Language as both an enabler and hindrance to working with emerging technology

Welcome to No Playbook, a ‘newsletter’ (at best) where I regurgitate my stream of consciousness as I explore different emerging and innovative technologies and business ideas. There are no answers, no roadmap, and no playbook to be found here. Just my own thoughts and perspectives as I try to make sense of things whilst embracing the constant change.

A long-used (maybe overused) adage is that “change is the only constant”. To some degree, I think this is true. But however we find change exciting and exhilarating, it has brought with it a constant barrage of new terminology and jargon to describe innovation and emerging technologies.

Just think metaverse, artificial intelligence, web3, DeFi, digital, and intelligent automation just to name a few that I have been working with more recently. I recall reading articles that looked to explain the differences between digitisation, digitalisation and digital transformation. Even the consultant in me rolled my eyes.

Having said this, I do think that this is to be expected - and needed. We humans have faced so much technological innovation and change over the past decade that we need language to help us understand it, to peel back the ambiguity, and to communicate it to others. It is through this quest of defining new technologies that we begin to understand them and can see how they can be applied to improve businesses and lives.

The problems occur when innovation moves faster than we can all come to a consensus on a definition. When this happens, and quite often with the really-really emerging stuff, it becomes a double-edged sword.

On one hand, we form a collection of descriptors and language that helps us communicate with each other more easily and get on the same page. But on the other, we create a rigid belief in our cognition that can hinder our ability to reframe our understanding as technologies inevitably evolve.

Over the years of working with organisations playing with emerging technology, I have come across this a lot. Sometimes it manifests itself as the noise that creates miscommunication and misunderstanding. Sometimes it pulls us into a semantic debate and becomes a distraction from solving the problem. Sometimes it prevents us from generating novel ideas beyond the metaphorical four walls definitions create.

But sometimes, it is the ah-hah! moment that we needed in order to break past the barrier preventing us from imagining new possibilities.

Upon reflection, I have begun to formulate my approach to wrangling this issue. And a core part of that is that is to take a leaf out of narrative storytelling - the suspension of disbelief. To engineer a brief moment in time in which I try to let go and allow myself to be transported to the world created by who I am talking with.

Pointing out all the plot holes in a story is a quick way to close oneself to the ideas the movie is trying to convey.

This is a constant challenge and reminder to myself as I continue with my work and career. The engineer in me always looks for clean and elegant answers. But sometimes it is more important to be patient and wander than to rush into creating the mental box to put things in.

Without being held back by the perfect definition, the next ramblings will look to explore the conceptual space surrounding various emerging technologies and innovations. It is my belief that having an appreciation of different emerging ideas with the fluidity to constantly shape and reshape the synapses connecting these, will help unlock ingenuity and creativity in solving problems in ways we feel inspiring - and just maybe, fulfilling.