Imagine this: A team of smart communications professionals is debating how to attack a client problem. Someone on the team—maybe the guy who still buys music on CDs—says “I hear asparagus is hot; we should do something with asparagus.” Instantly, eyes roll. Someone else, let’s say the media guy, collapses on the table, head down on folded arms; “You gotta be kidding me. If I hear ‘asparagus’ one more time I’m gonna scream. I am so done with asparagus.” Red-faced and chastened, CD-boy doesn’t bring up the term again for six months.

So what, you ask, is asparagus? Could be Twitter or Facebook Connect, could be RSS or embedded video, could be tagging or AJAX. You’ve probably experienced some approximation of the two situations above (though maybe not in the same meeting): either the recommendation of a technological approach just because it’s fashionable or the dismissing, out-of-hand direction that’s judged by the cognoscenti as being all too common.

Welcome to the twin dangers of the hype cycle. For years Gartner has tracked the hype cycle as a generalized phenomenon of new technology—after the new tech shows up in the world we all rocket up the frenzy scale to a “peak of inflated expectations” and then collapse to “the trough of disillusionment.” Knowing the pattern of the hype cycle helps us deal with the overreactions to tech; first that it’s auto-magic that’s going to solve all our problems and shine our shoes, then it’s over with and the cool kids are on the lookout for the next new thing. On his blog, my colleague, Ilya Vedrashko, quotes New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks: “In order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.”

Really, is this the best way to plan out work? Fact is, the best interactive experiences always had less to do with the technology and more to do with what makes us human.

The Barbarian Group’s Benjamin Palmer was on to this way early. I remember a panel discussion at a conference years ago, well before Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle had settled on the number 2.0. After sitting out a couple of rounds of typical blather from the other panelists, Palmer quietly interjected that the animating spirit of the Internet is generosity. Wow. This simple human thought stood in extreme contrast to the overheated hype-speak by the other participants (not their fault really, that’s just how it goes on Internet panels). And it predicted in broad strokes the cultural development of the social Web better than any technology-based analysis could have.

Bruce Bildsten got this too. At the earliest stages of the BMW Films project, Bildsten talked about “the driver”—eventually played by Clive Owen—as an archetype inspired by Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, all cool and mysterious. There’s been a lot written about BMW Films as an early Web video project. But success here can’t be attributed just to the early application of the technology (way early in the hype cycle, well before YouTube and Brightcove). Bildsten understood that the real challenge on this project would be creating a central character people would actually care about, and that would build audience across episodes.

Our team at Hill|Holliday has been working on a very cool application for our Dunkin’ Donuts client—something we show to people and they get incredibly excited about. But that excitement stems less from the fact that it fits into an existing ecosystem of social technology, and more from the recognition that the app uniquely fits the character of the pink and orange inclusivity of the Dunkin’ brand. As our planner once said, Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t just serve coffee, it also fuels the “hope and ambition and energy and drive” of America. People see this app, and they get it, and it makes them happy. It works that way because all the experience designers and strategists and creatives who worked on the app have great empathy for the person who'll use it.

For lots of us, the fashions of technology will always have a certain allure. And that’s natural. There’s a nice shorthand that says if a lot of people are jumping on the train then there must be something there. But left unchecked by our better instincts as students of human behavior, technology won’t help us as much as we hope. CA

Editor’s note: Ernie Schenck is contributing editor of the advertising column and the author of  The Houdini Solution: Put Creativity and Innovation To Work by Thinking Inside The Box.