Watch out for that Tree! The journey to a cleaner economy through the Jungle of Hype and Stealth

George, George, George of the Jungle,
Strong as he can be.
(Yell) Watch out for that tree!
(“Oooh!”)

Lately, it feels like we—investors, journalists, grantmakers, the yearning public, idealists, politicos—are all a little like George of the Jungle. We mean well. We want to rescue the world from climate disaster, energy insecurity and collapse.  But in our rush to find the next big thing—Super Fuel! Super Drug! Super Fiber! Super Project! Super This! Super That! Super Everything!—we keep slamming face-first into the reality of a very thick tree. One of the reasons is that technologies are wrapped in symbolic narratives that we fall for, every time.

Why do technologies that are useful but incremental get wrapped in epic narratives? Probably because we respond like Pavlov’s Dog to developers who ring the bell and pitch them that way. Historical context evaporates. Promises multiply. And too few of us stop to ask the old questions about demonstration and preparedness.

Why? As I think I first heard on One Tree Hill: “Falling in love is the easiest thing you’re ever gonna do.”

The almost effortless rush. The rapture. Yes—this is The Solution. Eureka! We’ll do Good! We’ll do Well! We’ll Save Billions! We’ll Make Billions! Hard questions feel so much harder when they’re asked of new loves.

(Yell) Watch out for that tree! Don’t you trust me, Baby? (Oooh!)

The Allure of the Epic Narrative

We live in an age when it feels as if everything is transformational, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, or the Next Big Thing™.

The problem isn’t that these technologies aren’t promising. Many are. Some are genuinely clever. A few are even profound. But when their progress is packaged in breathless, world-saving language, two things happen:

First, it becomes nearly impossible to see the difference between incremental progress and epochal change. Modest improvements are hidden behind a screen of capital letters and exclamation marks.

Second, the more dramatic the promise, the more disenchanted we become when reality fails to keep up. If you were told something was going to change the world by next Tuesday, and instead it merely improved a process by 10%, it can feel like nothing happened at all.

The truth is, the incremental is often the most important. But the incremental doesn’t always photograph well, doesn’t headline well, and certainly doesn’t fundraise well.

A few phrases to watch for when evaluating hype:

• “Game-changing”
• “Disruptive”
• “Moonshot”
• “Revolutionary”
• “Unprecedented”
• “First-of-its-kind”
• “World’s only…”
• “Breakthrough”
• “Super” anything
• “Uber for [fill in the blank]”
• “One weird trick to solve…”
• “Paradigm shift”
• “Exponentially better”

These words aren’t inherently dishonest. Sometimes they are accurate. But more often, they are a sign that the narrative is sprinting several steps ahead of the technology.

When that happens, the merely good is overshadowed by the promise of the perfect. And when perfect inevitably fails to arrive on schedule, good gets thrown out with it. So, is perfect the enemy of good? For sure, boisterous claims often are.

Here are just a few of the technologies where narrative velocity has repeatedly outpaced reality.

Biochar

In some ways, biochar is the perfect illustration. It’s been used for centuries, probably millennia. The Terra Preta soils of the Amazon—enriched with charcoal—are legendary among soil scientists.

Yet every few years, we see a new wave of “biochar will save the climate!” announcements. In these cycles, you’ll hear that it:

• Pulls carbon out of the atmosphere permanently,
• Increases crop yields dramatically,
• Reverses desertification,
• Solves soil acidity,
• Might cure baldness while it’s at it.

In reality, biochar does help—sometimes quite a lot. But its benefits are variable, slow to measure, and stubbornly local. And every time the promise outpaces the practice, disillusionment follows.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is like the James Bond of defossilization: always coming back for another sequel. First, there was the Hydrogen Economy of the 1970s. Then the 1990s. Then the 2000s. Then the 2020s. Each time, a wave of excitement declared hydrogen fuel cells were about to displace fossil fuels wholesale.

To this day, hydrogen has real, important applications—especially in refining, fertilizers, and potentially long-haul trucking or steelmaking. But every time it’s marketed as a universal energy carrier, the reality of thermodynamics shows up to wave its skeptical hand.

What gets lost is that hydrogen is, and can be, useful. Just not in all the ways its evangelists promise.

Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles have finally become mainstream—an undeniable accomplishment. But it’s worth remembering how many exaggerated promises got us here and how they distorted perceptions along the way.

Consider a few specifics:

Battery Lifespan

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, it became possible to see projections that battery packs would last hundreds of thousands of miles, within a few short years. In reality, while battery longevity has improved significantly, degradation remains a challenge, especially in harsh climates or for vehicles subject to frequent fast charging.

Charge Time

Early narratives promised that “ultra-fast” charging—refueling your EV as quickly as you fill a gas tank—was just around the corner. A decade later, the reality is:

• • Fast charging infrastructure is still limited outside urban corridors.
  • Even with DC fast chargers, many vehicles take 30–60 minutes to reach 80%.
  • Frequent fast charging can accelerate battery degradation.

Rare Earths and Critical Materials

Many of the early forecasts also underestimated how hard it would be to secure the supply of critical minerals essential to electric vehicles. While lithium and cobalt get most of the headlines, a typical EV battery and drivetrain depend on a suite of materials, including:

• • Nickel – essential for high-energy-density cathodes (like NCA and NCM chemistries).
  • Graphite – the primary material for the anode, much of it synthetic and produced in China.
  • Manganese – used in cathodes to improve stability.
  • Neodymium and Dysprosium – critical for permanent magnets in high-efficiency electric motors.
  • Terbium and Praseodymium – additional rare earth elements that help maintain magnetic strength at high temperatures.

Most of these rare earth elements are not truly rare in terms of absolute abundance, but they are dispersed at low concentrations, making them expensive and technically challenging to mine and refine. Today:

• • China dominates processing and refining capacity. Estimates suggest China controls about 60–70% of global rare earth mining and over 85% of refining capacity.
  • Western mining operations have struggled to compete. Even well-known projects—like Mountain Pass in California—have been buffeted by price swings, environmental hurdles, and supply chain complexity.
  • Efforts to onshore processing face significant cost, permitting, and community opposition challenges.
  • In other words, while press releases described the rare earth challenge as a solvable sourcing problem, the reality is that these materials are a strategic chokepoint in electrification—and their development timelines are long, capital-intensive, and fraught with risk.

Subsidy-Driven Markets

A great deal of purchasing activity, particularly in Europe and China, has been propped up by:

• • • Direct purchase subsidies.
    • Tax credits.
    • Company car incentives.
    • Regulatory mandates (e.g., California’s ZEV credits, China’s NEV quotas).

These policies have been effective—but they also mask the question of what true market demand would look like at unsubsidized prices.

Predictions vs. Reality

From 2010 onward, a number of forecasts declared that by 2020 or 2022, EVs would be cost-competitive with combustion vehicles, with range anxiety fully solved. Instead, EVs remained a premium purchase for many buyers, with true parity arriving slowly and unevenly across segments and markets.

None of this is an indictment of electric vehicles themselves, which represent one of the most important industrial transitions of our time. But it is a reminder: When the narrative says “revolution” and the reality delivers “steady progress,” disappointment is inevitable—even when success is happening.

Performance Woods (Lignostone, SuperWood, and friends)

Wood densification is not new. In fact, it’s so old that by the time World War II arrived, laminated densified beech was already replacing metals in aircraft and transformers. Every couple of decades, someone re-discovers that you can chemically treat and compress wood to make it tougher.

Most recently, “SuperWood” arrived in a blaze of headlines. To be clear, the work is solid, and the process improvements are real.  A Nature paper from Hu and colleagues in 2018 was a milestone in showing higher performance metrics and process refinement, but not a conceptual leap beyond decades of chemical pretreatment + compression. Since then, multiple other researchers have achieved other improvements (e.g., the 2020 work in Journal of Wood Science). It’s a field in a welcome cycle of R&D yielding promising results. Yet here we are in 2025: mainstream press treating it as something never before imagined.

What we appear to have is an incremental step of laudable progress for a promising technology, getting wrapped, if I correctly read the Wall Street Journal headline (the article is titled “It’s Bulletproof, Fire-Resistant and Stronger Than Steel. It’s Superwood.”) inside a Superman metaphor. Did I miss something in the headline? Does it not make it harder for companies to persist when the stakes are raised so high, so early? But let us not lay all the blame at the feet of the Wall Street Journal. It’s called SuperWood, not BetterWood, or GoodWood, or PrettyDarnPromisingWood. The company is doubling the blinds. If factories don’t materialize at the implied speed, it feels like failure—when it might simply be slow success. And, a success which is built on decades of innovations that have come before.

There are four recurring dynamics:

 Symbolic Compression and Repackaging

Each time the idea resurfaces, it’s compressed into a simpler narrative. This creates a clean story for media and investors—without messy historical baggage. Persistence factor: The simpler the narrative, the easier it propagates.

 Continuity Density of Prior Work

The field of engineered wood has high structural continuity density (SCD). Ironically, this deep base makes it easier to repackage old ideas. Persistence factor: High continuity density allows faster re-emergence of familiar ideas in new clothing.

Thermodynamic Incentives

Wood densification serves multiple hot-button themes. This creates high external energy gradients: policy incentives, ESG investment, venture capital. When a material has even a chance to address these gradients, it gets attention. Persistence factor: Technologies that align with big thermodynamic drivers (climate policy, decarbonization capital) get repeated attempts, even if they fail repeatedly.

Narrative Reinforcement & Hype Propagation

Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal running stories in close succession is almost certainly a PR-driven push. And, when a charismatic CEO or inventor steps forward, the media script basically writes itself. Persistence factor: Human cognitive biases (novelty, optimism, simplicity) combine with PR campaigns to accelerate acceptance.

Why Don’t People Connect the Dots?

For one, few reporters read deep trade literature, journals, patent applications and peer reviews. But, to be fair, there’s more. Symbolic drift occurs: as the same concept is re-described, its identifiers mutate. E.g.: Laminated densified wood → engineered wood → Superwood. And, there’s entropy export: The act of simplifying the story for new audiences discards nuance. That loss is the price of speed.

Too many meaningful but incremental scientific advances are announced like the invention of the wheel — what happened? The symbolic compression strips out all context. This pattern not only runs risks for investors and supporters, it runs risk for the technologies themselves. We are all drawn into the black hole of failure by the gravity of this approach.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

If all this sounds inevitable—if you believe every new technology must be announced in a frenzy of superlatives—consider how Michelin has communicated the development of 5-HMF, a promising bio-sourced molecule.

In May 2025, Michelin announced an industrial demonstration plant for 5-HMF in France. The press release is worth reading in full because it offers a model of narrative discipline:

• Instead of calling the molecule “game-changing” or “revolutionary,” Michelin describes it as “a platform molecule” and “an essential component of green chemistry.” To be fair, these phrases are still somewhat aspirational. But they are specific, technical claims about how the molecule functions and where it can be applied—not vague declarations of instant transformation.
• Instead of claiming overnight adoption, they detail the specific production capacity (3,000 metric tons annually) and the need to license and scale additional facilities over years.
• Rather than promising instant market conquest, they project a potential European market of 40,000 metric tons by 2030—a cautious, plausible number.
• They acknowledge prior setbacks: an earlier attempt with another partner failed before joining forces with IFPEN.
• They credit public co-funding but don’t pretend the government will buy the end products.
• They describe the project as an enabler—a foundation on which applications can grow—not a magic solution in itself.

This approach does not diminish the technology’s promise. If anything, it increases credibility. Investors, industrial partners, and the public can see clearly:

• What is proven.
• What is still uncertain.
• What it will take to get from demonstration to industrial scale.

This is what a healthy narrative looks like. One that is hopeful, but conservative about velocity. One that frames promise, advises of risk, and invites participation without hype.

It is a reminder: technological progress can be communicated in a way that builds durable trust instead of fleeting excitement.

A GTESI Contrast Between Hype and Disciplined Narratives

In the General Theory of Evolutionary Systems and Information (GTESI), all technological systems are understood as co-evolving material progress and symbolic encoding. How a technology is communicated is not merely an afterthought—it is a reflection of the development culture that produced it.

Below, we contrast the two dominant styles observable across the examples presented.

1. Narrative Velocity vs. Developmental Velocity

Hype-Driven Narratives
In these cases—hydrogen, performance woods, biochar—the narrative velocity is designed to vastly exceed the developmental velocity. The story must travel faster than evidence accrues.

This is often because the underlying development model is:

• • Venture-funded.
  • Rapid-scaling.
  • Optimized for early capital aggregation.

Discipline-Oriented Narratives
By contrast, Michelin’s 5-HMF announcement displays narrative velocity deliberately calibrated to match developmental milestones.

This emerges from a development model that is:

• • Industrially integrated.
  • Phased by demonstration scale.
  • Constrained by existing operations and market standards.

GTESI Observation:
The mismatch between narrative and development in the hype-driven approach is a source of cumulative entropy: credibility erodes as expectations decay.

2. Symbolic Compression and Clarity of State

Hype-Driven Narratives
Symbolic compression is maximal. Complex processes are reduced to slogans:

• • “Stronger than steel.”
  • “Game-changing.”
  • “Zero emissions by 2030.”

The result is informational discontinuity: audiences cannot see which parts are proven, which are speculative, and which are infeasible.

Discipline-Oriented Narratives
Symbolic compression is moderated. Michelin’s release contains clear indicators of:

• • Prior failures.
  • Production constraints.
  • Funding dependencies.
  • Specific production capacities.

While terms like “platform molecule” are aspirational, they are bounded by explicit parameters.

GTESI Observation:
When symbolic compression exceeds a threshold, the probability of disillusionment increases, because system state becomes unobservable to non-expert stakeholders.

3. Continuity Density and Encoding of Progress

Hype-Driven Narratives
Continuity density—the accumulated lineage of incremental advances—is often disguised or ignored. Each iteration is presented as a fresh revolution, erasing the past.

Discipline-Oriented Narratives
Continuity density is preserved. Michelin’s communication explicitly references:

• • The 2008 start of research into alternative resins.
  • The first partial implementations in 2013.
  • The collaboration with IFPEN beginning in 2021.

This continuity establishes symbolic coherence, making incremental progress visible and credible.

GTESI Observation:
High continuity density encoding improves persistence and investor confidence because it situates new work in a transparent lineage.

4. Thermodynamic Incentives and Narrative Friction

Hype-Driven Narratives
The thermodynamic gradient—large pools of capital and policy pressure—is channeled through frictionless stories. Barriers are depicted as either solved or trivial.

Discipline-Oriented Narratives
Narrative friction is embraced. Michelin acknowledges:

• • The European supply chain is still immature.
  • Production costs remain high.
  • Large-scale adoption will require licensing and new production nodes.

GTESI Observation:
Narratives with deliberate friction create selection pressure for investors and partners who are prepared to remain engaged through slow maturation.

5. The Role of New Analytic Tools

Observation:
In both paradigms, observers, policymakers, and investors often rely on intuition rather than structured analysis to judge technological credibility.

GTESI offers a different approach:

• • Tools to assess the velocity alignment between narrative and material progress.
  • Frameworks to measure symbolic compression and continuity density.
  • Metrics for assessing narrative entropy (the degree of uncertainty masked by slogans).

With these tools, stakeholders can identify when enthusiasm exceeds evidence—and when sober, measured optimism is justified.

A mature innovation ecosystem does not merely generate technologies. It generates narratives calibrated to their readiness. The examples presented show that narrative discipline is not incompatible with ambition. Rather, it is the precondition for durable trust and persistent capital.

A New Symbolic Language for Technology—and a More Courageous Development Ethic

If there is one lesson in all these stories, it is that the problem isn’t just too much hype—or too little disclosure. It is the mistaken belief that either narrative overreach or narrative lockdown will protect a technology. It never does.

Overreach—the language of revolution, game-change, and miracle—alienates stakeholders when reality unfolds at its natural pace.

Lockdown—the language of stealth, control, and secret readiness—isolates the technology from the thousands of partners, regulators, customers, and supply chain allies it will need to scale.

Both are, in different ways, forms of narrative fragility.

The Myth of Stealth Mode as Safety

Many technologists today fear exposing their work to public scrutiny. I hear these often:

“If we share too early, it will be copied.”
“If we admit our uncertainties, we’ll lose credibility.”
“If we make any claims, they’ll be thrown back at us if we fall short.”

These concerns are understandable.  Yes, for very early-stage, IP-heavy concepts (e.g., novel battery chemistries), some caution is appropriate—but that caution should be temporary, and as the marriage liturgy proposes, is “therefore is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.” 

Further, stealth mode is almost never real stealth. Investors are briefed, suppliers are courted, governments are lobbied. What stealth mode usually means is tight control of the narrative. It is a strategy to avoid questions until later. Yet the fantasy of control often prevents the most essential work of all: building the village around the technology—the network of allies who will help it survive first contact with the market.

It is, in many ways, a form of unintentional arrogance—the idea that success is primarily about the brilliance of the technology itself, rather than the thousands of small acts of participation and collaboration that make any project real.

Toward a New Symbolic Framework

The antidote to hype is not secrecy. The antidote to secrecy is not hype.

What we need is a new symbolic language and encoding framework—one that:

• Frames promise without promising inevitability.
• Describes progress in language that is granular, cautious, and affirming.
• Makes clear what is proven and what is still speculative.
• Embeds the project in its ecosystem early, with the humility to acknowledge that even great technology will fail without the patient work of cultivating the ecosystem.

A Proposal for a New Narrative Ethic

When describing a technology, consider encoding information along these dimensions:

Dimension	What It Describes	Example
Technical Readiness	What has been demonstrated under controlled conditions.	“Tested at pilot scale over 18 months.”
Process Readiness	Whether supply chains, permitting, and workforce are aligned.	“Permitting pathways mapped; vendors engaged.”
Economic Readiness	Whether cost structures are credible at scale.	“Projected costs within 20% of incumbent.”
Market Readiness	Whether buyers and channels are confirmed.	“Three anchor customers in negotiation.”
Ecosystem Readiness	Whether the policy and regulatory frameworks are prepared.	“Aligned with existing regulatory standards.”
Velocity Alignment	Whether timelines are credible.	“Commercial production targeted within 5 years.”

This language is not designed to make projects look smaller. It is designed to make them look real.

Why This Middle Path Is Better

Technologies that choose this path—transparent but disciplined, hopeful but humble—will outlast those that rely on either theatrical hype or strategic opacity.

This is because:

• They attract investors who understand the time horizons and risks.
• They build trust with regulators who will need years to clear a pathway.
• They surface supply chain challenges early, when they are cheaper to solve.
• They create room for non-financial collaboration—standards, siting, logistics—that stealth mode never solves.

A New Kind of Preparedness

The Boy Scouts say: “Be Prepared.”

But preparedness does not mean having all the answers locked away in private slide decks. It means assembling a coalition of the willing early, so that no single failure—technical, economic, political—can derail the project.

Stealth may feel safer. Hype may feel thrilling. But both are fragile.

A new symbolic framework—transparent, credible, granular—creates a space where technologies can be seen as they are: works in progress, worthy of patient belief and disciplined support.

A Call, Not a Crash

If George of the Jungle is our collective metaphor for how we’ve often approached technology—swinging fast, shouting enthusiastically, and smacking face-first into the tree—maybe it’s time to learn something from another denizen of the jungle. Perhaps what we need now is not just a different strategy, but a different sound.

Tarzan didn’t rush blindly. He climbed higher, looked further, and issued a call that was distinct, structured, disciplined, and consistent. His yell wasn’t just noise—it was:

• A declaration of presence.
• A signal of readiness.
• An invitation to join him.
• A clear, echoing orientation point for everyone else navigating the same terrain.

The Tarzan yell carried. It pierced confusion. It announced commitment. And it did so without the pretense that the jungle itself would change overnight.

Technological progress needs fewer blind swings and more purposeful calls—clear signals of where we are, what we know, what we still don’t, and how we intend to move forward. If we can learn to communicate that way—with disciplined resonance rather than hype or secrecy—we stand a better chance of building the village every innovation needs.

It’s a jungle out there, but it can be negotiated. So, here’s to fewer tree-crashes, fewer days in stealth, and fewer seasons of slogans instead of progress.

Unlike George, Tarzan doesn’t swing because he hopes the jungle will rearrange itself around him. He swings because he’s charted the branches. So, here’s to learning to call out with the clarity and courage of Tarzan—so that when we swing, we swing together, eyes open, and with a better sense of where the next tree truly stands — and how to journey there together.