To Reach Afghans, Pentagon Drafts Mimes, Storytellers, Wizard of Oz

[unhappycamper]

PENTAGON uses Wizard of Oz to break Afghan cultural divide.


To Reach Afghans, Pentagon Drafts Mimes, Storytellers, Wizard of Oz
By Noah Shachtman
June 25, 2010 | # 9:59 am

The Pentagon’s ultimate team of technologists is looking to looking to breach the cultural divide in Afghanistan — with storytelling, pantomime, and the Wizard of Oz.

After nine years of conflict, the U.S. military is still having trouble finding common ground with warzone locals. One way to fill that breach, Darpa figures, is through “interactive stories.”

Counterinsurgency, in many ways, is a series of negotiations — over economic development, over security, over political power. And “negotiation,” Darpa explains in a new request for information, “is best served by a culturally-specific narrative that explains why we hold a position, how it relates to other parties, and how it affects all parties both positively and negatively.”

Darpa’s tales are part of a larger Defense Department push to get smarter about the battlefield’s “human terrain.” Teams of social scientists are now embedding with combat units; Pentagon-funded researchers are building computer models of how the societies of Afghanistan and Iraq work; military pollsters are trying to tap public opinion in the conflict zones.

To come up with its story-telling tools, Darpa’s Information Processing Technologies Office is hoping to go beyond its usual cadre of neuroscientists, artificial intelligence specialists, and gadgeteers. The agency also wants contributions from “art, literature, film, dance, games development, advertising and public relations, advertising, grass roots organizing, collective decision making or any other discipline for which the respondent can make an argument that the approach bears on this task.”

[Oregone]

1. "Darpa’s Information Processing Technologies Office is hoping to go beyond its usual cadre of..."

Yeah. Sounds pretty nifty.

Certainly. Since getting out now is just too damn hard, right?

[Solly Mack]

2. Distance assimilation

[AsahinaKimi]

3. Maybe

We can ship them copies of the original Star Trek Episodes? ... Too much? :shrug:

[Moochy]

4. Just what this war needs!

More Artsy fartsy Psy-ops! Come all you unemployed drama majors, erstwhile mimes and itinerant storytellers!

[gratuitous]

6. Actually . . .

Connecting with another society and culture on an artistic level isn't a bad way to get to know them, and vice versa. Hearts and minds, as it were. I'm a little puzzled, however, why the military is implementing such a program. Not really their purview.

[Moochy]

7. A bad way to get to know a people: Bombing their innocents

Will the killing flying robots get a paint job? Will the missiles play culturally relevant music as they explode in the midst of a wedding celebration?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. They're getting desperate. K&R

[Ian David]

8. Petraeus and Karzai at Tenagra! n/t