The reading of Arthur Clarke’s short story “Superiority” had brought me to the following set of conclusions, in regards to how story’s motifs relate to particulars of my professional affiliation:
- The implementation of groundbreaking technologies to achieve practical results poses a variety of operational challenges. If these challenges are not being thoroughly observed, during the course of an implementation process, the actual effectiveness of revolutionary technologies’ deployment will be severely undermined. As it appears from Clarke’s story, the ultimate reason why practical utilization of Norden’s Sphere of Annihilation, the Battle Analyzer and the Exponential Field by Fleet’s commanders has failed to reach its strategic objectives is that it never occurred to these commanders that Norden’s inventions had changed the very essence of space warfare, as described by Clarke. After having been given powerful new weapons, Fleet’s commanders proceeded with deploying them in a conventional manner. Such course of their action was utterly inappropriate because: a) No research was conducted on possible side effects, associated with deployment of new weapons, prior to them attaining fully operational status, b) Commanders have failed at realizing a simple fact that the deployment of Sphere of Annihilation, the Battle Analyzer and the Exponential Field would never bring about the full spectrum of expected beneficial effects, unless Fleet’s tactics would be adjusted to correspond to new challenges and opportunities, associated with these new weapons.
- The juxtaposition of quality vs. quantity does not necessarily imply quality’s upper hand, within the context of a confrontation, especially when this confrontation is being concerned with military matters. During the course of WW2, Germans had produced 1.300 heavy Tiger tanks. These tanks were superior to Soviet and Allied armor in all possible respects. However, the utilization of Tiger tanks on WW2 battlefields did not achieve expected results, simply because these tanks’ utter technological complexity had prevented Germans from being able to manufacture them in sufficient numbers; whereas, the number of produced T-34’s alone accounted for 35.467.
By embarking upon Fleet’s rearmament in the middle of war, its commanders had lost strategic initiative – thus, allowing the enemy to take full advantage of its numerical superiority: “While we had been equipping as many of our ships as we could with the irresistible weapon, the enemy had been building feverishly. His ships were of the old pattern with the old weapons – but they now out-numbered ours” (1951, p. 3). Apparently, the enemy was quick enough to realize that the process of Fleet’s rearmament had reduced its technological superiority down to a minimum, which automatically provided the opposing party with an opportunity to use the realization of this fact to its own advantage.
- Under no circumstances should the empirical scientists be allowed to affect the process of designing military (organizational) strategy, due to their incompetence in this particular field. There is evidence in the story as to the fact that, after having been appointed as a Chief of the Research Staff, Norden never ceased meddling with purely military affairs, even though she should have been solely concerned with designing new weapons as his foremost priority. Apparently, despite his reputation as a talented scientist, Norden was quite incapable of realizing how his inventions might affect Fleet’s operational performance. In its turn, this can be explained by Norden’s inability to expand his intellectual horizons outside of lab’s walls: “We did not know, then, that he never promised anything that he had not already almost perfected in the laboratory. In the laboratory – that was the operative phrase” (1951, p. 2). It is not by pure coincidence that the popular preconception of particularly talented scientists regards them as absent-minded individuals, who despite their extensive academic credits, often have a hard time while dealing with life’s even most basic challenges. Therefore, I will always strive to make sure that, while at work, employees operate only within the range of their professional competence.
- The concept of technological superiority cannot be referred to as ‘thing in itself’ – people’s ability to take practical utilization of technological progress, simply reflects the subtleties of these people’s overall existential vitality. Despite the fact that, even as late as throughout the course of 4th and 5th centuries A.D., Roman army continued to remain technologically and organizationally superior to the armies of barbarians, it had failed at trying to prevent these barbarians from sacking the Rome in 410 A.D., simply because by that time, the majority of Roman soldiers felt themselves being utterly alienated from Roman traditional values. Similarly, despite the fact that America is still being considered as the world’s greatest military power, it had proven its utter vulnerability to terrorist attacks, carried out by individuals who profess anti-technological values of religiosity and self-sacrifice.
Nowadays, the majority of American citizens continue to remain deeply convinced that U.S. Army’s technological superiority is going to ensure country’s ability to effectively address geopolitical challenges in the post-industrial world. In a similar manner, Norden’s team of scientists remained convinced as to the fact that Fleet’s utilization of Sphere of Annihilation, the Battle Analyzer and the Exponential Field, would allow it to crush the enemy within a matter of very short time. And, we all know what had happened, as a result. In its turn, this brings us to conclusion that, under no circumstances should the concept of technological superiority be perceived as panacea to all objectively existing geopolitical problems – once the facilitators of technological progress are being deprived of their existential integrity, it becomes only the matter of time before they will be overwhelmed by numerically superior savages.
- The implementation of a new technology (organizational strategy) must serve a concrete practical purpose. As it appears from Clarke’s story, there were no objective preconditions for Fleet’s commanders to choose in favor of redesigning their strategic approach to dealing with the enemy, simply because even prior to Norden’s appointment as the Chief of the Research Staff, the Fleet has been enjoying tactical, strategic and technological superiority over the enemy forces: “The combined fleets of our allies greatly exceeded in number and armament those which the enemy could muster against us, and in almost all branches of military science we were their superiors” (1951, p. 1). In other words, prior to Fleet’s commanders having decided to take the advantage of Norden’s inventions, the enemy was being forced to play by its opponent’s rules, while indulging in space warfare. However, after Fleet’s commanders began to implement Norden’s inventions, this had ceased being the case. In other words, by deciding to improve Fleet’s operational performance, its commanders had unintentionally deprived Fleet of its strategic advantage over the foe – thus, creating initial preconditions for the Fleet to sustain an ultimate defeat down the road. What is means is that the implementation of a new technology should never be embarked upon, unless the possible effects of such an implementation are being thoroughly studied.
Nowadays, managers are often required to apply innovative approaches to ensuring the high effectiveness of employees’ professional performance, so that these managers would be able to gain the reputation of particularly ‘progressive’ individuals. In its turn, this explains the emergence of such sophistically sounding but essentially meaningless concepts as ‘transition-decision making’, ‘workplace empowerment’ or ‘participative leadership’. Yet, there are no objective reasons to think that the implementation of innovative approaches to managing the workforce should be associated with any practical benefits, in the first place. On the contrary, as practice shows – the more employees appear to be concerned with ‘attaining empowerment through celebration of diversity’ at the workplace, the lesser is their value as professionals. Despite the fact that innovative methods of managing make a good logical sense in theory, they make little logical sense in practice. This suggestion corresponds rather well with the main theme of Clarke’s story, which can be defined as follows: the deployment of new technologies cannot be considered as being automatically beneficial, in organizational/strategic sense of this word, for as long as people in charge of implementing these technologies, do not possess a clear three-dimensional insight onto the process’ possible social, political and geopolitical effects.