The End of Cyberspace

Martin Libicki and the conquest of cyberspace

A decade ago, Martin Libicki wrote Defending Cyberspace, and Other Metaphors. Among other things, two essays examine the utility of the metaphor of "cyberspace" in military thinking:

"Deterring Information Attacks," continues the examination of the metaphor that information warfare is indeed warfare by discussing the problems of retaliation and asking whether an explicit policy of retaliation is workable and thus likely to deter....

The last essay, "Point, Counterpoint, and Counter-counterpoint," was inspired by a search for a new metaphor for new kinds of warfare. Conflict has classically been modeled by orthogonal lines of defense and attack. Today's asymmetric warfare is about points, blots, and gated fences, topological forms with particular applicability to information warfare.

Tonight I see that Libicki's latest book, Conquest in Cyberspace: National Security and Information Warfare, is coming out this year. From the Cambridge Press catalog description:

With billions of computers in existence, cyberspace, 'the virtual world created when they are connected,' is said to be the new medium of power. Computer hackers operating from anywhere can enter cyberspace and take control of other people's computers, stealing their information, corrupting their workings, and shutting them down. Modern societies and militaries, both pervaded by computers, are supposedly at risk. As Conquest in Cyberspace explains, however, information systems and information itself are too easily conflated, and persistent mastery over the former is difficult to achieve.

Technorati Tags: books, military, security

Travel in the Internet age

There are lots of examples of how the Internet hasn't rendered the physical world irrelevant, but instead made it more accessible. For example, today I got a visa to go to Australia next week. Actually, I just got the visa a few minutes ago, while sitting in a chair in the bedroom.

via flickr

The Australian Electronic Travel Authority Web site lets you apply for a visa online. For anyone who remembers the whole process of standing in line at a consulate, this is a small miracle, almost up there with the revolution in international calling. It's so much easier, it's hard to describe.

Of course, like any good miracle, it consists of a couple parts. The first is being able to avoid lines: I did all this at home. Second, and probably more impressive, the visa no longer has to take physical expression in the form of a stamp in my passport: the visa resides in the Australian customs' database, which presumably is present whenever you (legally) enter the country.

Technorati Tags: Australia, travel

links for 2007-01-24

• Taylor & Francis Group - Article
  "Much rhetoric has been expended in 'reading off' idealized 'online' worlds into probable 'off-line' worlds: the 'death of geography' is a case in point. The case is made" in this article "in favour of a co-construction of the 'off-' and 'online' worlds."
  (tags: cyberspace endofcyberspace culture Silicon_Valley)
• Mihaela Kelemen, Warren Smith, "Community and its 'virtual' promises," Information, Communication & Society 4:3 (2001) [sub req]
  The paper examines and critiques some of the libertarian rhetoric surrounding the 'virtual community'. In so doing, it argues that cyberlibertarians have misunderstood what community is by placing too much emphasis on a disembodied individual.
  (tags: cyberspace endofcyberspace community)
• Teresa Heinz Housel, "Solar panels, shovels and the 'Net: Selective uses of technology in the homesteading movement," Information, Communication & Society 9:2 (2006) [sub req]
  "Although the dystopian and utopian academic literature on technology present either a pessimistic or optimistic picture of its societal impact, people's everyday uses of technology often counter such views."
  (tags: technology culture counterculture)
• CULTIVATING SOCIETY'S CIVIC INTELLIGENCE: PATTERNS FOR A NEW 'WORLD BRAIN'
  "This essay discusses six aspects of 'civic intelligence' (orientation, organization, engagement, intelligence, products and projects, and resources) as well as ways to make cultivating our 'civic intelligence' a practical - non-utopian - enterprise."
  (tags: collective_intelligence cyberspace)