Piled Higher And Deeper: A Bleg
bumped, because I wanted to
(From the old education joke. You know what B.S. is. An M.S. is more of the same, so…)
I’ve got an opportunity to enter a postgraduate degree program. I delayed for a year because it was the worst professional year I ever had. Now I’m trying for a reattack but am having difficulty figuring out how to frame the initial question for solving in a hundred thousand word thesis. I’m not afraid of the size of the project–this blog hit over a million of my (or quoted) words a while back; the money is in the bank ready to be spent as needed; and time in the off hours is achieveable. I’ve got some advisors for my master’s who will vouch for me at the new school.
But what to do, what to do.
So far, I’ve been considering three ideas.
- What a Navy foreign area officer is and how to make it work (not a big enough subject; file 13′d.)
- Change in military organizations, as a “how to make it happen”. Individuals in organizations, changing organizational culture, affecting procurement and development of weapons systems. Others have done a lot of work on this already, although I haven’t seen much on “how do I make this happen?”
- How would a “Genocide prevention unit” work; how to enable it, how to get the support, how it fails, how it might succeed.
- Something involving information warfare and Islamism.
Any comments / suggestions / ideas? I’m stumped, and if I’m stumped this early in the problem there’s no way I’ll finish the thesis proposal.
13 Responses to “Piled Higher And Deeper: A Bleg”
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July 16th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Perhaps something on finding a way to make Barnett’s “SysAdmin” work in the real world?
July 16th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
That’s some of what I was probing in my series of “Genocide Prevention” posts. Two problems with just critiquing Barnett:
–It’s a book that will be superseded in four or five years, when I’m done writing
–It’s his idea, not mine, and framing it that way would work only if I were working for him.
Also, I’ve figured out that I get interested in execution, the how of getting things done. I’d prefer to work on the ‘how’. Barnett’s apparently got his second book just on that–it’s called A Blueprint For Action–so my effort might well be duplicative or derivative.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:58 am
It strikes me that if this will be a 4 or 5 year project option two might be the most timeless solution.
Of course as you well know you’d be wading into an absolute swamp.
July 17th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
It’s blatantly apparent I haven’t earned my Power Point Ranger patch…. I ought to have shoehorned ‘future-proof’ in there somewhere…
July 17th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
how about something about how easy communications have made it so staffs are micromanaging every aspect of an operation – the old days it used to be “co, here’s your mission, make it happen”. today it’s almost to the point where the staff’s are keeping minute by minute counts of vehicles and pax moved during an operation instead of worrying about the big picture.
Yeah, that’s my nightmare. And I’m living it. I’m just glad I’m not on the ship saying WFT do they need to know this for?
Part of it’s our own fault, part is we’re allowing HHQ in Tampa and DC to bully us into it because they are trying to get the same level of granularity just in case their boss(es) ask. There’s something wrong with staffs worrying about Divo or Dept head level questions, but it’s happening now, and it’s just going to get worse with the ease of comms that we have now.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Option 4. “Memetics” is in and of itself a tired meme, but it is how the Long War is being fought and will be won or lost.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:19 am
You might re-consider the FAO question. Reason being, the FAO and FEF programs are annually under fire, both from OSD and from inside OPNAV and N51 (or whatever they are calling it in this “transformed” age) has had to fight a rear-guard action. A thoughtful, reasoned thesis on the need for both might just find sponsorship from that beleagured organization…
-SJS
July 18th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Number 4 – information warfare could include historic references, including Michael Collins’s masterly use of propaganda at the beginning of the Irish kerfuffle, 1919-1922. You could dig into the family backgrounds of the owners of American and British newspapers to see whether/how their belief systems influenced editorial.
You could examine all the stresses and influences on the Cairo Conference – which is the meeting that divided up the region, same as dividing up Ireland in 1920, ill starred from the get-go.
Some of the “information warfare” from WW1 is still embargoed in the UK’s archives, going back to the spying that was taking place in the years leading up to ‘the Guns of August’. Someone told me just the other day that lots of stuff relating to Erskine Childers has still not been released.
Even if you ONLY looked at information warfare from the Viet Nam era, it would still be interesting and fresh and new.
Sorry to go on…
July 18th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Isn’t this what a thesis advisor is supposed to help you do? For my own part, number 1 sounded rather too large for thesis, rather than too small. You’ve got to get something bounded enough to be really, really smart on it, and have the research/surveys to support the matter. Number 2 is all the rage, and there’s plenty of literature out there on becoming flatter, leaner, more responsive, etc – the problem is (in my view anyway) that most of that literature is personal opinion almost to the point of conjecture, but I guess if you can throw names like Drucker and Iaccoca around, you can sell a textbook, so a thesis should well be possible. Numbers 2 and 4 sound promising to me because of the scope and scale – just need to have the footnotes to turn opinion into scholarship.
Good luck – and save your notes ;-)
July 18th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
I’d second CAPT Lex with a stronger recommendation for option 2. More material for thesis fodder, and there is no right answer anyway. (But I’m a nuke and the laziest man on the face of the Earth, so naturally I’d take that one — it also has advantages on the outside, which I assume is in the not too distant future for you). Option 4 is relevant and lots of material is available, but it is incendiary if you get the wrong prof. Nothing wrong with sticking your neck out, but you wouldn’t want to say the wrong thing if Juan Cole was your prof.
Anyway, all good ideas and interesting subjects. Do what you want. But don’t think you need to choose something special to help on the outside. The sheepskin is all that’s necessary for you, nuke. Make sure you get it on the Navy’s dime, or at least what you can of the Navy’s dime (Tuition Assistance).
Subsunk
July 18th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Contemporary world events are forcing the USN into the biggest change it has endured since the 1870′s. Mullen’s move to GFS’s is a dawning recognition of that.
You being a nuke (oh, how Porter hated you engineer types)- bubblehead-FAO (that latter in the era of cammo sportin’ squids spending their “sea duty” kicking sand) , and interested in organizational change…You seem to be in the Catbird Seat.
July 20th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
I am in the third year of a Ph.D. program at RPI, writing on the history of U.S. military thought since Vietnam, specifically the impacts of information technologies and nonlinear science on the development of information warfare concepts. A few things to think about:
1) Are you already accepted to a Ph.D. program, or are you in the process of applying? If you are at the application stage, this does not need to be that fleshed out just yet. I would narrow your interests to fewer than 4, but you don’t need to have your entire dissertation proposal worked out yet. That comes later. If you can narrow your interest in a project down to one topic, that is best, but two closely related topics that are yet to be formed into something unified and unique is probably acceptable. Admissions committees want to see that you’ve put some serious thought into what you want to do, but they don’t expect you to have it all figured out. You will have at least a year, probably more like 2 years, of course work in which to explore and figure out more fully what you want to do. Your final project may end up being completely different than what you originally intended to do.
2) What kind fo program is it? Political science, engineering, history, etc.? The discipline will have a big influence on what the project is. Certain projects are more appropriate for certain disciplines. Again, if you’re still in the application phase, take your best stab at identifying a dissertation project now, but remember that during your course work you will be “disciplined”, i.e. turned into a good ____ (political scientist, historian, etc.) and will learn what is kosher in your field and what is not. No doubt your thinking on your project will change a lot during this period.
3) Who do you want to work with in the department to which you are applying? If you don’t know, take a look at the faculty list, read faculty webpages, look at CVs, read some of their publications. Beyond the course work phase, this is really about you, your advisor, and your committee. Ideally, you want to work with someone who shares your interests, values, work ethic, etc. If you are applying to multiple schools, the project that you propose in an application for one program may not be the same as for another, depending on who you want to work with in that program.
4) Career wise, where do you want to be after the dissertation? In terms of your research and your life after dissertation–if you go the academic route, the dissertation will become a book, requiring a couple more years of polishing before publication–with whom do you want to be “in conversation”? Meaning, you’re gonna be spending a lot of time reading stuff by a certain group of people, talking with them, going to conferences, etc, etc: Which group of folks would each of these topics put you in contact with? Would you be happy spending 5, 6, 7 years, maybe more, reading, writing about, working with/against these folks?
Of course, all of this is assuming you are in the application phase, which is the impression I get from your initial post. Point 4 above still applies even if you are already in a program though. Beyond that, if you are already in a program, you need more than a “topic”. You start with a topic, of course, but the goal is to take that topic and from it form an empirical question that is answerable, by you, in the amount of time and writing space you are given, with the resources at your disposal. So, for example, “organizational change, how to make it happen?” is probably too big. That is a question that an entire discipline of people is working to answer. Your goal should be to ask a more pointed question that contributes to answering that broader question.
In terms of the topics you mentioned, I agree with one of the other commentors that 2 and 4 seem to be the most promising. Why? With 2 there is a large body of literature from which to draw. That’s good; that plugs you into a network of folks already working on similar issues. However, part of doing a dissertation is doing something innovative as well….but not too innovative. If it’s completely new, no one has ever done it before, then there’s no body of established scholarship to draw from/contribute to. Topic 4 might be more susceptible to that problem than topic 2. However, topic 2 might provide more of a challenge in terms of doing something innovative.
Is there a way to combine the two? To study the role of IT-mediated communications in organizational change? Maybe you could do two case studies: Islamic fundamentalist use of IT and its impact on their ability to adapt and U.S. miltiary use of IT and its ability to adapt. What about milblogs as a component to all of this? Right now there is an online community of thousands of American soldiers communicating from all over the world via milblogs. Maybe that could be a third case study (case studies often come in 3′s anyway). What can we learn about IT-mediated communications and organizational adaptation/flexibility by examining Islamic fundamentalists online, milbloggers, and the U.S. military? You would set yourself up nicely for being able to make recommendations about improving communications within the military based on your findings.
Anyway, just some ideas to toss around. I hope some of this was helpful. If you’d like to chat more, feel free to contact me. lawsos [at] rpi [dot] edu
July 21st, 2006 at 1:19 am
All, you’re very kind.
Kevin, you’re not the first guy to deal with this phenomenon! You’re suffering in a similar manner to what the captains did when they had a radio linking them to the shore. Oh, the pain. (The more recent version of which I can remember, and let me state for the record, ow.) ISTR at the beginning of WWII admiral Charlie Lockwood sent out something along the lines of “My guys are not sending any more admin traffic. If you really really need it, you contact my staff and justify it twice. Sir.” It reduced the burden by half.
SJS, I’ve been working on that operationally rather than academically. There’s more organizational momentum than there was in 1996 when the first failed attempt happened; my little part has been connecting people to each other, reminding the people who weren’t there how the program failed before, and being an all around noodge.
Cap’n Lex, good points. I have to do this thing sort of backwards, since I won’t be attending any classes on campus and will work with the guys on campus remotely. They ask for a thesis proposal first and then start beating on you!
Carol, good point–there are some neat ways to build an information warfare research line. (And the military folks around here seem to think IW is what the EW guys did and a few extra leaflets sometimes. Oog.)
Subsunk, TA covers, oh, a couple hundred bucks for a little over a dozen credit hours. This thing will be about ten grand a year out of pocket. Ouch.
Sid, I think I’ve been wandering into the interesting paths just before they change into something else!
Sean, you’ve reminded me I owe you some links on institutional change in the Navy in that period of time–there are a couple of long-retired captains, now academics, that do that up at the Naval War College I’ve worked with on occasion (connecting me with the Rosen book, for instance).
The program is pretty specific–a research doctorate that is at the British equivalent of Naval Postgraduate School. They’ve asked for a 3000 word thesis proposal, and I’ll be doing the work on the other side of the planet to my professors. I’ve scanned the list of folks in the department; nobody I’ve worked with before, but several folks who fit the categories above, and the school program’s got an upcheck from my previous master’s thesis advisors.
Good point on the importance of asking the correct question. That indeed is my sticking point! I hadn’t thought about combining the ideas like that–although from watching all the excited people jumping up and down about steganography and Islamist web sites I bet there’s some interesting stuff being done right now. I’d be interested, I think, in the process a young man undergoes that takes him from kid watching shahidi music videos to strapping on the ol’ Semtex himself, and how to interrupt it. And milblogs are indeed a flavor of the moment I know a little about.