The Restless Context: Military Institutional Awareness of Social Change
Abstract
This paper proposes the establishment of an agency, the Army (or the military) Institute of the Future, to perform a warning function concerning future social change that may achieve substantial impacts upon the American military institution. Potential impacts arising from the dynamics of modern life are many, multilateral, and comprehensive, especially in two areas: (1) technology and (2) manpower and organization. The time has come to establish a systematic monitoring agency to collect and interrelate pertinent data across the range of important human activities--technology, the arts, the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social and behavioral sciences. Limited devices perform this function now, but partially, sporadically, somewhat whimsically, and, beyond doubt, unsystematically. Part of the reason for lagging effectiveness is, according to qualified task forces, that the 'people research' systems of the armed forces are under-financed in general, overstaffed by (quantitative) psychologists, negligent of broad study transcending the problems of one service, still dominated by scientists whose expertise lies in weaponry, and suffering from short-range view-points. People and organizational affairs are proliferating as problems, of which dozens are identified.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 03, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA054367
Entities
People
- Anthony L. Wermuth
Organizations
- United States Army War College