READ THE BOOK…THEN SAW THE MOVIE
I greatly enjoyed the C-Span program last night of Dr. Barnett’s PNM brief and subsequent call-in segment. The latter, in true C-span tradition, started with a call from a complete crackpot conspiracy theorist and Tom, to his credit, neither laughed out loud nor gave the guy the credibility a true reaming out would have bestowed.
Much of the material I knew very well having read The Pentagon’s New Map and blogged on it frequently but it was a very different experience for me seeing Dr. Barnett’s Powerpoint presentation. This is unsurprising, cognitively speaking, because the visual format engages additional areas of the brain and furthermore, does so at a much higher rate of processing speed than simple lecture or reading text. The retention rate is far higher as well – we remember movies and TV shows far more than we do particular lectures we’ve heard or passages we have read, unless we are blessed with a photographic memory. To an extent, the presentation highlighted some aspects of PNM in regard to System Administration that I was aware of previously but had not given a whole lot of thought. I’m curious to how people who have not read the book may have responded, since I’m not a typical audience member.
To an extent, the medium is part of the message here and when dealing with geopolitical abstractions any reification that will make them more concrete makes them more comprehensible to a wider audience base. Powerpoint cheaply, quickly and demonstrably fills in that mental gap for non-specialists.
C-Span has the videofile up today on it’s homepage( see above link), if you missed the program last night check it out.
Congratulations to Dr. Barnett for a successful appearance !
December 21st, 2004 at 10:13 pm
I saw it also, however I thought that he rushed through
some parts of the presentation. CSPAN presented a 2.5
hour (plus 0.5 hour Q&A) over last Labor Day weekend.
Dr. Barnett’s presentation was basically the same but was
at a somewhat slower talking pace. There was some
updated information in last night’s presentation. Very
stimulating presentation.
As an aside, I considered what question I might have asked him. Of all the questions that came to mind I probably would have picked this one: What is the State
Department’s New Map? It is not clear that the State
Department will “go quietly into the night” but will
have much to say about both the “SysAdmin” and “Peace
Keeping” functions. In fact, perhaps they would like to
have the Pentagon do the heavy lifting of setting the
system up and then take it over at some future point.
My opinion is that this would be a disaster given the
way the State Department is presently constituted and
administered. We’ll see.
December 22nd, 2004 at 6:59 pm
Dong
The State Department has two huge hurdles to overcome before being useful as a ” Department of Peace” System Admin tool:
1) Total revamping of the internal structure to get rid of regional desks and their bureaucratic mini-empires.
2) Cultural shift in the mindset of State as an institution away from ad hoc/muddling through/crisis management posture toward strategic goal longitudinal planning.
Diplomad has had other, more inside baseball type critiques that are also quite valid but the above are my two priorities.
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