Sludge.  We’ve all experienced it.  The inexplicably long wait on a call queue.  The interminably complex form to fill in.  The needlessly verbose terms and conditions.

These are not random inefficiencies.  They are a deliberate business strategy.  They are all carefully designed for one purpose.  Your submission.

They are designed to break you down; to weaken your resolve; to make you accept a less-favourable outcome than you might do under more favourable conditions.  Sludge is Germany’s Versailles.

Here’s how it works.  You wait in a call queue for 45 minutes.  When the operator finally answers, you are so grateful to hear a human voice that you will accept anything you are told, mindful that should you not, you will be returned to square-one with another 45-minute wait ahead of you.

Similarly, the endless small print of terms and conditions.  No one reads them, when it is so much quicker to simply tick a box to say that you have.  You do not know what you are agreeing to; you just know that you are ticking to avoid the sludge.

And the sludge only seems to be getting deeper.  We are all mired in the stuff.

But here, perhaps, there is finally a use for AI.  God knows, I’ve found precious little use for it in any other walk of life.  Get AI to deal with your sludge.  AI loves sludge.  Ask it to summarise the pointless verbosity; wade through the deliberately tortuous bureaucracy.

Perhaps it could start with this blog?  Sum up its message in one, concise, apt sentence:

“Bin without reading.”

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree is his own sludge generator.