Education or Training: what’s the difference? Do we really care in this age of total connectivity? Everything’s connected to everything, isn’t it? This is the Information Age…why isn’t everyone informed, educated and trained to operate in cyberspace…why is this even an issue? Those in the business of preparing people to think and perform better in life are clear in distinguishing the difference between education and training. We need both but as
This week I had the privilege of talking about SENDS at the summer, 2011 meeting of the Coalition for Advancing Cybersecurity Education (CACE), in Dayton, OH. I’ve had a long-term relationship with the USAF’s Center for Cyberspace Research (CCR) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, and I’m not surprised that CACE would hold their meeting here. The CCR is also part of the CACE effort, and a cosponsor of SENDS. CACE is an “open” association in
This past Wednesday, Craig and I delivered the SENDS Pilot Project Out-Brief to our government sponsors in the US Air Force Institute of Technology Center for Cyberspace Research and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. It was a challenge to capture a year’s worth of effort within a two-and-a-half hour presentation and demonstration, but it was also a stimulating experience. We had a great story to tell! You can follow along with the slides from the
In past blogs, we shared our thoughts about the future, the potential of virtual worlds and their use in developing the SENDS Center for the Science of Cyberspace (SCSC). Let’s discuss what we have learned and how we visualize the virtual world component of the SCSC. Our journey began in the “real world” with the concept of a real brick and mortar facility; a very traditional approach requiring the expenses of a physical plant, its furnishings, and the corresponding
Last week, Craig and I presented an early glimpse of the SENDS Center for the Science of Cyberspace at the National Defense University’s Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds (FCFW) Conference at Ft. McNair, Washington, DC. The conference itself was an amazing assembly of people and projects seeking to “explore multi-agency and intra-agency collaboration using the robust capabilities of virtual worlds, examining best practices across multiple sectors,” as the
Many of today’s leaders grew up before cyberspace started exposing them to the benefits and challenges of massive connectivity and the emergence of social networking on such an immense scale. Many of them became “accidental” luddites…it takes one to know one and I’ve known a great many. These luddite-leaders actually performed a worthwhile service for cyberspace development: through their resistance to change, they slowed things down enough so that technology didn’t
Tuesday, Craig and I had the privilege of talking about SENDS to a couple of graduate-level classes from the US Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH. Their professor, Dr. Bob Mills, told us these students were part of AFIT’s Cyber Operations Capstone class, which is a seminar-style forum for AFIT’s cyber warfare students studying national security strategy, policy, roles and responsibilities and doctrine
The academic perspective provides for the long-term potential success of our nation in cyberspace and indeed around the world. As we grow responsible cyberspace-empowered citizens who better understand the nature of a connected environment and all that it enables, we may see the emergence of better, more environment-protecting behaviors of people who connect, no matter where they’re from. But, in order to succeed with the academic approach to cyberspace living, we need to address some important issues. We have discussed the
By now, following our blog and web links, you have seen numerous references to what we in SENDS call a Science of Cyberspace. We’ve been thinking about what such a science would include and how it might be articulated since the beginning of SENDS two years ago. We even started calling it “open-source science” to demonstrate it wasn’t something that would be developed exclusively in a lab somewhere by Ph.D.s and computer scientists. Without going into a discussion of what
It seems like we are always starting a new series of blogs at SENDS, and that we never really end a series once begun. Perhaps that’s a characteristic of transformation in human life. Perhaps that’s what happens in the socio-technological convergence we experience in the world of cyberspace…ideas just seem to keep connecting and propagating all over the web! Life transforms and coevolves with our technology…well enough of that kind
