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by Dr. Carl W. Hunt, Ph.D., The SENDS Project, June 2011
This is a special edition of the SENDS Information Paper. This paper marks the conclusion of the one-year SENDS Pilot Project and the beginning of the SENDS Center for the Science of Cyberspace (SCSC) as it embarks upon its next phases. All of the original premises behind SENDS remain valid and yet are subject to continued scrutiny in our ongoing explorations of the domain we call cyberspace. That’s the way it should be in the scientific realm.
In the SENDS Pilot Project, we’ve validated that globally accessible information networks enable rich interactions that create an environment for massive exchange of information, services and goods. This was nothing new. What is new is that we are only now starting to appreciate and to admit how much we have yet to learn about the global connectivity in what we now refer to as cyberspace… about what happens when everything connects to everything, as we say in the SCSC prototype video.
If everything does connect to everything, still only a hypothesis at this point, how do we begin to understand the consequences of such massive interconnectivity? How do we even make sense of the role people play in such a deeply complex environment? How does leadership change? What are the effects of this interconnectivity in our national and global prosperity and security? May we ever hope to push past the preoccupation with cyberspace security and begin to exploit cyberspace’s role as a connective fabric that can bring us closer to each other and the knowledge we generate as a species?
The underlying interactions of the massive numbers of exchanges within cyberspace create complexities that transcend our current ability to adapt and to better leverage and secure the networked environments on which we so critically rely. These exchanges also hold the seeds of understanding—they promise answers to the questions above. We don’t yet understand the emergence of human and machine-based behaviors that enhance or threaten maximum utilization of cyberspace, but asking the right questions will guide us in determining the nature of the environment.
We need to more fully value the critical role that scientific inquiry plays. Without it we fall short in effectively explaining and predicting the nature of the threats we face in terms that help us resolve the “wickedness” of these challenges. Within the SENDS Pilot, we sought to establish that we need a “Science of Cyberspace” that better orients us to these threats and enables a more fundamental understanding of the nature of the environment and behaviors that “organize” it. Leaders face greater challenges motivating and maintaining cohesive discipline for their human assets in increasingly distributed, even globally dispersed organizations. These are all challenges SENDS may help resolve.
It is the purpose of the on-going work in SENDS to address these wicked problems in the context of cyberspace through scientific inquiry and experimentation, helping to build an open-source “Science of Cyberspace.” Through SENDS, we have begun to examine what might become the laws of cyberspace in ways that we all have the opportunity to define and leverage these new findings about this remarkable environment. These new scientific laws will influence understanding of cyberspace.
Since so much of cyberspace is virtual it’s also important to understand the role that virtual environments play in achieving new forms of connectivity and emergence, including even how we might map and explore it. What from existing virtual and physical environments informs this new study? This is also a fundamental question we explore in SENDS.
A “Science of Cyberspace” leverages the convergence of the natural and social sciences towards a further shared understanding and reality of the nature of cyberspace, both physically and socially, both “real” and “virtual.” The goal of SENDS research is to offer a transdisciplinary study in which we seek understanding of its physical, social and organizational impacts on nearly all aspects of life. It must be a scientific discipline that explains and predicts the nature of the connected collectivity, exchange and emergence that cyberspace enables, formalized through academic preparation and contribution. Above all, it must help us to educate new generations of the inhabitants of cyberspace to perpetuate its potential to bring mankind closer rather than segment us.
SENDS brings together leadership, business process, education, technology, law and policy, modeling and simulation techniques, metrics, and most importantly, people to these challenges. SENDS focuses not just on cyberspace technology but also on people: people as users, people as designers, people as protectors, people as attackers and people as solutions…indentifying and exploring all the roles people play in cyberspace.
We are seeking to develop this open-source science to address the challenges of achieving prosperity and security in the ecosystem of cyberspace, nationally and globally. SENDS leverages advanced modeling and simulation as a cyberspace laboratory, transdisciplinary perspectives to broaden thinking, and relevant educational curricula to prepare for the future, while constantly keeping in focus the goal of maintaining and enhancing freedom, prosperity and security for our nation and indeed for all who would connect with us.
The below graphic demonstrates major components we consider in SENDS from an ecological context. It illustrates the convergence of the diverse areas of study SENDS seeks to synergize.
The SENDS Ecosystem Model
SENDS integrates across a transdisciplinary landscape of study an effort that seeks to explain and predict the nature of exchange and connectivity that cyberspace enables and empowers, while keeping the ecological nature of the environment constantly in focus.
Updates on SENDS are available at: www.sendsonline.org. Please follow our transdisciplinary blogs at: http://sendsonline.org/category/blog/. The primary POCs for SENDS are Craig S. Harm, craig.harm@sendsonline.org and Carl W. Hunt, carl.hunt@sendsonline.org.
