Standardize systems, not people

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0400

In January 1994, I attended a NEXTSTEP conference in Washington. One of the speakers was Paul Strassmann, a former Director of Defense Information for the United States government. The archived programme places his address on January 26, at the Sheraton Washington.¹

I remember his argument clearly. He described the battlefield as an exceptionally complex setting: decisions of life and death, an adversary potentially as capable as oneself, and a stream of information from satellites, cameras, communications and sensors. In that environment, gathering more data was not enough. The challenge was to identify, at the right moment, what mattered to the person who needed to act.

Work Organization on Bifurcations

Standardize systems, not people