A “Tweet” of e-Discovery Found in “The Lost Symbol”
September 29, 2009
Masonic rituals.
Thrilling suspense.
E-discovery?
And Twitter?
After reading Dan Brown's follow up to The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, I found it interesting to see a tiny bit of e-discovery mentioned in his novel–so to speak. Even more surprising, Brown also cited the popular social media tool,Twitter, as well.
To not to give away any spoilers (and I won't), I will point out where e-discovery and Twitter come into play. However, to be on the safe side, it's probably best to do that after the jump.
As many of this blog's readers know, one of the great challenges we have in e-discovery is how we deal with search. How do we cull down the data needed for review? How do we protect clients from paying their attorneys hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to look through your mom's favorite recipes, fantasy football team stats, or other "fill in the blank" personal notables that probably should not be made public?
Luckily, this is not a problem for our heroes in the The Lost Symbol. In chapter 18, there is a discussion of an amazing search mechanism of which only a select few of the characters have access. This incredible tool can scan the world deciphering everything from all modern languages to ancient texts.
Then came the kicker. They unleash this engine coupled with a search spider that weaves its way around the world into millions of other search engines to find a few lines of very specific text. The person doing the searching is skeptical that these phrases would be hard to make sense of no matter where on the planet they track them down.
However, wouldn't you know it, one document pops up that is the exact one they were looking for! One problem–that document was "redacted," and therefore was unable to be decoded. This gives way to another mystery of where that document came from and who possessed it.
Later on in the novel, one of the themes that emerges is the power of collective thought. That when multiple people concentrate on the same thing, their thoughts could create or change an outcome or situation. The modern day tool that is noted in bringing focus to this type of collective thought is none other than the internet sensation, Twitter.
This makes sense considering how Twitter can generate mass appeal (or disapproval) in an incredibly short amount of time. The Iran election, and Michael Jackson's death are probably the most well known examples of it's ability. Even LegalTech was one of the top "trending topics" at the New York conference last February. Thankfully, the "collective" on Twitter were unable to cause the death of Jeffrey Goldblum by their thoughts alone.
It's interesting to see as e-discovery continues to permeate through our legal and corporate worlds, that it's also working it's way into our fiction as well. While I do not expect John Grisham to come out with novel entitled "The Document Review" anytime soon, I will say that I am looking forward to what Dan Brown will write next.