Transcript
Microsoft, AKA?
November 10, 2001
BOB GARFIELD: What do you call it when political correctness meets corporate cravenness and monopolistic business practices? Well if there's a word for it, you won't find it in the Microsoft Word Thesaurus, which as a matter of policy redacts synonyms potentially offensive to computer users. This situation was discovered accidentally by freelance writer Mark Goldblatt who wrote about his experience in the New York Times. Mark, welcome to the big show!
MARK GOLDBLATT: Hi. Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, so you're sitting at your computer, and what happens?
MARK GOLDBLATT: I had typed the word "fool" in the sentence "only a fool would believe," thought it sounded too much like the Doobie Brothers, so I hit the thesaurus function for the word "fool," and I wasn't given a list of nouns that I thought I'd be given.
BOB GARFIELD: At this point you're thinking that you know you just have a bad piece of software or something.
MARK GOLDBLATT:Yeah, well I'm thinking at that point maybe I should try "idiot" or "imbecile" to see if they're synonyms, but those did not have synonyms either. So at that point I just thought it must be a glitch in my software.
BOB GARFIELD: How did you test to find out what was going on?
MARK GOLDBLATT:I called a friend who I knew used Microsoft Word and asked him to try it to see if it was just my computer, but when he tried it with the word "fool" he received a list of like a dozen synonums that completely confirmed that there must be something wrong with my computer.
BOB GARFIELD: And then?
MARK GOLDBLATT:Then he -- he was actually the one who said what version of Microsoft Word are you using? And I was using Word 2000. He was using Word 97. At that point I think the two of us realized that Microsoft had actually changed the program somehow, and I, I figured I better call them just to see why this happened.
BOB GARFIELD:And lo and behold they tell you they do it to spare people's feelings. They didn't want to enter the year 2000 in, in a sea of negativity? [LAUGHS] What was this all about? [LAUGHS]
MARK GOLDBLATT: Well actually -- strangely enough, what I started to do when I realized that they had done it to spare people's feelings, I started to try other words that might hurt people's feelings like "short," "fat" and "ugly." And all of those had long lists of synonyms. So it was really the, the idiot, imbecile, moron demographic that they were worried about.
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] Yes, but is there a danger attached to the company that dominates the word processor market arbitrarily removing words from the language for fear that they might somehow offend somebody?
MARK GOLDBLATT: I think "danger" is too strong a word. I would [LAUGHS] say there's an element of silliness about it.
BOB GARFIELD: Perhaps "danger" is too strong a word. [COMPUTER BELL] What about "hazard," "risk," "peril," "threat," "menace," "jeopardy" or "non-safety."
MARK GOLDBLATT: [LAUGHS] That's -- yeah. I would say there's a non-safety.
BOB GARFIELD: Mark Goldblatt, thank you very much!
MARK GOLDBLATT: Thank you!
BOB GARFIELD: Mark Goldblatt teaches at the Fashion Institute for Technology and is the co-author with Missy Hyatt [sp?] of The First Lady of Wrestling: An Autobiography out this week. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:Joining us now from Redmond, Washington is David Jaffe. He is the lead product manager for Microsoft Office. David, welcome to On the Media!
DAVID JAFFE: Hi, Bob, how are you?
BOB GARFIELD: I'm well, thank you. So-- does the Microsoft Word Thesaurus really edit for niceness?
DAVID JAFFE: [LAUGHS] Oh, not at all! I mean Word continues to be a great tool, however at the same time our approach is to not suggest words that may have offensive uses or offensive definitions.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well what constitutes offensiveness?
DAVID JAFFE:It's really on a word by word basis. I, I don't have any specific examples for you, but a key for us it to just make sure that inappropriate terms, you know, are removed.
BOB GARFIELD:Isn't there something a little bit Orwellian about all of this? I, I'm thinking specifically of - from 1984 - the character Winston Smith [sp?] whose job actually was to delete from old newspapers words that have been taken out of circulation by the Minister of Information. Isn't there something a little eerie about all of this?
DAVID JAFFE: Not, not at all. I mean we've never-- we've never portrayed Word's dictionary, whether it be the spell check or, or the thesaurus as, you know, a catch all for every single word. We use it as a, as a tool that helps people create reports, letters, etc.
BOB GARFIELD:So you're suggesting because this is only a tool you've kind of re-engineered it to make sure that the tool isn't misused or abused.
DAVID JAFFE: That's correct. I mean we definitely have a broad user base who uses Microsoft Word and you know our goal is to make sure that there's nothing that can be deemed offensive while still making it an extremely useful tool for users as they create their reports, letters, spreadsheets, etc.
BOB GARFIELD: David isn't that the responsibility of the tool-user to determine what's offensive and what isn't?
DAVID JAFFE:Clearly we are a tool that helps users communicate their ideas rather than limit those ideas. With that said, however, you know, we do have a broad user base and it's all about providing a more universally acceptable product for our customers.
BOB GARFIELD: How do you find out what they deem inappropriate?
DAVID JAFFE:Well we receive customer feedback in, in a variety of different ways, so we take that feedback and we incorporate it into every product version, and so everything we do related to a new version of the product is based on customer feedback.
BOB GARFIELD:What's the number of people you have to hear from before a word gets expunged? Is it 400? Is it 1? Can one crank with a hair up his--his probable -- well hold it-- [DOES SOME KEYBOARDING] with a hair up his-- uh, donkey -- get Microsoft to, to pull a word out of its--lexicon?
DAVID JAFFE: There's really no specific number that we can-- we can place on it. It's really on an individual by individual basis. As to whether something is, is deemed offensive or inappropriate.
BOB GARFIELD:All right. Well you know, you're not going to concede [LAUGHS] any of my points, but I very much appreciate your spending the time with us.
DAVID JAFFE: Thanks, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: David Jaffe is product manager for Microsoft Office at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, Washington.