FreeLists / cybercrime-alerts / Online, the Armies Have No Borders

[alerts@xxxxxxxxxxx]

* this message via http://techPolice.com *

Online, the Armies Have No Borders

By WILLIAM J. HOLSTEIN NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com

ICHARD HUNTER contends that advances in communications and information 
technology are only beginning to have deep social and political impact. In an 
interview, he spoke in particular about his idea of "network armies," groups of 
like-minded people united by the Internet.


Q. Many people seem to think that the rapid pace of technological change 
encountered in the late 90's has faded away. Are they right?



A. No, the trends are playing out and strengthening. Moore's Law hasn't gone to 
sleep ? the power of a transistor is doubling every 18 months. That has 
implications for surveillance, data mining and wireless transmission. The power 
of networks continues to rise, and with it, the power of network armies.


Q. But you say we won't see the full impact of technological change until 2010. 
Why?


A. Certain elements of the new technological environment will be in place much 
earlier than that. Data mining, which is the ability to pull multiple databases 
together and get meaning out of them, is here right now. Wireless broadband 
communications occurs from 2003 to 2005. Embedded computers and smart machines 
? devices that are alert, intelligent and always on ? arrive between 2005 and 
2008. They will be in a wide range of human environments like cars, homes and 
offices. The pieces that take much longer are natural language processing and 
semantic analysis.


Q. In your book, what exactly do you mean by the term "network army?"


A. It's a collection of communities and individuals who are united on the basis 
of ideology, not geography. They are held together by public communications, 
the Internet being a prime example. They may have very different agendas, but 
they're united on a specific issue. Think of the meeting in Seattle that 
attracted protests from French farmers, animal rights activists, Quebec 
nationalists and trade unionists from multiple countries. Their agendas were 
quite different in aggregate but all of them agreed that globalization was a 
very bad thing.

Network armies don't have a formal leadership structure. They have influencers, 
not bosses who give orders. People join a network army because they believe in 
what it's about.

Q. Why do you think that one of these network armies, the Open Source movement 
dedicated to Linux and other free software, is going to knock off Microsoft?


A. I hope I didn't leave the impression that the Open Source movement is going 
to "knock off" Microsoft. They're going to cause a lot of trouble for 
Microsoft. As with any network army, there is no one to negotiate with. They 
don't have leaders. It's difficult for Microsoft to cooperate with anyone they 
perceive as opponents. The actions that Microsoft has taken have reinforced the 
feeling of "us versus them" in that network army, which is exactly what you 
don't want to do unless you want a war.


Q. What should Microsoft be doing?


A. They should be looking for areas where their interests coincide. Both 
Microsoft and the Open Source movement want computers to work better. Surely 
there is something to talk about there. Surely they could exchange information 
and exchange plans.


Q. Grass-roots movements have been around for a long time, so what's new about 
a network army?


A The Internet dramatically increases the power of networks and increases the 
speed at which these networks form.


Q. One network army you mention is Al Qaeda. What should the United States be 
doing about it?


A. The traditional tactics that are based on army versus army aren't likely to 
be very successful against these guys. We will have to create means of aligning 
individuals and communities into networks that are opposed to Al Qaeda. If 
you're talking about a threat that's distributed among your own people, you 
can't use the centralized power of a traditional army to fight it.

We need to create networks of individuals, private companies, law enforcement 
and the military who can cooperate in generating information about finding and 
fighting Al Qaeda network cells. We're a pretty open society. I think we can 
use that to our advantage to build a network army of our own to fight network 
armies like Al Qaeda. They're not the last one we're going to see.


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/business/yourmoney/28SVAL.html

--
This was sent to you from http://theMezz.com
To Subscribe/Unsubscribe go to http://techPolice.com