Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Memetics and Military Strategy

A professor friend of mine has been invited to a conference sponsored by DARPA on the usage of memetics in military information strategy.

I'm fairly surprised that the military is only starting to use memes this late in the game. With the success of the Bush campaigns and memetics ("Flip-floppers" and "Al Gore invented the internet") I would have thought Rumsfeld would have applied this technique ages ago.

Mostly though, the ability to manipulate information and history frightens me. Currently, the level of manipulation in our information sources - mainstream, political, etc - is ridiculous. The extra addition of military information twisting frustrates and concerns me with respect to our societal ability to function with all information spun to the umpteenth degree.

Freedom of speech and freedom to manipulate speech are two very different beasts.

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