Re: [unrev-II] Recommendations??

From: Eric Armstrong (eric.armstrong@sun.com)
Date: Fri Oct 05 2001 - 13:33:41 PDT

  • Next message: John J. Deneen: "Re: [unrev-II] Recommendations?? ... Lateral Thinking Criteria & Hyper-Object Substrate"

    I wanna borrow the book when you're finished with it.
    And I wanna help build tools that will let us make sense
    out of things, and figure out good policies.

    It's fascinating. Bill Moyers did a special FrontLine on our
    past reactions to terrorism. One response was relatively
    effective. All of the rest were pretty much useless. Talk
    about the need for a usable knowledge base!

    Eugene Eric Kim wrote:

    > On Thu, 4 Oct 2001, Eric Armstrong wrote:
    >
    > > As a result, I do find myself experiencing the same frustration that
    > the
    > > CIA
    > > undoubtedly lives with -- we know the answer is in there somewhere,
    > but
    > > our chances of finding it are negligible.
    > >
    > > What I find most interesting, in this respect, is that system we
    > need to
    > > solve
    > > the "putting it together" design problem may be exactly what the
    > > intelligence
    > > community needs to solve the "putting it together"
    > > proactive-anticipation
    > > problem.
    >
    > I'm currently reading a fantastic book on this very topic:
    >
    > Treverton, Gregory F. _Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age
    > of
    > Information_. Cambridge University Press 2001.
    >
    > Treverton was formerly the Vice Chair of the National Intelligence
    > Council.
    >
    > Some excerpts:
    >
    > "Cold War intelligence lived in a world where information was
    > scarce;
    > it relied on "secrets" not otherwise available. Its business was
    > those secrets. Now, though, it faces an era of information.
    > Information and its sources are mushrooming, and so are the
    > technologies for moving information rapidly around the globe.
    > Given
    > these circumstances, the business of intelligence is no longer
    > just to
    > provide secrets; rather, its business is to produce high-quality
    > understanding of the world using all sources." -p2
    >
    > "The onset of an age of information has enabled dramatic changes
    > that
    > encompass the end of communism, the onset of the "market state,"
    > with
    > accompanying transformations in the roles of government and of
    > private
    > actors, the rise of emerging states, and the proliferation of
    > non-state actors. Intelligence now has many targets, not one;
    > many
    > consumers, not just a few; and vast amounts of information that is
    > to
    > a great extent unreliable, not a scarcity of information that
    > mainly
    > comes from satellites or spies and is therefore regarded as
    > accurate."
    > -p6
    >
    > The parallels between what Treverton writes about throughout the book
    > and
    > what Doug has been talking about for years are striking, to say the
    > least.
    >
    > -Eugene
    >
    > --
    > +=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/
    > ===+
    > | "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so
    > they |
    > +===== can have an excuse to drink alcohol." --Steve Martin
    > ===========+
    >
    >
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