"In the land of Gibberish, the man who makes sense, the man who speaks clearly, clearly speaks nonsense."― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not FOR SALE
I remember a Western teacher's frustration with Eastern European secondary school students in the 1980s. He was stunned that they could not write. They were certainly literate, but while they had been taught to memorize mass amounts of information – they could spew on cue all the American presidents and their dates of office – they had never been taught to process all this information in any meaningful way. Writing is an exercise in analyzing, organizing, and presenting information, developing a thesis and supporting arguments. They struggled with composition. This teacher exploded with, "The Western world runs on the written word! How are they going to be able to survive in that environment?"
Fast forward to 2016. Deloitte has just formed an alliance with Kira Systems, an ingenious company utilizing the latest machine-learning technologies to teach computers to "read" documents. According to the press release:
"Wading through miles of corporate jargon hunting for key words and patterns can consume considerable time and resources," said Muraskin. "By teaming with Kira Systems, we can help organizations reduce their review time while redeploying talent to higher value activities – let's save our eyes for more strategic matters."
Now, let us be the first to say this is an astounding technology. Again, from Deloitte: "The product is known as D-ICE or Deloitte Intelligent Content Extraction. D-ICE allows client teams to analyze hundreds of thousands of documents in weeks, putting them in a stronger position to advise clients in completing major business transactions under tight deadlines."
This is a huge step forward for the corporate world. And just imagine its application in the public sphere's mind-numbing archives, whose sheer mass probably warps the space-time continuum a few more degrees for all of us. But the business world is also drowning in documents, and any given business transaction generates mountains more, in triplicate. Having something like D-ICE that can sift through all that tree pulp and find the actionable takeaways can have a very real impact on how business gets done.
But what does this say about the state of communication in our modern world? One of the problems D-ICE is addressing is the sheer volume of documentation, and much of that is driven by regulations and laws that are not going away any time soon. Cue Steve Forbes' arguments about who has ever read the IRS code end to end. We as a civilization generate massive amounts of documentation no one is ever going to read. That's not communication. That's just noise.
At particular issue is "corporate jargon." Anyone who has spent ten minutes with legalese, a tax return or an insurance policy will understand. To be sure, some of our very own literary efforts have afflicted our copyeditor with a serious eye twitch, but there are corporate mission statements out there that give lorem ipsum a good run for its money. Corporate gobbledygook has gotten so bad that the SEC felt compelled to issue a handbook on clear English for submitted filings. There are comedic corporate jargon generator websites that can recreate real world corporate discussions to a terrifying degree.
It says something when a tool designed to plow through our mountains of barely comprehensible language is such a valuable asset. Kudos to Kira and Deloitte for building this key product. D-ICE is an antidote to a crucial corporate need. But you just have to wonder how far greater emphasis on good, effective communication skills in law and business schools might take us as well.
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