Army Times, By Andrew Tilghman – Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Sep 9, 2010 8:29:12 EDT
Army Reserve Col. Lawrence Sellin has no regrets about publishing a rant about the military’s overreliance on PowerPoint presentations — despite the fact it got him fired from his job at joint command headquarters in Afghanistan.
. . . . . . .
Sellin said his controversial article was the last of several efforts to find something meaningful to do at ISAF headquarters.
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Sellin’s screed highlights a long-simmering controversy inside the military bureaucracy.
Marine Gen. James Mattis, currently chief of U.S. Central Command, told a military conference earlier this year that “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”
And Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster banned PowerPoint presentations as a brigade commander during his successful efforts to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005.
Sellin said his complaint is not solely about PowerPoint, the presentation software created in 1987.
“I don’t hate PowerPoint. It’s a useful tool,” he said. “But it can be a crutch as a substitute for thinking. It’s too easy to produce a lot of slides and create volume, not quality. You really think that with a lot of detailed slides that you’re making progress, when you are actually not.”
Army Times article, second below, reports what the beginning of what I expect will be a major decline in functionality of Army computer systems. While some sort of institutional response to the alleged Wikileaks traitor, Specialist Bradley Manning, is appropriate, I don't think this is it. This is a simplistic approach, the sort of thing the KGB did and presumably the sort of the SVR continues to do.
By the way, IMHO, 91K classified documents on the Internet is not some sort of an inadvertent security violation. It's almost certainly one of the national security crimes; I think it's treason. Better to concentrate on the perpetrator — try him, convict him, and then, maybe, violate in some significant ways his Constitutional protection against “cruel and unusual punishment” as a highly visible deterrent against espionage.
NOTE: Image links to source generally as persistent link not available.
Below the line: PBI comment and cyber-security recap (34).
Five years ago at IC2 Institute in Austin, we were talking about digital convergence, and those talks spun off an organization called the Digital Convergence Initiative, the idea being to build a local business cluster of convergent companies. We were ahead of our time, and it was hard for many to get their heads around how such a “horizontal” cluster would work. We were onto an effect of convergence that could be pretty interesting: the edges of verticals will blur, and companies that before convergence had nothing in common will find affinities and synergies that create new forms of business.
Phi Beta Iota: We have been beneficiaries of Jon Lebkowsky's good-hearted genius and will start following his blog, which is being added to Righteous Sites today. The ten areas covered by the cited article include Shopping, Relationships, Business Deliveries, Maps, Education, Politics, Society, War, Advertising. The bottom line for the public is that accountability and transparency is virtually inevitable, and we will eventually eradicate corruption including fraud, waste, and abuse. The only question is how soon and will it be soon enough. We think it will. Like Jon, we are optimists.
Here are the last two paragraphs with the links recommended:
Linked data and the future
The examples of data mentioned in this article are innovative, exciting and life changing, but the best is yet to come. The majority of the information that we use in our daily lives is “dumb”, or unconnected. The next step is “linked data”, or data that talks to each other. In the UK, Tim Berners-Lee and the team behind Data.gov.uk are aiming to create a linked database of Government information. By providing all data the Government produces in a linked format, individuals will be able to pull in different sets of data to produce new and innovative ways of understanding how our Government and the world works.
FluidDB, a start-up company run by Terry Jones, and with backing from Tim O'Reilly and Esther Dyson and others, is tackling this field from a different angle. FluidDB wants to create a “writeable world”, where physical objects have virtual identities, which can be updated and called upon by any individual with access to the internet. That could mean tweets and status updates about everything from a brand of toothpaste to the Eiffel Tower could contribute to a collective database. The possibilities for collaboration are endless.
This graphic was created for a lecture to Eastern European Parliamentarians at the George C. Marshall Center in the mid-tolate 1990's. Many understood back then that the Department of Defense (DoD) was the only element of the U.S. Government (USG) capable of serving as a hub or backbone for USG Whole of Government and dynamic or surge inter-agency operations as well as multinational operations other than war (OOTW).
Unfortunately, the military services have managed to avoid, undermine, or ignore leadership from a series of Secretaries of Defense, so today we do not have a Global Information Grid (GIG) nor do we have joint mobility, weapons, or communications systems that are truly inter-operable.
Originally posted online in 2008 when this Blog was first created, we are updating the publication date to make it more easily visible–this will be, we believe, a central graphic for the multinational endeavors of the future.
EXTRACT 1: An endless supply of data, probably unparalleled in its breadth and depth, flows from every continent to a cluster of buildings on the edge of the English Garden in Munich. An encyclopedia of life, its dangers, its injustices, its coincidences, is being assembled there. There is probably no other place on Earth where the risks of the modern world are being studied more intensively and comprehensively than at the headquarters of Munich Re, the world's risk center.
EXTRACT 2: Today Munich Re wins accolades for its restraint, while its shareholders are eagerly awaiting the results of a new project. The goal of the project under development in Oechslin's department, more comprehensive than any other project before it, is to redefine the limits of knowledge by developing a global risk model.
Full Story Online
Phi Beta Iota: This is a superb article that ably documents how much can be known–and shared–that most governments and international organizations are simply not conscious of, or if conscious, exploiting microscopic bits of the data for nefarious purposes. These are the kind of people that could and should be at the heart of creating a World Brain and Global Game.
Huawei Android Smartphone ‘Ideos' Going To T-Mobile: Report
A few weeks into the future and an ad in the newspaper may look like this– looking for a Google powered smart phone? just spend $50- Amazed? Well that is what is the target of HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES and T-MOBILE US inclusive. The former a Chinese telecom equipment provider and the latter the fourth largest US mobile carrier.
The Ideos was unveiled on Thursday in Berlin. Ideos is an Android 2.2, the latest version of Google Inc.'s free mobile operating system; ensembles a 2.8-inch touch screen; and can be a Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing other devices to connect to the Internet. Ideos is better option to all these who aren't willing to pay exorbitant for devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone or Verizon Wireless's Droid lineup. Such brands typically retail for more than $500 without a contract, or $200 with a two-year contract.
Phi Beta Iota: Free cell phones to the poor, and call centers that educate them free “one cell call at a time,” are the foundation for creating infinite new wealth. What most do not appear to understand is that just as with the genius of Gillette (sell the shave, not the shaver), in the 21st Century the cell phone and connectivity should be free, and it is the transmitted knowledge that is monetized (not sold, but monetized, e.g. early warning from farmers on disease strains, Twitters on earthquakes, etcetera.)
