Obscurely Related but Interesting Nonetheless
Time to juxtapose.
Dr. John Nagl at Democracy Journal – Intellectual Firepower New threats require new think tanks
….He proposes, instead, creating a Federally Funded Research and Development Corporation, or FFRDC, dedicated to thinking about the Islamic terror threat in the same way that RAND thought about the Soviet nuclear threat. Stevenson suggests the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a model. It is undeniably a good and long-overdue idea, with likely payoffs hugely exceeding the few hundred million dollars such an organization would cost the taxpayer every year. But beyond the basics, Stevenson is working from the wrong mould. RAND was so influential not least because it was the brains behind an enormously large and powerful set of muscles called the Strategic Air Command, where peace was a profession and war just a hobby; DARPA provides thinking that feeds the mammoth U.S. defense industry. Stevenson’s proposed think tank would need similar need bone and muscle. But unlike the Strategic Air Command or the Department of Defense, the muscle we need today would motivate soft power, rather than hard steel.
It is not for me, a scribbler in a think tank, to denigrate the idea of creating another one. In fact, an underreported cause of the recent turnaround in Iraq has been General David Petraeus’ creation of his own brain trust consisting of many of the military’s brightest strategic thinkers on the challenges of insurgency [See Rachel Kleinfeld, “Petraeus the Progressive,” on page 107 of this issue]. If Petraeus could do so much on his own, just with thinkers he knew personally, imagine what the nation could do with a call to service by a president who valued thinking hard about problems?
I’m certainly in favor of a foreign policy DARPA – glad the wonks are catching up to my early, amateurish, efforts at blogging – and I also agree that a “new kind of think tank” is in order too. Hopefully these ideas that originated in the blogosphere will gain currency and become a reality before 2016 or 2020. 🙂
Rialtas.Net -Government 2.0 – Stigmergic Collaboration
I have just finished reading Mark Elliot’s PHD dissertation entitled “Stigmergic Collaboration- A Theoretical Framework for Mass Collaboration” and I found it to be inspiring and profound.
This is one of the most scientific and rigorous examinations of mass collaboration and social networking technologies and their interactions that I have come across, and I highly recommend reading it. In fact reading this paper has reinforced my interest in 2.0 technologies and my view that they are just the beginning of a new mode of working and of communicating. In fact I am now totally fascinated by research in the area of stigmergy and emergence, thank you Mark.
One element covered by Elliot (and I hope he will correct me if I am misinterpreting him) is that the whole web 2.0 collaborative technology framework is an human emergent (stigmergic) structure, emerging spontaneously through the simple actions and interactions of many individuals self-organising and evolving more complex structures as the social and technological conditions necessary for these types of structure to emerge become more prevalent (just as termite mounds and ant hills arise out of the simple behaviour of individual insects). This is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the web and collaborative work (and of course collaborative art, and entertainment, and play…)
Dr. Mark Elliot’s blog is here, just FYI. Seems to be on hiatus.
Collaborative learning and organizational/collective learning are going to be the “next big thing” on the horizon, leaping off of the Web 2.0 tech community, epitomized by figures like Clay Shirky, Jason Calcanis, Scobleizer and Howard Rheingold ( who has a book on the works on this very subject or related to this subject). I’ve previously linked to “Minds on Fire” by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler; if you have not read it, you should. They are on target.
The obscure tie in here is that Dr. Nagl had issued a strong, even passionate, call to rebuild the military as “learning organizations” at the the end of his excellent book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
A wikinomic , “medici effect“world is coming.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
"He proposes, instead, creating a Federally Funded Research and Development Corporation, or FFRDC, dedicated to thinking about the Islamic terror threat in the same way that RAND thought about the Soviet nuclear threat."
.
I’m not sure "the Islamic terror threat" is truly today’s equivalent of the Soviets during the cold war? Socialism was the main threat during the cold war, and the Soviets were the biggest proprietors of it. Today’s main ideological threat is anti-globalization. I use the word “globalization,” to mean: the global spread of American geopolitical and economic interests. I use “globalization” to describe American hegemony because it sounds better for rhetorical reasons than calling it American Imperialism. .Basically, our enemies are anyone who opposes American geopolitical and economic interests. These enemies can include the Islamos, South American Marxists, and Russia, but can also include domestic enemies like the anti-capitalist left, or rightwing identity politic types. So this future think tank needs to organize its thoughts around the world as a system of either being pro-globalization or anti-globalization. It’s no mistake that Venezuela, Russia, and Iran are becoming closer allies. At the same time, the anti-capitalist left in America and Europe support Venezuela, while the most extreme white nationalists in the US and Europe back Russia. Iran of course supports insurgents all over the Middle East. .This future think tank should organize its self by sub-threats. It should have an Islamo group, a Russia group, a Marxist group, a demographic transition group, an identity politics group; all manned by vertical thinking experts. It should also have horizontal thinkers that think about how all these threat-groups relate. It should not be organized into economic, military, and political experts. Instead, each threat group should have such experts that study how each threat can be neutralized or managed economically, politically, or militarily. . There needs to be highly qualified people thinking about threats to American hegemony every working-day. It can’t turn into a tool for policy however, and it must never fall prey to political correctness. Its only function is to make America more powerful by studying its threats and developing ways of managing and neutralizing these threats. .
December 12th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Damn, somehow I didn’t place the periods in the right place. I’ll try again, Zen you can erase the the above post.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
"He proposes, instead, creating a Federally Funded Research and Development Corporation, or FFRDC, dedicated to thinking about the Islamic terror threat in the same way that RAND thought about the Soviet nuclear threat."
.
I’m not sure "the Islamic terror threat" is truly today’s equivalent of the Soviets during the cold war? Socialism was the main threat during the cold war, and the Soviets were the biggest proprietors of it. Today’s main ideological threat is anti-globalization. I use the word “globalization,” to mean: the global spread of American geopolitical and economic interests. I use “globalization” to describe American hegemony because it sounds better for rhetorical reasons than calling it American Imperialism. . Basically, our enemies are anyone who opposes American geopolitical and economic interests. These enemies can include the Islamos, South American Marxists, and Russia, but can also include domestic enemies like the anti-capitalist left, or rightwing identity politic types. So this future think tank needs to organize its thoughts around the world as a system of either being pro-globalization or anti-globalization. It’s no mistake that Venezuela, Russia, and Iran are becoming closer allies. At the same time, the anti-capitalist left in America and Europe support Venezuela, while the most extreme white nationalists in the US and Europe back Russia. Iran of course supports insurgents all over the Middle East. . This future think tank should organize its self by sub-threats. It should have an Islamo group, a Russia group, a Marxist group, a demographic transition group, an identity politics group; all manned by vertical thinking experts. It should also have horizontal thinkers that think about how all these threat-groups relate. It should not be organized into economic, military, and political experts. Instead, each threat group should have such experts that study how each threat can be neutralized or managed economically, politically, or militarily. . There needs to be highly qualified people thinking about threats to American hegemony every working-day. It can’t turn into a tool for policy however, and it must never fall prey to political correctness. Its only function is to make America more powerful by studying its threats and developing ways of managing and neutralizing these threats.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
What the hell?
December 12th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Seerov: hard return, period, hard return.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
LG, I typed this is Microsoft word before copying and pasting it on the reply area. Somehow this screwed it up? It doesn’t matter though.
December 14th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I find it interesting that as the world continues to decentralize, someone as smart as Nagl would suggest a centralized, governmental run "Darpa-like" organization is the way to go.
The last thing I’d do is let the American government get any more involved with innovation, creativity or future thinking than it already is.
December 14th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I’ve noticed that people predict the futures they wish for, and not necessarily what may actually happen. This corresponds with ideology.