Essay contest (7): We need to learn how to cut through the new megadata fog of war

A universal condition of future U.S. armed interventions is the dizzying amount of data that American forces will have thrust upon them at, each level of war and in every dimension of combat. The single most important thing the U.S. military can do to adapt to the Information Age is to channel the impending torrent of information, from a multiplicity of data sources, to relevant decision makers in useful forms. The face of battle in this era will still be defined by blood and hardship, endured by small groups of people surviving their way to the next objective, but in a much more complex context. That complexity will be apparent, often paralyzing, when flooding through a cornucopia of sensor systems. Computers will help stem the tide, but distributed human innovation, in the space between information and knowledge, is the only force that can contextualize the flow.