More GWOT documents are released
Athena at Terrorism Unveiled describes the release of more war-related documents for public review and the challenges it will create.
Recently, the public has been tossed a gem of what was previously unavailable open-source: Guantanamo Bay transcripts of detainee interrogations. There is an all-out organized effort to sift through these transcripts (some sets which are very lengthy), and write-up nuggets of information found within them. See GroupIntel for more. Thus far, Dan Darling has done a relentless job at reviewing them and has sent along overviews.
But Athena adds this caution.
But, herein lies the problem. Experienced analysts are needed, yet ones who haven't been stymied into accepting and spouting the typical intel community line. What's needed are analysts who can offer solid assessments based on the data. And from that, offer predictions that, inherently, cannot be within the data.
Commentary
The release of detainee interrogation transcripts is unlikely to be the last event of the sort. There are many other research situations, some in the natural sciences, where there is more data than human analytical capability which can benefit from a dataset release to the public. Data dumps may not long be confined to Iraq-related documents. Supposing that were so, the organization of the blogosphere itself is likely to evolve to meet the challenge. Since not all bloggers will be equally interested in detainee interrogations, networks of specialists are likely to arise in order to perform data mining. A market in information nuggets will probably arise to consume the product.
If I am broadly right then there will probably be a demand for information tools which will allow for collaborative analysis of large data sets. A surprising number of tools are already available commercially, including Instant Messaging, e-mail and various types of groupware. HTTP itself allows the authoring of documents which one can progressively "drill-down" until a source document is reached. And specialized software or portals could be written to enhance collaboration among a distributed group of researchers. It sounds pretty exciting. Considering the general rise of knowledge workers in the economy, these developments are not only natural but probably inevitable.
Societies with well educated, technically capable populations and a large degree of freedom will benefit the most from opportunities like these, while restrictive societies will benefit least. While it would seem natural for bloggers in the Arab world to best take advantage interrogation transcripts or untranslated documents, it may be Israelis, many of whom understand Arabic and English, who will have the initial lead because of their technical sophistication and unrestricted access to the Internet. As the information economy spreads there will be economic pressure on restrictive societies, including Osama's, where women are confined, to adapt or be left behind. Philip Bobbitt wrote that America's key strategic adaptation during the Cold War was developing the Globalized economy in its face-off with world Communism. To Bobbitt, Globalization was America's Communism-killer -- it forced Communist societies to stop being Communist in order to survive -- and the catalyst for unanticipated terrorist challenges from the Third World. It will be interesting to see what the shift to the Information Economy will do to radical Islam, just as to note what future enemies will be engendered by it.
posted by wretchardthecat at 3/20/2006 12:00:00 PM
27 Comments:
I have my doubts whether they can pull out of the flat spin.
//////////////
The moslems are not in a tail spin. They're doing just fine. Even their bozo laws are being heard in ever newer places around the world. The Moslem world is in advance. They're not in retreat. So they're doing something right.
(Yeah Yeah everyone else is getting into hi tech. But hi tech by itself is no metric for success.)
The Moslems are having success in the only area that really matters,reproduction.
Interesting debate of metrics b/t the first two commenters. I'm not sure that it can be resolved, but what is immediately apparent is that some of us measure by self-centric (perhaps individual-centric is a less loaded phrase) metrics - income, leisure time, education, life span. While I am personally in favor of these metrics being higher, they may not be of any value in societal conflict. As charles points out, the Moslem genes and memes are spreading, whilst the Christian/post-Christian genes and memes seemed to have reached a plateau.
'Course, having alternate forms of entertainment in the home after dark obviously has something to do with the disparity, but the meme pool is much smaller, too. Maybe meme flow is like water: narrow and deep has more immediate power than broad and shallow. Note: 'deep' and 'shallow' are being used to describe quantity (as metaphorical water), not quality of idea as usually associated with thinking.
Post christian genes and memes are not reaching a plateau, not when essentially atheist China is up for grabs. The Pope just appointed a fighter as cardinal for China, which indicates that he recognises the Middle Kingdom as a key battleground in the future, for either politics or religion.
I don't see Islam making much headway there.
Afghan Man Faces Execution After Converting to Christianity
If this guy does get executed then it's time to pack up and ship out and pull out the Screw Them All playbook.
In the analogy of blood flow through a body, the information infrastructure has finally flowed to every region and each limb has new neural scintillations flowing to the domain routing system of the brain connecting each sphere, through the ultimate information backbone, the corpus-collosium.
Speaking of the Israelis, the translation of the dead sea scrolls when poorly and created a lot of friction until the Israelis finally scanned and posted everything online. This allowed a community of researchers to each make their mark on the effort, in short creating a competitive environment where each tried very hard to outdo the other.
I have long been a skeptic of some of the tenants of Globalization, one being the conversion of the US into a service economy, it suggest that the US will eventually be an economy driven by lawyers and pizza delivery men. The logic was that we trade off to other nations our ability to produce hard goods, but that is OK because China will employ our services, but this is rubbish, China doesn’t need our lawyers for much the same reasons it doesn’t need our pizza delivery men, save if they are suing an American country. I wonder to if the “information economy” too is not a bunch of smoke and mirrors, not too say that exciting possibilities do exist in areas that used to be the sole domain of institutions.
Will voice recognition and language translation software ever improve to the point that politically bias translations will become a thing of the past?
Muslims are using demographics and high birth rate as their weapon. "Democracy now" and all that jazz, will not adress this threat. If creative solutions are needed, this is one area desperately in need of them being applied.
Whether it is nice or mean, good or bad, the shift towards the service sector is inevitable.
Here is the IMF's report on "deindustrialization" (there is a substantial amount of literature out there that supports the point, but this is linkable). I would suggest reading it.
As for the point about the net, I agree with Wretchard. The net makes proximity irrelevant in regards to information processing. Minds can link up with each other like neurons, without cost (besides time), and without having to be near each other or physically near the information they process. Much like localized specialization in the brain, the net allows these numerous aggregations of mind to simultaneously process and transmit a large and varied amount of information, but instead of being confined in space, they are dispersed with little or no regard for the third dimension.
As I said before, Americans process information at the society level in an incredibly efficient, responsive, and fault-tolerant way. Unless our competitors emulate this organizational freedom, there's no way they will be able to compete.
Aristedes,
Thanks for the report from the IMF. Pyramids, to work, need to have a dynacism, like changing economic conditions. It worked well with NAFTA. Mexico which still has a significant trade surplus with the US used to get a lot of manufacturing contracts. The middle class economy was booming. But as other third world nations came online jobs shifted from Mexico to other regions of the world. I guess Mexico is screwed up because they haven’t converted to a “service economy” yet. As long as we have weltering hell holes in the third world the constant shifting of manufacturing jobs will continue to occur until one shiny day Namibia will announce that they are changing over to a service economy. UAE is already looking for the collapse of the oil economy and is busily converting their substantial economy into a service economy.
Yes, we have been evolving to a service sector economy. I gave up trying to fight that since John Nasbitt’s Mega Trends in the 80’s. I used to work in commercial, industrial, and medical manufacturing but since the US doesn’t need these things anymore, I have worked in the defense industry which suits me fine. Believe me when the world goes up in smoke I know that business is going to be picking up. We have a saying that we kinda borrowed from P.J. O’Rouke; “Peace is hell”. The beauty of defense is that it is a perfect amalgam of service and hard goods for the stately purpose of killing people and breaking things. This is the epitome societal evolution and we can look forward to the whole world to adapt into a defense exporting service economy. Why build nuclear power plants when we can all work in a service economy? It’s easy really; I sanitize your phone once a month and you style my hair. It’s a perfectly balanced pyramid.
I still don’t understand how one feeds themselves with service or how information puts gas in the tank of my car. But oh well, I gave up expecting logical answer for those who follow quixotic religious beliefs also.
One of the great mythologies that dominates Washington, D.C is that of the all-competent generalist. Organizations such as the General Accounting Office operate under the fiction that such generalists can collect the data provided by the real experts and reach independent conclusions that will offer new and valuable insights.
This view is complete crap; such independence invariably equates to specific incompetence at best, all too often agenda-driven results, and at worst absurdity. Come to think of it, the absurdity is one of the better outcomes; at least people will tend to ignore it.
The internet and the organizations that use it (inhabit it?) offers the ability to have expertise applied in a manner that is potentially both independent and specific. The National Guard Memos kerfluffle is a great example of this. The real exerts on the internet uncovered the forgery immediately and others added to, verified, and amplified their findings – and very importantly, disseminated it in fashion that could not be ignored by at least some of the media. The “front porch” offered by Wretchard is an example of all of this.
Now, how do we apply this capability to the current war? And more importantly, how do we ensure that the people who believe in the all-competent generalist pay any attention?
annoy_mouse 4:46PM.
You have problem like every futurist must have.How do you know you will need gas for the car,how do you know you will need a car?
Meal can come from wall/joke more or less/.
Who can say there is going to be "annoy mouse # 12."Or Belmont Club.Or myself # 11.
There are going to be moronic robots and us #11 and # 12 will be on something as hard drive as "informaticum."No pizza boy and no sex stories,a la "Milkman."
Sad time is comming on us.
/end of futuristic joking.
milan,
"how do you know you will need a car?"
You got me there. I just need a lounge chair and and some one nice to plop grapes in my mouth.
Maybe return into seventh century,what is the same as rant before.
Milan,
Certainly futurists missed the telecommunication information revolution, the internet ecology, and all that.
Metuselah 5:25.
Right.That is the reason I am no futurist.Broadcast Eng.
Do you know where is that Pinus?
Senate committee combines identity protection measures:
Bob Johnson of the Insurance Federation of Minnesota warned about too strong of a law.
“We are in an information economy, nationally and internationally,” Johnson said, and making it more difficult to transfer information could affect commerce.
“Minnesota is doing well” in protecting consumers, Johnson said.
Identity Protection
Milan,
They keep it a secret. But I walked in the grove where it is located.
Very stimulating, Idea Professor!
That Information itself takes on a weight of its own have a world changing effect, thanks in this case to the unique collaborative environment of the Web and blogs.
But then it gets scary Since not all bloggers will be equally interested in detainee interrogations, networks of specialists are likely to arise in order to perform data mining.
Up to now, "data mining" has been done by robots and programs, but in our journey back to the future, humans are doing the mining.
The obvious, ongoing application of massively multi-player online (MMO) dynamic organization of talent to analyze huge amounts of data is fantastically empowering, but as we all know, people are going to play games when they get to this state.
Witness, Google.
I would think the documents were authored by a relatively small group of people. Why not recreate this group and have it catalogue, translate, and explain the material. Coalition forces should've had this done long ago.
Give us back our crown jewels:
Imagine you had bought this newspaper for a friend. Imagine you asked them to tell you what's in the TV listings - and they demanded cash before they would tell you.
The applications for public sector data are infinite, but here are two real-world ones that affect ordinary businesses. Many of Britain's best rock-climbing venues are on sea cliffs, and hence affected by the tides. For climbers planning a trip - and surely spending money in local shops - it helps to know if the tides will be favourable. But websites that try to offer British tide data have been told by the UK Hydrographic Office they must pay for it - a cost most are unwilling to endure.
Kristin Woodland, who chairs the local authorities' street gazetteer group, says: "The taxpayer pays for us to create the data, then has to pay us to use the data."
Happily, the practice of state-owned monopolies competing in markets dependent on their information is under attack from several quarters. A new trade association, Locus, is calling for the government to enforce a level playing field in the market in public sector information.
Britain's Taxes Funding Collection of Public Data
Metusaleh.
I know they are protecting it.I protect the plants.I drove 38,000 km backroads SW,Mex.PUSILKA is mine URL or osk379@telus.net.
Mine gun is digital camera.
Information... world wide...
Think, for a moment, of millions of informed, intelligent individuals around the world; observing and reporting on their local observations of politics, frictions, racial dis/harmony, economic trends, EVERYTHING that is important locally, across every linguistic, racial, political and class stratum;
With the information and observations being collected, sorted and sifted systematically and intelligently by committed, apolitical, educated persons and teams at the local, regional and national levels; and
the pertinent information, collected by people dedicated to the independent investigation of truth, sent to a correlating, synthesizing team called the Universal House of Justice, Haifa, Israel...
Is it POSSIBLE that the quality of that information, those observations and the reports born of analysis and synthesis of these local, international and world-wide trends, MIGHT be qualitatively better than the information available to any other nation, including but not limited to the US and its allies?
The telegraph, sign of and initiator of the information age (when the water of knowledge covers the earth) was born on the same day as the Baha'i Faith.
Just ANOTHER coincidence...
W, I hope you are enjoying Philip Bobbitt. To be specific, he mentioned that the strategic innovations which parliamentary governments developed to win the Long War from 1914-1990 were a)nuclear weapons, b)massive computational power, and c)communications in all of its forms, both logistics, supply, and data and voice.
In other words, these were strategic innovations, but their end result was a global economy -- one wonders a bit at causality here: whether the economy was the goal or a pleasant second-order effect. This is my view.
But now, the global economy yields innovations faster than any government could. How will states survive? My guess is in the means they develop to pursue and destroy terrorists across the boundaries of bureaucracy and sovereignty, and the decisions that they make about how to surveil their own populations. In the course of deciding these actions, new ideologies will be created and I bet we may find in the future that democracies might go to war with each other after all . . .
Every time you mention Philip Bobbitt I give myself a mental hgh-five.
-Cheers,
Chester
Internet guy,
You would hope that the Pentagon/CIA are already doing something along those lines. Use of automated translators would at least allow them to prioritize the documents.
Wretchard, you have once again managed to make me reel and stagger under the sudden epiphany your big thoughts engender.
The notion of
The notion of hyper-linked text documents emerging from interrogations of detainees in custody is a mind-stretching concept, and certainly people must be feverishly at work. Presumably there are actually some folks currently employed by our own government that have been for years working at such tasks. Most likely though, their work is classified and will remain so.
It would be mighty interesting to know the form in which such transcripts are made public — Printed text on paper? Or ascii files?
"Data mining" means directed research, i.e., the sifting of vast piles of raw data by someone with some thoughtfully organized guidelines, historical perspective, and multi-disciplinary training enough to note links between obscure items in the data to the world outside. It would be enlightening to have a discussion or essay on how a "data mining" program or algorithm might be organized.
I'm just an animator & musician, who has dabbled just a little with computers over the years. Can anyone suggest a starting point for making sense of this?
Thank you Annoy Mouse, for getting your finger on the point that struck me: It is the analysis of data that makes the so-called "service economy" a workable proposition. But that’s a beacon off beyond the horizon, and we have a very long way to go before most people will be able to make their living in such sophisticated activities.
I don’t believe the U.S.can afford merely to ponder the burgeoning datastreams spawned by the frenzy of those benighted primitives who continue to toil at jobs meant to produce actual tangible STUFF.
The disappearance of our most productive crop lands under the sprawl of new housing developments and shopping malls is lamented by many. But when you think of it, the asphalt and concrete and buildings are encapsulating and protecting the underlying soil against the day when we will need it again!
Meanwhile we buy more and more tomatoes and grapes from third-world countries where the farm laborers do not enjoy the hard won benefits that César Chavez and his fellows fought to achieve within our borders. And it seems they also do not enjoy the same level of sanitation and immunization from, say, Hepatitis. Thus, there have been a few significant clusters of food poisoning from fresh vegetables imported under NAFTA protocols. Ah, well... “Cost/Benefit” seems to be the key phrase.
If anything proves the worth of the information economy, it is this forum and others like it, where plodding dolts like me can get an education that otherwise would require years of slog at university.
Thanks, guys. =:-)
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