Re:Hawaii missile alert standdown delayed by forgotten log-in
by fredley on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @08:13AM
(#16213289)
I read an article recently about how we know what we know about history. The big takeaway for me was that most of what we know about ancient times, we know because the information was repeated. Ancient texts were copied by scholars and monks over and over again. Even when the originals were destroyed or decayed, we retained some of the copies. This turns out to be a common pattern with almost anything in the sum of human knowledge. We only know what is newly discovered, or what is rediscovered (repeated).
In the digital sphere we have the same issue. There is a whole heap of data out there, but much of it is under threat of being lost, because it only exists on a hard drive we have lost the technology to read, unless we rebuild it (but we've also forgotten how to do that). If the platters decay without that data being copied, it's lost forever.
Just as the military knows, with its constant drilling, the same is true of human behaviours too. Repetition is the key to everything we know, and everything we do. Knowledge and behaviours that aren't repeated will be lost.
Maybe it's important not to let any career exist that exercises its capabilities so infrequently. For example, firefighters train for massive disasters that rarely occur, but they more regularly fight smaller fires, and even more regularly respond to other problems like traffic accidents. So they are deployed on a very regular basis. Contrast that with the Minuteman missile teams who, I hope, have never ever fulfilled their role in actuality. Does this make them less effective?
Also makes me think about military efficacy. You can either go to war a lot, or find other ways to practice your skills. Which is why disaster response seems like such a natural fit for military.