Another long yet illuminating tech article here,
this one from a RAND report on the various
digital dysfunctions of the digitizing US military
as they fought their way into Iraq.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/talbot1104.asp?trk=nl
To judge by this article, you'd think warfare was
about keeping your tech hardware polished rather
than winning battles. I nevertheless appreciate
the level of detail here... I don't find it disillusioning,
it seems like the road to improvement.
*I wonder what a similar techno-centric
postmortem analysis would look like for
any human gathering on a similar scale that
involved cellphones, satellites, vehicles and
laptops... say, Burning Man, SIGGRAPH or
a national political convention. Wouldn't
there be just as many dropped signals,
crossed connections, misplaced orders
and general G.I. snafu screwups? And those
people aren't even trying to kill each other.
*It's never about perfect execution; it's
always about the Lessons Learned.
