Future Starlight
An intriguing post from Kent’s Imperative that may have major implications for conducting fifth generation warfare:
”Searching Starlight”The metaphor is meant to remind us that the pattern of stars we see in our night sky is in fact not the reality; it is the past reality. (Given how much time has passed since the light first left those stars.) When we witness events in the world, the same sort of delay may happen: we are only seeing a past emergence, but whatever confluence of forces caused that emergence has since passed on (although those individual forces may still exist). It might even be supposed that those forces have been altered by the newly emerged situation to which they helped give birth I’m sure many other thoughts might spring from thinking of Starlight — for instance, the way people respond to order vs the way they respond to chaos; what they are seeing is a past order or, really, multiple past orders. They may be acting upon that perception even before they are aware that new orders have since emerged from new ‘confluences.’
One of the other very key Insights from the Proteus study was the concept of Starlight – the complex and variable effects of time and distance on perceptions of information about events; and the impact of those effects on intelligence problems.
The post links to another considering Google, ‘the level 50 magician’ , particularly how Google is amassing information and not only enabling better ways of compiling that information but also probably ahead of the curve, itself, on compiling it. In closing, Kent’s Imperative links this, the future of the Intelligence Community, and Starlight:
Foresight and uncertainty management become the objects of the intelligence cycle in the future; the task for the Intelligence Community, therefore, is not merely the cataloging of events, but more the recognition of patterns. As a result, given finite resources, sensors may be less important than new ways to analyze complex data…Ah yes, pattern recognition… Acting without that ability, or with a very limited ability for pattern recognition, may be a hallmark of the inept ones.
However, I’m not certain that recognizing past patterns, even if we recognize that they are past patterns, will always enable a prediction of future starlight, on this our global scale: not all stars are visible to the naked eye.
Filed in The Vault and tagged Cognition, Kent's Imperative, Pattern Recognition
I have just addressed these points as well as points raised in your previous post. Since mine a longish post (1500 words) I've left it on my blog and only posted the link here. I do not refer to OODA loops because I consider them to pertain to contests within a specific local environment, instead I write about the time lag between analysis and action. I also avoid the discussion splitting hairs between GG and 5GWarriors and prefer the term ensemble instead which 'moves and thinks as one'. I do build to this point: "The protected hierarchies’ authority distributed through unity of organization will be replaced by unity of purpose among ensembles or there will be no unity among the ensembles at all." I think this distinguishes the difference between deamons and angels. I look forward to your comments.