Carl H. Builder

Is it a transition or a revolution

Abstract The power relationship in the world are currently undergoing a fundamental structural change, largely attributable to the microchips transformation of the information technologies. The losers of power in this change are hierarchical organizational structures everywhere which have historically been erected and sustained on the control of limited information. The effect of the change is analogous to the Renaissance, when the clerical hierarchies lost their control of information to new secular enterprises. This time, however, the diffusion of power is much more widespread; and the drama of the next few decades is how power will accrete in the new electronic networks that are rapidly shrinking the globe.

Global healthcare and the flux of technology

We begin with the inescapable observation that healthcare informatics is merely one of the many endeavors that is following a turbulent but nearly inescapable path into a digital future. Our objective in this paper is to describe as best we can the overall geography of the general path we appear to be on, to anticipate some of our future checkpoints along the way, to identify some of the roughest transitional passages, and to offer this as one guide among many to those who have volunteered to do the steering into this exciting, electronic unknown.

New methods for strategic analysis: Automating the wargame

A new method for automating political-military games as a means of analyzing strategic forces was recently developed and demonstrated by The Rand Corporation. Interest in this technique sprang from dissatisfaction with the dominant methods of analyzing strategic forces: manual political-military games and force exchange models. While each brings important capabilities to the analysis of strategic forces, neither method can independently handle all of the variables required to satisfy the current demands placed on strategic analysis. Rand drew upon the discipline used to develop models and the flexibility inherent in gaming to develop its automated wargame. The method promises significant improvement over the traditional methods of strategic analysis in breadth of input and flexibility of application.