Big Data and The Vietnam War
Computers, Electronic Data, and the Vietnam War (1988)
http://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/archivaria/article/viewFile/11490/12434
The experience of the 1940s and the 1950s made it apparent that the computer could be applied to war in a number of ways: processing text; keeping track of personnel actions, scientific and mathematical problems; and guiding aircraft and weapons. However, it was not until the appointment in 1961 of Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense that computer-based quantitative business analysis techniques offered new and ingenious procedures for the collection, manipulation, and analysis of military data.
Hereafter no decision was seriously considered without computer analysis to support it.
Using the ever-increasing mass of field data coming from Vietnam, McNamara initiated a monthly periodical in Washington starting in January 1967 called the Southeast Asia Analysis Report.
One of the best known of all the statistical reporting systems was the body count. It originated even before the American buildup when American advisors tried to justify the claims of South Vietnamese units that a certain action had been successfu
Thayer stated that quantification, a duty best performed by the computer, was only the first step. One needed to analyze the quantified data to make any sense of it. Analysis revealed persistent patterns and cycles. The body count, often criticized as being excessive and misleading, was an example of quantification without analysis
Figure 1 : Conducting a War by Computer, Vietnam, ca. 1968. Photo by Philip Jones Griffiths. Courtesy: Philip Jones GriffithdMagnum Photos Inc., New York City.
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535HON
Presentation on Big Data in Vietnam War
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/stuytobin-1272383-computing-the-vietnam-war/
First Hand experience of the computers used in the Vietnam war:
served as a manager for IBM in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971.
