from the Central Intelligence Agency

Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community —
"The compressed response cycle gives the United States significant strategic and tactical superiority over our adversaries. Our national security is best protected when we operate more quickly than those who would do harm to our people and our freedom. This compressed response time allows us to disrupt, interdict, preempt, and respond to injurious efforts before our adversaries can achieve their goals against us.

This compression is not just a preferred work style within the US national security community. It is characteristic of the way the world works in the 21st century. Thus, not only do we respond more quickly, but also the circumstances to which we respond—in and of themselves— develop more quickly. These rapidly changing circumstances take on lives of their own, which are difficult or impossible to anticipate or predict. The US national security community— and the Intelligence Community (IC) within it—is faced with the question of how to operate in a security environment that, by its nature, is changing rapidly in ways we cannot predict. A simple answer is that the Intelligence Community, by its nature, must change rapidly in ways we cannot predict."

From the Buzz Machine

Guardian column: The Google economy:

My Guardian column this week argues that we’re witnessing not just the collapse of the financial (and auto and newspaper…) industries but the birth of a new economy best seen through - you guessed it - the lens of Google:

The financial crisis might be damaging countless companies around the world, but last month Google announced another quarter of growth, with profit up 26%. When it reported similar results two quarters before, The New York Times’ headline proclaimed, “Google defies economy.” It should have read, “Google defines economy.”"