| Vincent Van Uffelen on Tue, 19 Dec 2017 13:18:31 +0100 (CET) |
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| Re: <nettime> The magnificent bribe |
Morlock,while I don't believe that there was a single mind or small group of multiple minds that planned the app based information society I do believe that the US military does exceptionally well in the discovery (invention?) and subsequent kick-start of "potential". Furthermore, I do believe that looking only at the survivors of a very, very lucky chain of coincidences (Google, Facebook) does skew the interpretation. There have been search engines and social media platforms before (what happened to AltaVista, Friendster?) and I don't think the DOD has been involved in all of them. Stating that the NSA did create Google, in a grand 20 year scheme (with all their decision makers as marionettes) does hint at looking at the whole with a way too focused lens. It's probably more of a loose dance of seeding ideas, technology, money, the close observation, and the intervention when it seems to be needed (surely the military has been surprised by their own success more than once, I don't buy that they invented the FB news feed).
Big picture thinking does happen though and while I can't suggest any 90th pure hardware or software technology references I would like to offer the technology of management theory. This I do believe is what actually keeps on informing the decision makers in military-industrial complex in their touchy-feely and continuously adapted approach to deal with information technology.
In the late 80th/early 90th the military started to think about new management principles and guidelines to steer their actions. The world "suddenly" became volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility,_uncertainty,_complexity_and_ambiguity) and in combination with the finding of the last decades' system theory (e.g. Russel Ackoff work in the 70th) they learned to focus on "choice" as the primary factor for future control. Thus in contrast to previous management theories is the change of play from molding minds to modulating contexts in which minds can perform their life (have they read Deleuze's societies of control, most likely, in the constant search for competitive advantage management theory is very open to new influences). It is very likely that these theories not only changed their internal management practices but as the world is effectively their workplace will have informed their interventions, policy lobbying, and investments in the silicon valley ecosystem.
Needless, to say that VUCA started to appear in everyday business management literature and theory in the mid/late 90th and is heavily featured in the 00th future studies. And design thinking with it's shallow iteration through a rather fixed problem spaces is the prodigy child.
There are plenty of sources about this change in management culture but this dissertation written in 1991 in the US war college on management is a very fruitful source: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a235762.pdf Some juice quotes can be found on page 34 (PDF 42):
"No one can accurately predict what tomorrow will bring. We do know that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity will define our future work environment."
"Edgar H. Schein tells us that it is possible that 'the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture'"
\\vincent On 19/12/2017 06:01, Morlock Elloi wrote:
Let's make (a plausible) assumption that "getting subscribers" and "app downloads" has been the sole goal, measure of success and fund-ability of info startups, since ever. Those making the obvious remarks (lack of business model, stupid concept, negative cash flow, etc.) were not in, missing the alleged point: creation of tap infrastructure for data collection/surveillance was the un-advertized end game.This assumption then leads to conclusion that VCs pouring money into these data taps knew from the start what the end game was. This, in turn, implies some serious centralized long-term (15-20 year) planning.Is there any evidence of such planning?There are speculations, but the ones easy to find are fairly recent (like 2007: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534 , 2015: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e ).Are there any earlier signs of this? Papers, conference reports, side remarks, from say 1990s, indicating that it was taking shape?On 12/18/17, 13:23, Felix Stalder wrote:I think we can say that the possibility of this transformation was built on from the beginning and is potential -- realized when successful -- is a precondition for venture capital to invest. So, when you want a date,# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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