More restrictions: Military puts Myspace, Youtube, other sites off-limits

Hi Culpeper,

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

Like I mentioned on the other thread. Corporate America as well as federal and state governments are already blocking these types of sites in the work place.

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You know, this is a pretty basic philosophical issue, and it really comes down to the question of where does responsibility for individual action lie. Personally, I tend to agree more with Selil on this particular one, and my reasoning runs like this.

Assumptions:

Assumption 1. Organizations (actually institutions; organizations are particular instantiations of institutions), in and of themselves, are socio-cultural constructs that have no independent existence outside of the minds of those with whom they interact.

Assumption 2. Humans use organizations as a way to fulfill basic needs (we are pack animals).

Assumption 3. The goal of organizing is to meet these basic needs, and the rules of organizations should be adapted to their operational environment, including that produced by other organizations.

Assumption 4. Organizations operate using one of five basic forms (Weberian "ideal types") of social relationship: Equality Matching (aka "reciprocity"), Authority Ranking (mutual ties of obligations up and down a status ladder), Communal Sharing, Market Exchange or No Relationship (the null set).

Assumption 5. The "best" way (i.e. form of social relationship) to meet a given need in a given environment changes depending on the need and the environment.

Corollary: "Adaptability", for an organization, is the ability of that organization to shift within and between forms of social relationship.

Observations:

Observation 1. "Our" society, i.e. North American and the Western World, has, in general, shifted from a general social form of Authority Ranking to one of Equality Matching, at least in the non-governmental sectors of our lives. As an example, consider the shift in both job search tactics and the concepts of "career" in the private sector. This shift started, at least in North America, in 1968 (disgustingly long Ph.D. dissertation on this available on request :D).

Observation 2. Organizations which use an Authority Ranking relationship require trust that those "in authority" actually do have a better knowledge of the environment of the organization. Organizations that use an Equality Matching relationship require a) trust that all members of the relationship will "keep their word" when they commit it and b) that the collective "knowledge" of the environment is greater than the individual "knowledge" of the environment, even if individuals,regardless of the "position", do not.

Corollary 1: "Responsibility" in Authority Ranking organizations is vested in the organization and the offices that derive from that organization. Ideally, individuals cannot be held responsible for events that are "beyond their pay grade". In an Equality Matching organization, "responsibility" is vested in the individual, not the organization. Ideally, individuals are always held responsible for their decisions, but this responsibility is mitigated by the others in their network.

Corollary 2: Authority Ranking organizations lay out specific, and different, rights, responsibilities and access to resources based on the "rank" of each member of the organization. Changes in rights, responsibilities and access to resources may be "decreed" by the organization. Equality Matching organizations lay out specific, and different, rights, responsibilities and access to resources based on the "ability" and "network position" of each member of the organization. Changes in rights, responsibilities and access to resources must be "negotiated" by individuals within the organization.

Observation 3. Our development of Computer Mediated Communications (CMC) has followed (not led) this general trend: MySpace, Facebook, SWC/SWJ, etc. are all examples of this.

Observation 4. People who have grown up in this new social contract "know" (gnosis or "knowledge from lived experience") that this is "right", and react poorly to "morality" imposed from a different form of social relationship.

Arguments:

Argument 1. Censorship, at the organizational level, is based on a morality inherent in an Authority Ranking social relationship, not an Equality Matching one.

Argument 2. Attempting to impose the morality of one form of social relationship onto people who are operating with another form of social relationship is ridiculous and, inevitably, will fail. The end point of such an attempt is resistance against the organization attempting to do the imposition ("and all Iraqis really want Democracy!!!!").

Corollary Argument 1: the imposition of situationally inappropriate morality will reduce trust in the imposing organizational form.

Corollary Argument 2: the argument that "all organizations" do X is invalid. It is an attempt to project a particular value into a universal value.

Conclusions:

Conclusion 1: Morality must be appropriate to the social form that members of the organization perceive holds in a particular area. Since CMC is an area which is dominated by Equality Matching, an appropriate form of morality should be applied, and this is one of individual responsibility for actions within a network, no one of censorship.

Expansion: Please note that the concept of "operational security" is generally accepted and operate on an Authority Ranking model - in this instance, OPSEC is governed by a different morality and censorship is appropriate.

Conclusion 2: Attempts by the US Military to impose censorship "randomly" will lead to a decrease in trust of the US military (as an organization) as "knowing what it is doing".

Expansion: This decrease in trust will affect all areas that operate under an Authority Ranking form of social relationship. This will lead to a growing "disillusionment" with the AR component of the US Military, and act as a goad for people to leave and/or "work around" (if they stay) the AR system.

Case Observation: Consider the discussions on the Contrary Peter Principle and the Officer Critical Skills Retention Bonus as examples.

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Hmmm, I hadn't intended to run on this long :D.

Marc

marct keep going. throw in a few more citations and we've got a good journal paper.

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Originally Posted by selil

marct keep going. throw in a few more citations and we've got a good journal paper.

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LOLOL - I may just do that :D.

marct

You brought up a serious psychological and philosophical approach to the problem. Basically, the overall needs of the organization comes before individual responsibilities. There is always a few bad apples that make it hard on everyone else. This is normal rather than abnormal. But organizations, like corporations and the military, actually own the resources that are being used. Not the individual. The organization set the policies on how their resources are to be used and what could be expected if these policies are violated.

I posted this on the Blog Watch section but it has some relevance to the DoD and "New media":

"Blogs and Military Information Strategy"

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Originally Posted by marct

LOLOL - I may just do that :D.

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I call second author.

Hi Culpeper,

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

You brought up a serious psychological and philosophical approach to the problem.

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Thanks; I'm trying to get the discussion out of the absolutist terms it is so frequently cast in :D. BTW, the social relations models I'm using come from Anthropology, not psychology, but they do draw on psych. What I found interesting about them was their universality - at least in all of the cultures we have looked at.

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

Basically, the overall needs of the organization comes before individual responsibilities.

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I would have to say "sometimes". Organizations are socio-cultural constructs designed to meet specific needs and, if they don't meet those needs, they go by the wayside. Personally, while I know that it is a useful and adaptive convention, I have always been bothered by treating organizations as if they were "real"; they aren't, they are only something we build to meet a need. This is the problem with the human impulse to "reify" some concept (i.e. treat it as if it where a thing that could be perceived by the senses).

Organizations, as formalized nets of social relationships, also have responsibilities to their members - "stakeholders" is the usual term for these people. How the organization is set up also controls the way in which it operates. Let me toss out an example: COIN operates on an equality matching social relationship, while the "traditional" military Ii.e. industrial age model of formalized warfare) operates on an Authority Ranking model: pyramid vs. network if you want a visual image. Now, given that the charter of the military is to carry out missions in the national interest (as defined by politicians), what happens when someone succeeds using the "wrong" tactics?

This is where individual responsibility enters into it: there's a thread on the board dealing with the being vs doing paradox that captures this quite well. Since organizations do not, in actual fact, exist, then the "needs of the organization" is merely a shorthand term that leaves off the all important qualifier: "as decided by a particular person holding a particular position". It is all about individual responsibiliy - there is no other kind. As a case in point, when was the last time you and the Army headed out for a couple of beers :D?

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

There is always a few bad apples that make it hard on everyone else. This is normal rather than abnormal.

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Agreed. And, according to the morality of an Authority Ranking system, then the system must be tightened to avoid that possibility. However, in an Equality Matching system, then you turn the individual bad apples into apple sauce and let the rest of the people get on with their work. Again, it comes down to individual responsibility vs. abnegation of individuality. It might be useful to think about the concept of an "illegal order" here.

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

But organizations, like corporations and the military, actually own the resources that are being used. Not the individual.

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Well, I'm not going to keep harping on the "organizations don't exist" line :D. Let me just say that, given this line of argument (which is actually a Market Exchange argument), then it would be perfectly valid for any soldier to bring over their own laptop and post from an internet cafe anything they wanted. In this type of social form, I could also note that soldiers could turn around and point out that their contracts with the military do not call for them to die, therefore their families have the right to sue the military for a breach of contract. Finally, I could also point out that the contract specified that soldiers would originally have contact with their families and that this is a unilateral rewriting of the contract - clearly it's time to start a union :eek:!

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

The organization set the policies on how their resources are to be used and what could be expected if these policies are violated.

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And has consistently changed that contract on an "as felt" basis; which is a breach of contract. Believe me, you don't want to see the military based solely on a Market Exchange model!

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Originally Posted by selil

I call second author.

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Okay, you're on

Marc

marct:

So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

marct:

So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:

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uhhh, yeah but it STRONG! :D

Hi Culpeper,

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Originally Posted by Culpeper

So, in a nutshell, "Its an Army of One"?:wry:

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LOLOL. Thanks for making my day start off well :D. Actually, it's the first nice day we've had up here in about a week or so.

If you get right down to the root of it, it is always an army of one; at least in the sense that all individuals must "buy in" to the organization and the social forms that operate in it. The reality, of course, is a lot more complex :wry:.

Fiske's research (he's the Anthropologist who developed the model I'm using) shows that people shift back and forth between relational models quite often; sometimes in the same sentence! He actually argues that models can be used as a way of defining a culture - at least in the sense of what is "right and proper" - and I think he is on to something. My own twist on his work is to tie his models into how organizations and communities "act" (i.e. situational construction of "right and proper"), and to tie that into evolutionary psychology and theory.

Let me go back to one of the assumptions I noted in that first post.

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Assumption 5. The "best" way (i.e. form of social relationship) to meet a given need in a given environment changes depending on the need and the environment.

Corollary: "Adaptability", for an organization, is the ability of that organization to shift within and between forms of social relationship.

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If we look at the Army as an organization (it's really hundreds if not thousands of organizations linked together, so this is almost a "national culture" level of analysis), and look at the two main environments it operates in, one bureaucratic / political and one "operational" we can make some very interesting observations.

Let's start with the operational.

One of the things that everyone seems to be talking about is how the Army concentrated on training for "traditional" or "conventional" warfare (I prefer "conventional" myself, since the convention was state to state). For this type of warfare, an Authority Ranking system is perfect, given the actual environment (i.e. technology, social conventions of conflict, etc.). The organizational thrust (the neo-institutionalists call it an "isomorphic vector") has been to develop integrated systems that allow for maximum flexibility, control and firepower.

All of that relies on maximizing predictability in the application of force, whether it is by human or machine agency. The environmental assumptions, i.e. state to state "conventional" warfare, really are not examined - they are axiomatic, assumed, and part of the basic perceptual reality. There really is a good reason for this: in a state vs. state "conventional" conflict this is what works best (again, given the technological and social environments).

So, as long as the operational environment is skewed towards this type of conflict, this is the best type of social relationship for it. But what happens when the operational environment, or part of it, changes? Let's play this out a little more fully. First, if we look at Iraq, there was an ops plan that fit with this form of social relationship - GEN Zinni's comments about "ad hoc" organization for post war stabilization - and that is basically an occupation along the lines of the Marshal plan. Second, this type of a plan was vetoed by Rumsfeld et al. for political reasons; in other words, the political environment forced the Army to shift from an operational environment that would have worked within an Authority Ranking system to one that cannot work in such a system. So, as a result of social / political decisions in the US (and the CPA), the entire operational environment changes to a situation where an insurgency is inevitable.

So, now we have an insurgency and, after several years, the Army, as an organization, goes "Oh, my!", dusts off the COIN material and says to the troops "Now you have to be flexible". BTW, this is a gross generalization which completely ignores the excellent work done by then MajGens Mattis and Petraeus. In fact, their style of operations led the way in developing the push for COIN - still within an overall Authrority Ranking structure, but much more emphasis on Equality Matching. Think about Gen Mattis' popularization of Sulla's epithet - "No better friend, no worse enemy" - that could be the motto for Equality Matching (for a full discussion of how that type of system operates, see Marshal Sahlins' work Stone Age Economics).

As we all know, COIN requires lots of initiative, flexibility and adaptability from very junior members of the forces. Still, it is also the best way to survive in that type of an operational environment even though it inverts some of the power relationships from the "normal" Authority Ranking system. So we now have a very interesting situation in the organizational culture. The "formal" culture is based on an Authority Ranking system - for good reasons, don't get me wrong on that ;). However, the formal culture has also "formally" admitted that "non-formal" methods (i.e. COIN) must be used in a number of situations, and these situations are life threatening. The people who have been deployed and "get it" will, inevitably, react by adopting some of the basic assumptions of an Equality Matching system, especially since those assumptions happen to dominate civilian life in the private sector of the US.

Part of the "organizational culture shift" involved is a re-examination of doctrine and a re-writing, sometimes on the fly, of "the Book" - and this has been encouraged for the past couple of years via such online communities as the SWC and the various "in house" communities. In effect, the "formal" organization of the military has said "reach out to your network to get answers; eventually we will codify them for you but, until then, use your network".

Now, this push towards network building and other forms of Equality Matching is based on survival in a changed environmental condition. Actions that are contra-survival, especially in an immediate "hot zone", are still frowned on (to put it mildly!). In Equality Matching systems, the worst "sin" you can commit is to betray your network in word or deed. Your "social capital", to use a currently popular phrase, is your reputation (note, not your rank or office).

This is why certain actions are more "unforgivable" in an Equality Matching (EM) system than in an Authority Ranking (AR) system - breaking OPSEC is one (it endangers and is a betrayal of your network); breaking the honour code is another (again, a betrayal of the network and the reputations of everyone in it); and blindly following the "rules" is another (it endangers the entire network). On the flip side, EM systems encourage actions that are "unforgivable" in AR systems: challenging "authority" and "received truth" (Weber's Bureaucratic and Traditional authority) when it does not act the way it "should" (i.e. when it doesn't work); accepting responsibility for fulfilling your word (i.e. doing the "right" thing to get the job done) rather than just following orders (i.e. doing what the "authority" says is "right"); and modifying and adapting to the immediate operational environment. The corollary of this shift is that, for people operating primarily in an EM system, individuals are responsible for their actions.

So, in a round about way, we get back to the start of this entire thing - network access. The military has formally admitted that it is, in some cases, "good" and "useful". The question is who decides what is "good and useful": the military as an organization or the individual within the military?

I think that it is quite understandable that people who "get it" will use whatever network they can to get the resources they need to do the job at hand. The vast majority will use their network contacts in a "moral" manner (i.e. according to the morality of the EM system): they won't break OPSEC, they won't dishonour their network, and they won't break their word. For these people, anyone who does operate "immorally" - the bad apples as it were - deserves what they get.

On the flip side, we have people who "don't get it". These could be the "bad apples" who need to be turned into apple sauce, or they could be the people who just believe that they (or the "organization") know best. This latter type, the "naturally occurring bureaucrat", believes that if anyone makes a mistake, everyone pays for it. They will sit in their air conditioned offices and think up new regulations that will allow them to show how any action committed by someone in the field that might possibly make them (the person in the office) appear to have been lax was, in actual fact, against regulations. I believe that the old term for this type of person is REMF.

Culpeper, I am certainly not arguing that anyone in the military should be able to access any site or post anything they want to. What I am doing is arguing that unnecessary restrictions that make it harder to get the job done should not be implemented, and that individuals who "stray" should be punished as individual. Banning all access based on the actions of a few is analogically the same as decimating (in the old Roman sense) a unit that does not achieve an objective they are ordered to.

Marc