Bionic Duckweed
or Why We Procrastinate
Surely you must have heard of bionic duckweed and unobtanium? These wonderful technologies will soon drive our driverless cars and make fusion technology accessible-ensuring a limitless supply of energy and climate change will be a forgotten nightmare.
Well, of course you haven’t, because I just haven’t had the time with pandemic and all, to invent bionic duckweed, well not just yet. And science fiction uses unobtainium as the Go to exotic material to make a story work. Without it, faster than light travel, antigravity suits are not just possible.
Metaphor
Stian Westlake in a brief but thought-provoking essay on Medium, bionic duckweed: making the future the enemy of the present, presented this idea of bionic duckweed. This is a metaphor for a future glorious technology which might sound plausible- but isn’t, as it keeps us from acting.
As Stian writes
“Back in 2007, Roger Ford, a railway engineer and journalist, was giving evidence to the UK’s Parliament. He criticised a Government White Paper that had decided against electrifying rail lines, ‘because we might have trains using hydrogen developed from bionic duckweed in 15 years’ time… We might have to take the wires down and it would all be wasted’.
According to Stian, bionic duckweed is a
Sort of promissory note in reverse, forcing us into inaction today in the hope of wonders tomorrow.
GPT-3, AI’s latest miracle
Take GPT-3, OpenAI's newest AI language model. GPT-3 is the most powerful language model ever built. Only our imagination can limit GPT-3’s language capabilities. When properly primed by a human, it can write creative fiction; it can generate functioning code; it can compose thoughtful business memos; and much more.
Does this mean GPT-3 is the future? Does it mean that we can relax and play golf or go fishing while the AI will just take over? No. Then that’s bionic duckweed.
GPT-3 lacks true commonsense and the ability to reason abstractly.
Taxonomy
There is even a Tim Harford’s taxonomy of bionic duckweed, (Tim Harford, Financial Times)
Evil duckweed- predictions designed to distort decisions today
Duckweed ex Machina-solves unpleasantly knotty political problems by waving rather vaguely at a technological fix.
Schrodinger’s duckweed — the technology that might or might not be round the corner.
Inevitable duckweed- OLED TV’s are getting cheaper. If I wait, I might buy a100 cm screen for the price of 55 cm today.
It’s not just the government or politicians and their vested interests who exploit the many types of bionic duckweed, listed above, we do it in our personal lives all the time.
Coping Mechanism
I have observed this while coaching executives. This idea that our focus on a ‘bright future’ can make us shortsighted enough to become complacent about building our core foundation.
Why learn to drive, when the future is about Uber/Ola and driverless cars? Why learn to cook, when you can get nutritious meals on an app? Why learn to read books when the future clearly is about blogs/ posts by people who have done all the reading for you in this glorious era of digital transformation? I could go on.
I never had a good name for it, but I do now. This puzzling tendency to procrastinate, to put off doing what is important in the present because somehow there’s a promise of a solution, is on scrutiny, just bionic duckweed.
It’s a coping mechanism for dealing with uncertainty and has to do with our ever-increasing expectations.
Sam’s Blindspot
Sam* had been on the fast track to a senior leadership position when he recently got passed over for a role that rightfully should have gone to him. He was forty years old, ambitious and a skilled digital marketeer- he had an intuitive understanding of technology. He was also personable and could charm if he put his mind to it.
People saw Sam as impatient and brusque, and he rubbed them, especially those who were not tech-savvy, the wrong way. While he took baby steps to work on his listening skills and tried to reach out to people on his own, he never addressed his core issues.
For Sam, the future was digital, technology was the promise, and he would keep waiting for the organisation to recognise his worth. Sam’s focus, nay obsession about the future, made him shortsighted about the dangers he faced to his career in the present.
It’s a sobering thought. The next time I put things off, I am going to check if it’s the duckweed.