Technology

You’ll Eat A McRib, But You Won’t Try Machine Learning? What Gives?

Overcoming the fear.

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People eat a McRib from McDonald’s, but do they really know what it’s made of? Has anyone done the homework and determined exactly what is involved in the making of a McRib? I’m going to guess that not many people do. Look, it’s fast, it’s inexpensive, and it gets the job done, right? Anyone who’s really hungry in the middle of the night and searching for something to eat is likely to be satisfied with a McRib (or some similar incarnation resembling edible food).

Hang in there. I’m getting to the point and a seemingly odd pivot.

If we’re willing to put food in our bodies — food that we really do not know that much about — why is it that we fear new technologies? We don’t eat technology. It really cannot physically harm you (not yet anyway). So, what are we afraid of?

I use the collective “we” in part because it seems like this is a collective issue. Whether you’re a student trying to research and submit your homework, or a data scientist exploring the latest machine learning algorithm, we all need technology. But I struggle to understand why everyone does not just embrace it and move on already.

This week, I want to explore the digital divide a little and try to identify why some people have not made the leap. And this includes folks in legal operations and law firms.

Like it or not, and at the risk of being called ageist, it seems to me that one of the obstacles to great technology adoption is that there’s a huge generational gap. I’ve been fortunate. I grew up loving computers and the possibilities they offer. I straddle what I call the sweet spot between when we used yellow legal pads and the introduction of digital devices like iPads to take notes. For me, file cabinets and Windows directories are the same thing. I’m fortunate to know both sides.

Not true for everyone. While I saw opportunities in technology, others saw obstacles. Look at studies about the demographic use of technology and it should not surprise anyone that there’s a dramatic reduction in the use of technology for people born before 1955. This makes them just a young sixty-something. And you can imagine the line graph moving downward from there. But is it just because people are older that they don’t use technology?

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No, not entirely. Without a doubt for some it’s just plain fear. For others it’s a lack of confidence, not only in the mystery of the technology, but also in their ability to understand, execute and ultimately explain what just happened. Yet others have just sort of reached the peak of their learning plateau and are either unwilling or unable to invest intellectually in anything more. I personally think some people are just stubborn and cling to the old ways of doing things because that’s what they are comfortable with. Lastly, sometimes it’s just a question of available resources.

Yet, today, there is ever-growing evidence that computers and technology in general are far superior to humans when executing some activities. Take document review and machine learning technologies. If you have 50,000, or even 1 million documents, the use of machine learning or technology-assisted review tools can help review and categorize these documents faster, more consistently and just as accurately as any humans reviewing the documents. The difference: It would take ten humans nearly a year working 10 hours a day to look at a million documents. One or a few lawyers using machine learning could do it in a week or two.

This is not to say that technology is always perfect. But the truth is that humans are imperfect too. The point here, operations folks, is that like eating a McRib, technology, particularly things like machine learning, is typically faster, it’s usually cheaper, and at this point there is no question it gets the job done. What are you waiting for?

It has always amazed me that young people today — we’re talking people under 25 or so — are so connected with technology. It both excites and concerns me. I’ve spent a good portion of my career teaching and advocating for the use of technology and straddling that divide between paper and digital. I wonder, though, if anything ever permanently disrupts the use of technology, will I have to teach young people how to use a file cabinet? Or worse: how to grind meat and form it into a McRib?

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Mike Quartararo is the managing director of eDPM Advisory Services, a consulting firm providing e-discovery, project management and legal technology advisory and training services to the legal industry. He is also the author of the 2016 book Project Management in Electronic Discovery. Mike has many years of experience delivering e-discovery, project management, and legal technology solutions to law firms and Fortune 500 corporations across the globe and is widely considered an expert on project management, e-discovery and legal matter management. You can reach him via email at mquartararo@edpmadvisory.com. Follow him on twitter @edpmadvisory.

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