Future Imperfect

When we look at the effects of technology on the future of our militaries we should remember that the past has shown that early adopters and pop media pundits will suffer from optimism bias and exaggerated both the pace and pervasiveness of changes in our society. For our part, our perceptions of the future will be shaped by military cultural and our risk adverse hierarchical environment. History has also shown there are no revolutionary technological changes, just the rapid evolution of those that exist.

The interface between man and machine will improve, allowing us to interact and assimilate information faster than ever. Culturally we will become knowledge nomads, global networkers and sifters of social media, taking threads of news, information and entertainment from the web and weaving it into our own personal data stream. These evolutionary jumps in technological will be fuelled by the symbioses of technology and culture and the paradox that the more technology affects culture the more it will be shaped by our expectations. With each technological advance we need to define and understand the social and ethical implications of using new technologies and their effects on military culture and ethos.

When we study the future we focus mainly on technology, the cool stuff we fight with and the computers that make the network fusion possible. While in military circles there is limited discussion about the most important factor that will drive the future; the generation of people that will grow up immersed in social media and mobile technology. It will be from this generation that we will draw our future warriors, leaders and public servants. This socially connected and globally aware generation will shape the ideological views of government, foreign policy and will become the long tail of government bureaucracy.

We are still trying to figure out the impact social media will have on global culture but recent trends clearly point to the primary tools of warcraft in the future being non-kinetic. Many non-kinetic ops will not be lead by military forces but act in a supporting role to other government departments. Social technologies can be used to influence public opinion and shape international acceptance without resorting to military force making the requirement for specialized influence and cyber operations critical to this style of warfare. In the end any influence activity is a human endeavour and it is that dimension of conflict, not technical prowess that will determine success of future operations.

“Leadership is about people and communications, coincidentally so is Social Media”, the Digital Chief

Ralph Mercer

Originally posted on Influence Solutions