IT Essentials: clarity versus crapification
Earlier this week I was working on a long article about the EU AI Act, when my Teams notification started buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.
[BUZZ] "[Expletive] there are some terrible websites out there," fumed my colleague Penny, who was shortlisting awards entries.
[BUZZ] "Just trying to fight your way through a seemingly impenetrable thicket of buzzwords, jargon and meaningless corporate claptrap to find out 'WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY DO?'"
I could only commiserate. The time I've wasted trawling through websites trying to work out whether something is hardware/software/consultancy/all-of-the-above/something-else-entirely must add up to weeks. At least, unlike an IT professional, I don't have to make serious decisions based on this verbiage.
The fake-it-til-you-make-it tech industry has always been this way. New widget pretty much the same as the old widget? Rebadge it. "Powerful solution" or "next gen" are good fallbacks. Better, invent a new genre, or, better still, co-opt an existing one. Promise to deliver "end-to-end innovation" and "seamless digitisation". Ensure you're "accelerating" something intangible as you advance down the road to organisational excellence; always "delight the customer"; profess a strong belief in the power of togetherness; celebrate new growth ideas - but never never NEVER let on that you produce middleware.
Adding to the frustration, modern websites all seem based on the same template, you know, logo and mission statement at the top, scroll-down and it splits into three sections, each with some more verbiage or a flashy video for SEO. Lots of extra clicks and scrolling just to find the basic info you're looking for (assuming it exists).
[BUZZ] "It's like they've just rolled off the same production line of crapification."
It may always been this way, but it seems to be getting worse. Crapification is cumulative, the hellish machinery accelerating as AI, increasingly deployed to produce website content, learns from the crap that went before.
To be clear, "crapification," the descent of all things into the same worthless brown ooze, is related to, but distinct, from the similar term "enshitification", which was coined by writer Cory Doctorow specifically to describe how once-useful platforms become steadily worse over time as they seek to extract ever more revenue from a captive user base.
Definitions are important.
Which is why I always enjoy working with contributing lawyers. Legal language suffers from its own form of obscurantism, of course, with its endless subclauses, provisions, appendices, adjuncts and jargon, but unlike corporate claptrap, this is in the service of precision. I appreciate precision; when you're floundering in the buzzword swamps precision is a blast of clean, fresh air.
Lawyers are magicians who can navigate the runic legal passages, retaining the precision (they get into trouble if they don't) while making all the contextual guff disappear. Magic invoked, even a tech journo can get the gist of the important parts of of some pretty dense documentation.
There is jeopardy too though. After publishing a story comes the anxious wait for the inevitable ping signalling an incoming email requesting amendments for quotes out of context, clunky paraphrasing or a vital detail omitted. But you know what? That's all good. We'd much rather get it right than leave something inaccurate out there adding to the confusion.
So, here's to clarity, here's to precision and here's to lawyers! *
* Exclusions may apply
Recommended Reads:
The worlds' first AI specific legislation comes into force next month. Since the EU is one of the world's largest trading blocs, it will likely be imitated around the world. Moreover, it has significant extraterritorial reach, potentially affecting anyone who wants to sell AI systems or use their outputs in the European market. Find out more in this long read.
Elsewhere, Cisco patched a critical flaw in Secure Email Gateway appliances that could be exploited easily by remote hackers, Microsoft rowed back on its DEI commitments, and blessed are the cheesemakers, for they shall be rewarded with gold.
