Naval Gazing.

As I have written in this space so many times before, I don't read business books to learn about the world. I read books about the world and apply their lessons to business. I believe my methodology is infinitely more effective than reading some volume by a business neophyte with a mere gift for aphorism.

About three weeks ago, I read this sentence in a book review in my favorite source for book reviews, the cheery, apologetic, fascist, radical right Wall Street Journal. Despite its politics, the Journal's book section is a joy. Even when polemics enter the critiques, I have enough in my head to be able to deal with their creepy creepiness.

This particular review was by Paul Kennedy, a scholar whom I respect. He's professor of history at Yale University and the author or editor of some 20 books, including “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery” and “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” There is much more value in reading something by the likes of Kennedy than some pablum somebody spouts on some podcast or on Linked In. 

But for most people, the world is TL/DT. Too Long/Didn't Think. There are certain things and people you must find time for, and think about.

Besides, I liked the picture in the review.

Kennedy's review started out with these sentences. They reminded me of "Baseball Annie's" lines from "Bull Durham." "A man will listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay." That's good writing advice, too. Whether you're writing a commercial, a blog post or a history book. This, for a reader, is more than foreplay. It's five-or-six-play.

Every so often a work of history comes along so substantial in its sheer size, so erudite in its scholarship and so well achieved that it makes others seem minor by comparison. So the appearance of “The Price of Victory,” the third and final volume in N.A.M. Rodger’s massive naval history of Britain, is worth special attention—and not only to readers interested in maritime affairs. For what Mr. Rodger has done here is to use the lens of Britain’s naval story, from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of World War II, to offer a majestic, confidently written sweep of historical scholarship. There is really nothing quite like it, or that comes close to it, in any recent work of military or naval history.

I was in the middle of something else when I read this review. No matter, I hastened through my previous reading and moved "The Price of Victory" up into the on-deck circle.

I'll admit. 

It's been a slog. 

And at 976 small-type pages, there were more than a few moments when I asked the ceiling, "why do you do this to yourself?" Sometimes my reading can feel like voluntary root canal.

Because it ain't easy being an autodidact. I work at it and I persevered. The last 400 pages or so have been more than worth the price of Amazon's monopoly pricing policies. I could hardly care less about the Naval History of Britain, 1815-1945. It's what I'm learning about today that makes it all worthwhile.

As you might expect in a book about war, there's a lot of "Price," that's about technology. After all, in 1815, battles were fought not that differently than were fought in Roman times. Just a century and a third-later, we had jets, nuclear weapons, and rockets and guns that could hit targets they couldn't even see. Not to mention radio, radar, advanced cryptography, encryption and more.

That's a lot in a little.

Additudes about technology, to my eyes, mirror our attitudes today about "big data," AI, Quantum, the singularity and anything else the silicon-imbibers spit out. 

Here are just a few highlights I've selected about tech from "Price."

Determined not to learn from other people's experience...That reminds me of everything and everyone in the agency business and government (a modren oxymoron.)

Half the meetings in client-ville and agency-ville attempt to make work a sure thing.  All will be well if we best practice. We believe now, as we believed then, that we can outsmart risk. No more than you can outsmart chance. Believing you can is that highest of sins, arrogance before the gods.

Emotionally, of course, we want to believe in an AI-propagated Valhalla. One where customers are satisfied, waits are non-existent and service is pleasing and blithe. Wholly at variance with the known facts of the situation.

A zealous quasi-religious faith in technology. No matter what reality shows you.

The companion of that is this. A reminder that we "over-believe" in technology. In almost every aspect of our lives. What's more a companion to the conviction that technology cures all problems is a devaluation of people. 

I have a sense that AI will ultimately prove to be like the bombing of Germany or Vietnam. You can't win without boots on the ground. (People.) People are better at people than machines and math are better at people. And always will be until we're crushed by aliens in silicon ivory towers.

Finally, for me (and I'm not finished with the book yet) is this, my favorite passage:

Yes, this is about a war fought almost one-hundred years ago. But the profundity and the relevance of the wisdom is unmistakable.

What's more, since amerika appears seems at this point to be (mis)led by an autocrat, I promise you as we sink further and further into decay, we'll hear more and more about dream or miracle weapons--the magic that will change everything. You know, kinda like AI.

They never come.
They never work.
They never will.
We never learn.