zenpundit.com

An intriguing post from the loudly mysterious Kent’s Imperative:

“SIGINT in the exaflood environment ”

“There has been a lot of talk recently regarding the implications of the rising rate of data exchange for policy issues such as network neutrality and broadband penetration. The term exaflood – coined by one particularly lobbying group – is apt enough, even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with their proposed solution approaches.

….Traditional SIGINT techniques – even within the relatively new realm of digital network intelligence – are the products of an earlier era, in which the target set and its emanations were distinct enough from its environment to be amenable to capture and analysis using a certain degree of discrimination. The kinds of intelligence that will be required against the adversaries of tomorrow will be increasingly less able to rely on the traditional tradecraft which is undergirded by such assumptions.

We do agree with the statement, frequently attributed to former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis & Production Mark Lowenthal, to the effect that “there is no such thing as information overload, only poor analytical strategies.” However, the exaflood will challenge both collection and analytical strategies such as never before. Against this backdrop, we look to the continuing infrastructure, language, and human resources challenges faced by those in this section of the community, and greatly wonder if our future community will be adequate to the task.”

Read the rest here.

Hmmm. What does this mean then? Will the digital environment itself be the target with “the system” set to by stymied by ( and thus alert human operators to the existence of) processing of data pattern anamolies ? Looking for “non-haystack”, however defined, to stand out from a sea of carefully studied hay? How do we know the exact parameters of a continuously evolving complex system of systems of networks ? My head spins.

I am thwarted in my attempt to comprehend by my inherent  non-geekiness. My kingdom for a slide rule!

MILDLY INTERESTING

For wordsmiths, Visuwords.

I looked for an embed code and did not see one anywhere on the site. If one exists, could the more technically capable out there point it out ? I’d like the graphic to appear in this post.

OPEN-SOURCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

One of the more significant developments in terms of creativity in the past decade has been the advance of open-source platforms that permit asynchronous but real-time, mass collaboration to occur. A phenomena that has been the subject of recent books like Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect and Wikinomics:How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams; or, become a functioning business model as with Ross Mayfield’s Socialtext; or, a metaphor for the evolution of a new dynamic of warfare, as in John Robb’s book, Brave New War. And nearly everyone with an ISP is familiar with Wikipedia and most have at least heard of Linux.

The open source concept is a very useful one because it has efficiency, in both the evolutionary and economic senses, adapting faster than closed, hierarchical, competitors and at lower transactional cost ( the price for these advantages is diminished control and focus). As with scale-free networks, it was the advent of the internet and the web that brought the potential of mass collaboration to the attention of economists and social scientists. But did mass collaboration on the cognitive level (the physical level is as old Stonehenge or the pyramids) only start with the information revolution ?

Probably not.

If we look back far enough in the history of great civilizations, you will find semi-mythological figures like Homer or Confucius to whom great, even foundational, works of cultural creativity are attributed. Intellects of a heroic scale who were philosophers and kings, lawgivers, prophets or poets and who produced works of timeless genius. Except that they may either not have existed or their works represent efforts of refinement by many generations of anonymous disciples ( eventually, scholars) who interpreted, polished, redacted and expanded on the teachings of the revered master.

This too was mass collaboration, over a much longer time scale and of a much more opaque character than Wikipedia. Scriptural works went through a similar process, whether it was the scribes of King James, or a medieval Ulemna favoring some teachings of the Hadith over others, or Jewish sages translating the Torah into Greek, despite occasional claims of divine inerrancy, most religious texts were shaped by a succession of human hands.

What the Web has done is to vastly accelerate and democratize the process of mass collaboration and render it more transparent than ever before.

PORTALS, PLATFORMS AND RULE-SETS

Blogfriend Critt Jarvis has reinvented his online presence and returned to some of his original intellectual concerns from back in the days when he was a founding member of The New Rule-Sets Project, later purchased by Enterra Solutions. Critt is jumping off a post by Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion and extending the argument with “Steve Rubel is right, do you know why ?“:

“He’s right. Here’s why. Web portals are social networks, and social networks aggregate to a global conversation market.

Like global or world cities — for example, New York, Paris, Tokyo, London — where, from the transparent nexus of culture, governance, infrastructure, commerce, and fashion, we expect to consistently have a really good time,

The global conversation market has the necessary resources to accommodate a global social network.

For a really good time in the global conversation market …

Find your portal to social networks

Web portals provide stability in social networks, requisite to emerging conversation markets.
Web portals provide growth of social networks.
Web portals provide resources for social networks.
Web portals provide infrastructure for social networks.
Web portals provide money for social networks.
Web portals provide rules for social networks.
Web portals provide security for social networks.

And remember this

Absent stability, there’s no conversation market.
Absent growth, there’s no stability.
Absent resources, there’s no growth.
Absent infrastructure, there’s no resources.
Absent money, there’s no infrastructure.
Absent rules, trust me, there’s no institutional investor money.
Absent security, the rules don’t work.

For me, the social networking wars are over. What I need to do now is find my place in the portals. Which makes me wonder, What is going to happen to Twitter?”

One of the interesting things about Critt is his ability to embed a large number of important concepts at the implicit level in his writing. Critt’s primary interest for the past few years has been facilitating “global conversation”; that is people to people connection on a global scale of magnitude. An interest that is congruent with his expertise in technical platforms as tools of communication.

These platforms and by extension, the portals that serve as gateways, represent rule-set systems that offer maximum connectivity and transaction of a certain kind with a minimum of friction and direct cost. These are rule-sets for the enjoyment of “ordered liberty”. For example, Second Life provides the user with system access and tools with which to communicate and create but within these strong minimalist confines, citizens of Second Life primarily must self-regulate. This contrasts with the fairly stringent, proprietary, ethos of other MMORPG like Everquest or World of Warcraft.

These services, while entertaining, stifle user creativity and innovation via techno-paternalism. Arguably, in an economic sense, these companies have a business model that opts for maintaining hierarchical control over outcomes within their system over maximizing the growth of their market share or the growth of the user-market itself by limiting user transactions by orders of magnitude. Ultimately, as Web 2.0 concepts permeate the wider global culture, this position becomes self-defeating – the creation of virtual ghettos.

Mr. Jarvis understands that, in the long run, it’s a road to nowhere.

CONFERENCE

Away today at a history conference – ” 21st Century Freedom” – a refreshing combination of GWOT from a historian’s perspective combined with Web 2.0 changing society and the discipline of teaching history. Back later tonight.