I Can't Believe I'm Thinking This...

I just stumbled across a post from Bruce Sterling on Wired's "Threat Level" blog: "Threat Level is fascinated by the National Cyber Range." I found it because I happened to have read the BAA last week and I was now doing a little homework for a proposal. Let me first record that I applaud Mr. Sterling's calling attention and his quippish commentary. I have to admit that I've had many of the same thoughts over several years of working in this business and even today as I consider implications of potentially working this concept. But given rationalization, a most useful tool and frequent resolver of guilt, I am compelled to counter Mr. Sterling's remarks.

I'll start with the obvious: DARPA invented the Internet; the thing Mr. Sterling is using to exercise his freedom of speech (in the wide open, by the way - something that will get you jailed or killed in other places in the world). Brilliant and now legendary inventors like Vinton Cerf worked for DARPA. Two prominent California universities participated, too. Even then the Internet started with a trepidatious title: "Galactic Network," but here we are.

But enough of the obvious. It is easy to pique our fears by tapping into what is surely a bottomless well of sarcasm and criticism, particularly when one is not bothering to give treatment to any other relevant possibilities. At very least, an entirely contrary position owes some consideration of likelihood. Generally from there we do a good job of protecting ourselves from those downsides, particularly, believe it or not, where our privacy and rights are concerned. A more appropriate criticism would be one that counters the supposed benefits an endeavor such as this program may suggest to offer. Since none are suggested by Mr. Sterling I will have to come up with my own.

I have to start by asking myself, "What existing problems can this solve?" Or, "What questions can this answer?" Or better yet, just plain, "Why?" I know I have to consider these questions in "DARPA-hard" terms. It seems naive to reduce this to a matter of...what? DoD's attempt to CONTROL EVERYONE AND RULE THE WORLD!? ...muhahahaha! (I get sarcasm.) I am absolutely certain that the kind of folks who would work on a program like this are smart enough to know that the concept of people exchanging information in the form of data packets over wavelengths has no constraints on infrastructure. There is always peer-to-peer.

I do suppose it is worth making explicit, by law, the fundamental right to operate your own network on your own infrastructure...

If there was ever an obvious example of a lab experiment having massively unforseen consequences beyond the lab it is the Internet. Ironically, the very spread of the Internet itself must have all of the same characteristics of the spread of an Internet virus or else Internet viruses would lack the very means attributing their basic behavior. Spread of cell phone technology is even more pervasive. And it is all fantastic. But there is some really bad, bad shit that happens on OUR Internet - the one conceived of, invented, and owned by civil people - and it has nothing to do with privacy.

Spam is beyond out of control. It may be intractable. DARPA does intractable. Who would tolerate hundreds or thousands of phone calls daily? Why is Internet spam so disproportionately leveraged as an advertising medium compared to junk mail? Is it because spammers think it's better marketing? Or could it be because criminals are exploiting our Internet for personal gain?

Why would DARPA want the "ability to rapidly generate and integrate replications of new machines?" Could it have anything to do with the existence of multimillion node botnets wreaking havoc?

Then there's this CNN report of researchers demonstrating the feasibility of hacking and destroying critical infrastructure.

So, I just don't know. What exactly is wrong with trying to fix that stuff? Why can't that be DARPA's reason?

How about this one: "The ability to replicate large-scale military and government network enclaves." De facto, the military and government have every right to pursue that ability for themselves if they think they need it. Er, ourselves...if we think we need it. Whether we like it or not the military and the government is us and us and us. But, hey, wouldn't it be great if DARPA invented a revolutionary new way to replicate [FOO] large-scale network? Like the ones on which our banks run.

And this one: "The ability to connect to distributed, custom facilities and/or capabilities as necessary to incorporate specialized capabilities, effects, or infrastructures." Hello, system integrators. DARPA should call Apple for this one.

And: "Realistically replicate human behavior and frailties." Well, that's just DARPA being DARPA-weird.

Visualization Doesn't Matter

Sense-making matters. I've always been cognizant of the fact that people without sight have exactly zero use for visualization. (Probably not 100% true, I bet.) The point is that there is nothing presumptive about visualization that makes sense-making possible. It is the human mind that makes sense-making have even meaning enough to give way to possibility. Communication matters, too. Certainly visualization makes communication possible by providing an entire medium/channel/wavelength such that when we lack it our communication may likely be impeded.

Obviously I think there is value in visualization. So why do I say it doesn't matter? Because visualization is never more than a means to an end. That end could be to have fun or it could be to make an important decision or it could be to send a message. But in any case, there can be 1001 means to achieving those ends and visualization is never more than one of them.

Why is this point worth understanding and remembering?

Selling. Working for customers. Providing a service to people. I am a computer scientist and a technologist and a visualization "guy" but my work and my business are all about people. Sometimes people forget what the word "technology" means.

And so when I'm talking to a customer about visualization and I find that we are talking too much about visualization then something is not right. We should be talking about the customer's wants, needs, pains in intellectual terms that are not constrained by any one means of achieving an end. It's up to me to decide how, where, why, and when visualization matters. That's what I'm getting paid to do.

Ok, so enough with the hand-waving. What is a practical example?

I have a customer who wants and needs to make an investment in visualization and part of his information technology capability. I know going in that the reason I am doing business with this customer is because he values visualization and knows he needs help integrating it into his IT portfolio. So I'm sitting down in front of him and giving him his first brief on what I am doing for him. Most of the hour long presentation (demonstrations, actually) is/are in terms of how visualization is used to present and interact with his domain data. He finds that all well and good in about 5 minutes, but what he really wants to know is "which of my problems does it solve?" And that's where it gets tricky. Because the answer is that visualizing domain information doesn't solve any problems de facto.

So do you want to talk about my visualization services or do you want to talk about your problems? What matters? I'm happy and comfortable discussing either. But in my business, people solve problems and it just so happens that my people are skilled at using visualization as a means toward that end.

Net-centricity v. Social Networking

Danger Room Editor, Noah Schachtman, has a rather interesting article on this topic in the Dec. 2007 print issue of Wired, 15-12. The main theme is the juxtaposition between net-centricity and social networking (although not exactly the social networking we know through Web 2.0 popular culture). The message about net-centricity is that it is highly effective as a destructive, lethal capability while social networking is better at stability operations and counter-insurgency. Some of the most advanced social networking groups in Afghanistan are just starting to step it up with computer hardware and software, I reckon to enable things like social bookmarking, collaborative placemarking, network analysis, pattern matching, and the like. But the focus in Iraq and in general is on personal interaction, almost eschewing technology. The irony of ironies is that our military has an excellent solution to a problem it does not currently have (fighting big wars with nations and dictators), while the terrorists and insurgents have swiftly mastered the technology domain of modern social networking - email, cell phones, text messages, chat, forums - and the military is reportedly now most successful resorting back to low-tech, human/psychological solutions. Not coincidentally or surprisingly, there is some heated debate about the role of social science in military operations. My interest is in the heart of the matter...the balance between communication technology and human interaction, particularly when technology gets in the way or solves the wrong problem. The insight in the Wired article is that, technically speaking, a better application of IT to the military's current and future challenges related to stability ops and counter-insurgency, as previously inferred, is closer to Web 2.0 social networking and collaborative read/write web technologies, web services, pub/sub and the like. I would go so far as to project the need onto the whole of government and civic life - federal, state, and local.