These past few months have brought us “the war on Christmas”, “the war on women”, and anything else the news would like to hype up to make us feel victimized. So when I saw the title of a recent article, I had to laugh. Information Week Government brought this to us in their article, “The War On Military Records.”
As is often the case with major media-focused events, such as the end of combat operations in Iraq in September 2010, records and the details they can provide future historians are not the focus of media coverage. The media focused on what the event meant militarily and to the troops and their families. And of course, the financial implications.
Little attention was paid to the documents that will be crucial to future historians and others who will debate the conduct of the conflict, and determine the eventual big picture.
Often, people think of digital data as being inside a building or corporation. It isn’t often thought of as existing on the battlefield. However, with the Internet and cloud technology, the era of big data has arrived on the battlefield, and we need to find new ways to deal with it.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
