Review: The John Boyd Roundtable
Thanks to Mark for passing along a review copy of the book. It’s a solid short read (my kind of book).
It has the uniqueness of both being able to touch off debate, but still offer a framework with which to talk about the future of warfare (or more appropriately, decision making) – in other words, it demonstrates exactly how to approach Boyd.
As an aside: This text caused a moment of clarity (rare in this town) and did a good job motivating me to get back to my intellectual roots, as well as follow the Boydian dictum of read, read, read (also something far too rare in this town) For that, a personal note of gratitude to the contributors, and editor.
Someone’s Diary, Updated
Didn’t think the entry would be from the Chairman of the Fed.
Him:
“We have lost control. We cannot stabilize the dollar. We cannot control commodity prices.”
Me:
We lost control. Then the dampening factors in the global system gave out. We were no longer able to absorb systemic shocks. There were no buffers. We saw this pattern replicate itself across food, energy, transportation, and financial networks. Then they came.
Responsibility
On one note – it’s about time. (Snipping Fannie/Freddie golden parachutes was a good move.)
On another – this school of thought – that its your responsibility to keep your bank running – is way off. Get out while you can.
Review: Increo’s Backboard Is Now Useful
In response to my review of Backboard, in short I said it was a castrated product without markup abilities, their CTO shot me an email when they fixed the problem. Now you can add a layer of red-pen style markups, very useful when working with formatting or a graphic.
Here’s where they should go from here:
- The next step: Allow me to “place” my text commentary on the document in question.
- Longer term: If it were able to handle multiple layers (think Photoshop, but one layer per person) you could juxtapose the various feedback loops and incorporate a variety of graphically represented thinking.
- Create tablet/PDA clients and this could really zoom, ideally as part of the Google office package.
At that point it would make sense to “connect” with Google maps, satellite imagery, etc etc.
Anyway, it’s a smart useful web application, and I’m glad to see them run with it.