We often use new technologies in an inefficient way, failing to realise their full potential. Our mindsets struggle to adjust and keep us locked in our old ways. Alby Anand Kurian and Nitin Borwankar call this phenomenon the “laggard’s lock”. They write that knowing that it exists (and recognising it) is the crucial first step in learning to make the best use of technological changes as they occur.
The laggard’s lock is a name that I am particularly fond of. It reminds me of various things, from the world of Harry Potter to the Indiana Jones movies, where a giant gate slams down, blocking everybody and everything. In actual fact, however, its use is more prosaic. I conceived of the term to describe how our mindsets do not always keep pace with new technologies and, locked in as we are, we employ them in the old way, failing to use these new developments to their fullest or optimum potential.
A laggard is a straggler, a dawdler and the term here refers to a mind that is trailing behind technological changes. The lock is appropriate because we find ourselves trapped and boxed in by the parameters set by the old technology frameworks. Nitin Borwankar describes here how the lock operates in his area of expertise, engineering.
“I once saw a drawing that has stayed with me and is applicable at every stage where a new, more powerful and flexible technology comes along. It demonstrated how the users of the older technology continue to use the new one only in the modality that they are used to, that is, a degenerate mode of the older technology.
The drawing I saw was about the maritime use of the steam engine. It showed a huge rowing boat with a steam engine at one end connected to a set of oars with a complicated assembly of rods, shafts, linkages and pulleys so that the energy of the steam rowed the oars instead of human beings doing the rowing. Usable and clearly understandable but only in a backward-looking rear-view mirror kind of way.
Clearly, the inventor of this did not, and possibly could not, immediately think of the steam turbine on a ship. The inventor was possibly an owner of a fleet of ‘oar driven boats’ and was looking for incremental benefit when in fact greater benefits were latent in the new technology and waiting to be had. But more importantly, qualitatively different, richer and as yet unimaginable ones. But for that the old modalities had to be given up…”
I have named the mindset that Nitin depicts as the laggard’s lock. Interestingly, even while Nitin was discussing this, I was describing a similar pattern of events that happens across cinema, the world wide web, advertising, and life in general.
It happens to all of us, doesn’t it? I remember an oft-repeated tale in the family. TV remotes had been recently introduced and my uncle was happy to use this new toy. Yet, every time he wanted to change a channel, he continued to walk to the TV set, pick up the remote, adjust the channel, put the remote back on top of the TV set and walk back to the sofa to watch his programme.
This story of my uncle (who was nicknamed ‘remote uncle’ after that) illustrates the laggard’s lock rather well. He recognised the need for the new technology, invested in it, and used it. However, trapped as he was within the old technology framework, he used the new one in a less than optimal fashion. The story of my ‘remote uncle’ is, of course, an amusing one; when we ourselves fall into the trap of the laggard’s lock, however, it is difficult to realise that we have done so, and to change our behaviour.
At the cinema
When cinema first came along, the creative people who had worked in theatre till then saw some of its potential. The laggard’s lock was at work, however, and, in their mind, they saw cinema as an extension of stage shows and drama, all of which had been around for hundreds of years. Their mind and their imagination were limited by that framework. As a consequence, they placed the camera where the audience would traditionally sit and enacted the play before it.
They didn’t realise until later that with the camera, you could now move into the character, track along with him, or move around him… you could transport the crew and the audience from location to location – the possibilities were infinite, but it took time to comprehend this.
But once that happened, a whole new world opened up. In the new medium, an actor could twitch his brow during a tight close-up and convey his emotions. An entirely new language of telling stories had been discovered, with a rich new grammar and syntax that was all its own, and it owed almost nothing to the traditions that had prevailed before it.
On the world-wide web
The wonders of the internet and the world-wide web are still unfolding before us. It took us from emails and video conferencing to banking and cyberspace parties. And yet, there is the nagging feeling that we are not using it right. For instance, in advertising and marketing communications (which form one of the backbones of the web), we are not exploiting the medium to its fullest. Here, where we are offered a media with infinite possibilities for interacting with our customers, we put versions of our thirty-second commercials (that were made for television) on the net. High-flying creative directors from advertising, who are excited at the thought of shooting a TV commercial in Bali, are tepid in their reactions to working on internet campaigns. Clients, even the best fast-moving consumer goods companies, are not hauling up their advertising agencies, because they feel equally lost in the virtual spaces of the world-wide web.
The coming of AI
A new world seems to have opened up with the dramatic advent of artificial intelligence. Discussions have been rife about its effects and whether jobs will be gained or lost and the ethical issues that bedevil it. Yet, one could wager that just as in the case of the transition from theatre to cinema, it will take us some time to shake off the laggard’s lock and use this new tool to full advantage. What holds us back is not the limitations of the technology itself but the limitations in our minds that lock us into old systems of thought.
For instance, arguments have revolved around whether AI will replace human intelligence. That is like harking back to a time when banks thought computerisation and the internet meant merely putting all the physical records they had onto the computer and no more. They could not conceive, at that time, of all the possibilities that lay ahead, with nearly all of banking online. With AI, new opportunities are at hand. A realm of its own is revealing itself to us and that is the one we need to discover and explore. It cannot be viewed through the prism of life and work before.
This, then, is the challenge we face today. As individuals or as corporates, we must build systems that are created and designed to make the best use of technological changes as they occur. That is the key to the present as well as to the future. Of course, knowing that the laggard’s lock does exist within us, and learning to recognise it, is the crucial first step in that process. Otherwise, there is the danger that we will lag behind and be left as pre-historic relics. We wouldn’t want to be “remote uncle”, would we?
- This blog post represents the views of the author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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