Digital Financial Reporting

Stanford University has a unique undergraduate or graduate major offering called the Symbolic Systems Program.

So, what is a symbolic system? Per the associate director of the program when interviewed by The Stanford Daily:

“[The major is] a combination of studying the human mind … and the intelligence of machines and of the design interaction that happens between them, [as well as] how those things can inform each other,” said symbolic systems associate director Todd Davies ’84 M.S. ’85 Ph.D. ’95 in an interview with The Daily.  

A symbolic system is essentially a system built with symbols such as natural language, programming languages, mathematics, or formal logic. An interesting thing is that symbolic systems are understandable by both humans and by computers.

You can get a more detailed understanding of symbolic systems from the Stanford Bulletin which describes the course.  Cognitive science is somewhat similar to symbolic systems. Computational linguistics is also somewhat similar.

Why is this important?

In his book Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich describes (page 204-206) three categories that all modern work/jobs fit into: 

• Routine production services which entails repetitive tasks,
• In-person services where you physically have to be there because human touch was essential to the tasks, 
• Symbolic-analytic services which include problem solving, problem identification, and strategic thinking that go into the manipulation of symbols (data, words, oral and visual representations). 

In describing the third category, symbolic-analytic services, Mr. Reich elaborates:

“In essence this work is to rearrange abstract symbols using a variety of analytic and creative tools - mathematical algorithms, legal arguments, financial gimmicks, scientific principles, powerful words and phrases, visual patterns, psychological insights, and other techniques for solving conceptual puzzles. Such manipulations improve efficiency-accomplishing tasks more accurately and quickly-or they better entertain, amuse, inform, or fascinate the human mind.”

Think Computational Law and Computational Audit.  Many tasks in accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis are related to symbolic-analytic services and rearranging abstract symbols. As I pointed out a while back, the "Learn to code" is a hysteria and is misguided.

The Essence of Accounting has a lot of information that will help you get your head around the accounting symbolic system.  The Logical Theory Describing Financial Report will help you learn about reports.  Understanding Digital helps tie accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis together.

More advanced information is provided by Processing Logical Systems. One more thing worth checking out if you are interested in all this is Introduction to the Fact Ledger.

Or, if you want the "full meal deal" and want to work through all my best information methodically, deliberately, and rigorously; please see: Mastering XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting.