The General Staff and Facebook

The General Staff and Facebook.
Andre Willers
4 May 2011

Synopsis:
The 150-person ceiling has been solved before by the invention of The General Staff .
Facebook is a General Staff in every person's cellphone .

Discussion :
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_(military)

Simply put , a Staff enables a single individual to command and control thousands or millions of people in an orderly fashion .
It handles all those pesky details .

The initial modern form was developed by
Berthier and Napoleon
The first modern use of a General Staff was in the French Revolutionary Wars, when General Louis Alexandre Berthier was assigned as Chief of Staff to the French Army of Italy in 1795. Berthier was able to establish a well organized staff support team. Napoleon Bonaparte took over the army the following year and rapidly came to appreciate Berthier's system, adopting it for his own headquarters, although Napoleon's usage was limited to his own command group.
The General Staff:
In 1814, Prussia formally established by law a central military command General Staff and a separate General Staff for each division and corps.
History :
I presume Berthier used ancient Roman and Greek experiences , but I am not going into that now .

The General Staff and Political Stability :
The existence of a General Staff leads to greater political stability . The latest instance of this can be seen in Egypt (2011) .
Conspirators have to ask " What does the Army think ?" instead of "What does the Colonel think?"
Without a General Staff there is no Army , only a collection of commands .

Companies :
The CEO faces the same problems . The General Staff here are called by many different names . Personal secretaries was a favourite in the 1800's . Directors in the 1900's . Personal Assistants in the 2000's . All are Staff Officers who exist to implement the will of the CEO over a large number of subordinates in an orderly fashion .
Sam Wall started it with WallMart .

Military applications of Facebook .
Already used in asymmetric conflicts in Egypt , Libya , Iran , Iraq , Afghanistan , etc , on all sides .
A military revolution on par with the technological changes in the late 1700's .
With each soldier having a General Staff in his cell[phone , the formal command structure will have to trot to keep up , or be rendered irrelevant ,

Multiple General Staffs
Also known as the Democratic Ceiling .
Without a technology like Facebook , the 150-person ceiling applies and political parties form Hierarchies form . Back to the old horse race .
With Facebook , there will be a strong force to tailor different versions with various degrees of compatibility . This is akin to speciation .

Virtual Species :
"Can the camouflage-clad warrior find happiness with gaudy butterfly? Can he even find her , if their Facebook privacy settings are incompatible ? "
Toys and their boys .
Andre