Cacophonautics:
Navigating the Noise
Cacophony (ca·coph·o·ny) can be defined as “a harsh mixture of sounds.” It comes from the Greek stems kakos (‘bad’) and phōnē (‘sound’). Similar words include din, racket, noise, discord, and dissonance. We use it more generally to refer to situations in which so much is sounding that we have a hard time figuring out what is being said, and what to do with that information.
There seems to be more noise than ever in our personal and professional lives, including in the teeming legal tech world. Too much information! (Some of it caca — 💩.) Are there good ways to navigate it?
The Legal Tech Tower of Babble
This sense of overload is hardly new. Those of us active in legal tech in the 80s can recall there being dozens of products even in such novel categories as expert systems and document assembly. Nowadays services like LawNext and LegaltechHub bustle with alternatives across all kinds of categories. Extracting the ‘signal’ from the noise is a growing challenge. Social sites like LinkedIn and the one formerly known as Twitter deliver a constant stream of news and commentary. It can be deafening, if not paralyzing.
When you’re looking for a product, service, or vendor to choose — or an employee to hire — the clamor can be alarming. You issue an RFP or post a job description and get hit with more responses than you can responsibly handle. Welcome to the paradox of choice.
VCs and other investors likewise face torrents of startups seeking funds. Choosing well is challenging.
Selection is just one of the many contexts in which noise can play a malicious role. (See Keeping the noise down in tech selection.) But wise procurement and hiring decisions are critical for most legal organizations.
Selective Service(s)
What solutions might we draft to sail more smoothly across turbulent info-seas? One possibility leverages machines; another our fellow humans:
· We’re surrounded by increasingly smart forms of nonbiological intelligence. Some can help with the noise. Generative AI tools, for instance, now do an awesome job summarizing long texts that you may prefer not to read. They can also generate insightful comparisons of alternatives under consideration.
· Good old humans still come in handy. As They May Choose lays out a future in which choosers and ‘choosees’ engineer better decisions through social production, collaborative deliberation, and interactive visualization. Together they can tap the ‘hive mind,’ while avoiding groupthink.
So don’t reach for ear plugs, or bury your head in the sand. Find ways to ride the noise. Be a proud cacophonaut.
