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Shachtman: Drone Attack

Once an avowed Wired hater, I've taken a shine to the recent vintage. The magazine's not so heavy on The Long Now boosterism, although some might argue its just been replaced by The Long Tail boosterism. In any event, I took a particular liking to Noah Shachtman's article on unmanned aviation in the military. Enough to attempt a tortured analogy.

Shachtman's piece captures a cultural divide between the Air Force, which views UAVs as planes requiring professional operation, and the Army which treats these devices as populist tools for more effective tactical ops. Both sides of the divide are rapidly adopting the technology, and adapting their cultures but in different means and ways, each choosing different shapings of the tools.

Lesson learned? Not either/or but and.

I'm not big on the journalism vs blogging debate, but could a similar thing be happening with blogging packages and other social media tools? The pros are cautiously figuring out how to integrate and adapt, while the grunts are charging forward. Out of both efforts will come a variety of adapted tools, molded appropriately for their particular strategic and social contexts.

I told you it was a tortured analogy!

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