ABSTRACT: In his book, Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi gives us a detailed analysis of the typology of the WWW. In so doing, he makes many errors from which we can derive important lessons about ways not to study the WWW or complex networks in general. These lessons are crucial from the point of view of the philosophy of science, and suggest that more care and reflecivity is called for in pursuing WWW research. This paper is intended to provided imputus for meaningful thought and further discussion.
CONTENTS:
Introduction: Quality and Quantity
Network Analysis (Analytical Dimensioins of Networks, Robot Typology, Network Density, Assessing the Value of Hubs and Non-Hubs, The Effect of Search Engines on Typology)
Static Quality (Proportional Linkage, Website Design, Valuable Referrers, The Effect of Closeness)
Dynamic Quality (The Myth of Fitness, Competition is Cooperation, Survival of the Fitters, Innovation Changes the Landscape, Limits to Growth, Alternative Norms to Preferential Treatment
ABSTRACT: The Information Revolution combined with connective technologies creates a unique global social network. This network is vulnerable to cascades of information, norms, and coordinated action. The inherent unpredictability of the information society demands new kinds of governance that focus on rapid network-coordinated response over centralized predictive planning.
CORE QUOTE: “Power, as the capacity to impose behavior, lies in the networks of information exchange and symbol manipulation, which relate social actors, institutions, and cultural movements.” Citing M. Castells, End of Millenium (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), p. 379.
Kristan Wheaton is the author of The Warning Solution: Intelligent Analysis in the Age of Information Overload (Falls Church, VA: AFCEA International Press, 2001) and is currently busy working on his next book, Failed States: How to Predict Them, How to Prevent Them. He is also a Foreign Area Officer for the US Army who served as an attaché in the Office of the Legal Counselor, US Embassy, The Hague, where he works with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on war crimes issues. He has served as the Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the US Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, as the Chief of European Analysis in the Intelligence Directorate of the US European Command, as a US Defense Liaison Officer to the Republic of Macedonia and as a Special Assistant for Intelligence to the Commander of Multinational Division North in Bosnia. His recent publications include ‘Combat by Tria’ in Proceedings, (September 2001), and ‘Evolution, Ethnicity and Propaganda: Why Negotiating with the Innocent Makes Sense’ in Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict (August 2001). Click on the photograph to reach his current biographic page at Mercyhurst College.
Phi Beta Iota: A most interesting paper, it fails to recognize that domestic enemies, particularly nakedly amoral violators of the Constitution and amoral politicians who “sell out,” are a greater threat than any external threat. When internal integrity is lost, one has self-destructed. The paper also does not discuss “friendly enemies,” among which Israel, France, and Germany are perhaps the most intrusive.
I have never, in 18 years of OSINT advocacy, seen a more professional and intelligent endeavor to understand and report on what we are trying to do. This is absolutely world-class, and my admiration is unbounded. This creative individual has a lifetime free pass to our conferences. His technical, legal, and people skills are of the highest order.
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Kent's photo links to the ten video interviews he did at OSS '06, the last conference before it was stolen and consequently destroyed by an individual that broke his promise (one of several) and is fortuitously no longer responsible for anything of significance. All of the interviews are recommended, but then Congressman Simmons, now running for Senator in place of Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticutt, is especially noteworthy. No one in government has, in the twenty one years we have been fighting this fight, gotten a better grip not just on the idea of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a separate discipline, but on OSINT as a means of revitalizing American education, improving decision-support to every Congressional jurisdiction (most get NOTHING from the secret intelligence world), and helping the President and the Cabinet Secretaries manage Whole of Govenrment Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Operational Campaigns.
Among those interviewed that we hold in very high esteem are Michael Andregg, Carolyn Stewart, Mats Bjore, Ralph Peters, Robert Young Pelton, Stephen E. Arnold, and Peter Morville. There is also an interview with Robert Steele, who is not tagged within this website.
Below is a direct link to Kent Bye and a collage of clips from each of the people he interviewed. We consider this the single best most brilliant piece of citizen journalism on the concept of OSINT.
Overview Video
Below are the currently available links for audio only for all those interviewed:
Below links directly to the Simmons interview, use the photograph link above to select any of the others. NOTE: the video portion appears to have been disabled for all of them, you get audio only right now, we are working on this with Kent, it is vastly better to see these individuals in full multi-media form.
