." Essentially, is "wisdom" being used merely to impede, or is it contributing to progress?
Overall, I'm biased towards the dreams. Many won't succeed, but it's not all that easy to accurately predict the successes and failures. Unless it's obviously dumb ("invention" predicated on a violation of the laws of physics), I'm going to err on the side of new possibilities.
In our wide world, even a solution for the 1% will be helpful to a significant population. Of course, AR is not being touted as a solution for the 1%, it's being touted as the Next Big Thing. I think it does have that potential, but very possibly in a lot of smaller ways, rather than as a single killer app.