When I started to pay attention to such things, I've noticed that a lot of "ideas" breathlessly dicussed in technology have no grounding in reality. Their popularity is based not on how well they describe and explain something, but on a very basic social dynamic of easy repetition. I think it's reasonable to refer to them using the word "memes", even though it's not exactly consistent with what Richard Dawkins described in The Selfish Gene.
Those memes have the following properties:
1. They are very easy to express.
2. They seem reasonable at the first glance.
3. They confer some social benefit upon the speaker.
This is quite a enough for an idea to explode in popularity, even if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. A person doesn't need to fully believe in a meme to repeat it. Initially, it's the repetition itself that's important, not the level of credulity.
After gaining some traction, a meme becomes more convincing. The frequency of its repetition is perceived as social proof, so it gets accepted more easily. The act of repetition becomes a sign of alignment with a larger group, which is a social benefit in its own right.
While hard to measure objectively, it seems that the tech sector is particularly succeptible to this dynamic.