Cyberspace as "EcoSpace"

By Craig Harm and Carl Hunt

One of the ways we look at Cyberspace from a scientific perspective is to think of it as both a host for complex adaptive systems (CAS) and a massive complex adaptive system of its own. Today we talk about the latter. Cyberspace is complex in that it is a set of dynamic networks of interactions and relationships rather than a mere aggregation of static entities. It is adaptive in that its individual and collective behaviors change (coevolve) as a result of experience. Three key processes come from the studies of complex adaptive systems, also called complexity science. As we’ve noted elsewhere in the SENDS Blogs, these processes include exchange, self-organization and emergence.

In today’s blog we’ll build on previous articles to convey these same concepts within the context of a CAS. One of the key characteristics of a complex adaptive system is its dynamism. Complex systems operate under far from equilibrium conditions requiring a constant flow of energy to maintain the organization of the system. This constant flow of energy is created by agents (e.g., users and machines) within the system all involved in the process of exchange, self-organization and emergence.

The massive complex adaptive system that is cyberspace requires better understanding of both its benefits and its challenges to human individual and cultural evolution. Thinking about cyberspace in terms of emergence and the exchange-based interactions that drive emergence allows us to better visualize the changes we experience both individually and collectively as we navigate within cyberspace. Another recent invention that cyberspace has enabled, advanced computational modeling and simulation (such as agent-based modeling), are the keys to better visualizing the actual and possible changes evident within the environment.

The figure below helps to visualize the major interactions that take place to create both the opportunity and the requirements for exchange-based coevolution within cyberspace and its interacting elements. Exchange is at the heart of this interaction. The diagram (click to enlarge) also depicts several categories of emergence that are both products and components of the coevolving world of massive interconnectivity that cyberspace enables. There is continuous feedback, another component of CAS.

There are two basic forms of networks that coevolve with each other through exchange and emergence that compose cyberspace: the physical network and the social network that accommodate the production of something useful to humans. Emergences from human and machine behaviors, culture, governance and technological characteristics all synergize to produce what we recognize as the social and physical media of cyberspace: the network.

The services that we introduce to make cyberspace valuable and the threats to those services and accesses are also part of the coevolving landscapes that compose cyberspace. Finally, both natural and artificial (e.g., man-made) adaptations and coevolution take place that ensure cyberspace is a dynamic environment that truly requires scientific methods to study and understand.

The figure above should also serve to demonstrate how these interactions are more than interesting features of cyberspace, they are also codependent, coevolving consequences of cyberspace! They are the interacting parts of the ecology of cyberspace that compose the essence of the environment of cyberspace, including the threat. All of these things are not only present, they are required for cyberspace to be meaningful to humans. We must understand them both in the context of our physical worlds and in the virtual worlds that emerge from these interactions.

As an example using the diagram above, we can follow the scenario set forth for the first iteration of SENDSim. For the SENDSim scenario, agent-based representations of people and machines are engaged in exchange and are connected through: 1) a specific characterized intranet connected to the internet; and 2) customized user behavior based on interviews of a selected user population. As users interact with the network we find the first level of exchange. This exchange is further expanded by the principal influencers (Threats and Services, from the model above).

In the initial instantiation of SENDSim the threat is the conficker malware, and services are the basic and increased tasks performed by users, thus creating a second, more complex level of exchange (following the hierarchical nature of emergence as part of CAS). As a complex adaptive system, the exchanges in a cyberspace ecosystem generate “emergents”. In the case of cyberspace these emergents are depicted by resultant emergents that include Behavior, Culture, Governance and Technology.

The process of these complex exchanges occurring in cyberspace produces currently unpredictable results (but inferable through models). Just as natural evolution occurs in a biological ecosystem, cyberspace evolution occurs as a result of adaptations to the principle agents of users and networks. Resultant adaptations (Natural and Network) are generated which coevolve with the two principle exchange agents. This process of coevolution is occurring naturally as an attempt to bring the entire system to equilibrium. However, as a massive CAS, cyberspace is fluid with a constant flow of energy producing continual change in an enduring attempt to reach a final equilibrium that will never come to pass.

In considering cyberspace as a complex adaptive system, it is logical to compare it to nature’s massive complex adaptive system, a biological ecosystem. In this context, we could think of the ecology of cyberspace as an "EcoSpace", as the title of this blog suggests. Using terms from complexity science, the evolution of cyberspace can then be thought of as a similar type ecosystem: coevolving while constantly striving for equilibrium.

High School Students’ First Milestone in Cyber Security Certification

by Joseph Cuenco, Executive Director, Science Center of Pinellas County, FL

The Science Center of Pinellas County (SCPC), St Petersburg, FL, has teamed up with Raytheon, SRI International, and St. Petersburg College in creating an innovative cyber security educational program that will prepare high-school level students for testing in industry recognized certifications. The Science Center of Pinellas County and Raytheon have been affiliated with the SENDS Project for almost a year now and are consulting on the educational curricula task.

The program’s focus on practical training and knowledge helps qualify students for credits towards a two or four-year degree in “Network Security” from St. Petersburg College, an academic partner to SCPC. The program objective is to prepare students for careers in cyber security -- with the skills and knowledge necessary to protect national, corporate, and civilian networks; provide them STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) foundation components; and help them learn about career placement opportunities with the best companies.

We are currently exploring with the SENDS Project and our Raytheon instructors how we might tap the SENDS Collaboration Substrate to enhance the educational program. We want to help students and teachers expand their repertoire of planning and modeling tools to assist in decision-making about tough cyber security problems, and offer them the SENDS cyberspace laboratory environment for experimentation and testing of new ideas.

Students have just completed the first module of the Cyber Security Certification, the CompTIA A+ hardware and software component. Many are opting for taking the certification tests in the next few weeks versus waiting until the end of the 15-week program. Preliminary data indicates that many of these students (ranging from 9^th graders to seniors) are presently qualified to pass the CompTIA A+ certification exams now, even before completion of the training!

Why this Course? Understanding the student’s rational for undertaking the program helps to explain their excellent progress. Our interviews with students tell us that they greatly desire to qualify for internships in cyber security as well as further qualify for armed services and government programs such as the US Cyber Corps. Equally important, they really desire to expand their knowledge in the field and use this training in the real world.

There is another aspect to this Cyber Security Certification program that has engaged these students: the conceptual frame of cyber security provides a great deal of cache – particularly around the dividing line between the “white hats” and “black hats.” Cyber ethics and the module on cyber law obviously make very clear student’s obligations and requirements in these areas. Yet, this still continues to be an intriguing area for them. One aspect is fairly clear from the high schooler’s viewpoint. Learning the skills of a cyber ninja is beyond cool. It’s empowering!

Student and Adult Learner Synergy. Our present student base is comprised of high school students mixed with adult students, in a university-based learning environment. The adults are more interested in obtaining job skills and certifications which will enhance their portfolio of employment skills. There is one dynamic that we are beginning to learn more about – what each of the student segments can “learn” from one another or share in an osmosis-like environment. These high schooler’s appear to learn and think almost as fast as today’s dual-core processors, challenging the older students to learn differently, as well.

For the adults, there appears to be much more rigor and thought required into learning new concepts; almost certainly requiring a great deal more energy at the end of the work day to be receptive to brain stimulation. Can the two segments benefit one another in this learning process? Our observations suggest that the answer is yes: there are benefits to both populations of students.

What can the adults provide the younger students? They help to focus on structure and rigor of their learning process. These adults obviously possess a great deal more experience having gone through various levels of formal and informal training. Tools, process, and discipline have been necessary in order for their desired educational goals to be achieved. Our high school students are observing that some of these “adult approaches” to learning might be useful to them too. It’s a great mix of youthful energy and more experienced academic rigor!

Industry Perspectives. A key element to learning cyber security foundations through the teaching of industry experts is understanding the practical application of these concepts in the work environment. The students learn to frame their questions in important ways. What are the benefits from working with virtual machines? Why is the documentation really important? What was the worst case of troubleshooting I’ve had? What is the optimal humidity setting for a server room? (I asked that one).

Our cyber ninjas are beginning to quickly develop their skills, and we are all beginning to better understand the role cyberspace and cyberspace security play in our future. We may just learn as much from our students as they learn from us!

SENDS and DoD’s “Armed with Science”

by Craig Harm

Yesterday, the Public Affairs Office (PAO) of DoD posted their first entry about SENDS in their very fine blog called “Armed with Science.” The SENDS Project has been working with the PAO for some time to establish this relationship and we’re delighted we have the opportunity to tell the SENDS story through this venue, as well. We expect other connections soon and will keep you posted as they link in.

This new connectivity with the DoD PAO and “Armed with Science” is an important example of the interconnecting, interactive power that cyberspace has introduced to the US and to the world. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other environments have captured the essence of social networking to the benefit (and sometimes not so much benefit) of many who would otherwise constrain themselves to the one-to-one or one-to-few connectivity of email. These socially based networking environments offer us many insights about modern interconnected communications and relationships, and how the social nature of the world is evolving before our very eyes.

SENDS and other efforts we begin to describe in the Science of Cyberspace White Paper offer us an objective opportunity to study how cyberspace and its interconnecting fabric affect us socially, culturally and professionally. This is in keeping with the objectives of the “Armed with Science” project and we are pleased to now be a part of it. We will be providing routine updates about SENDS through both “Armed with Science” and this blog as well, and hope to continue to leverage the power of interconnectivity through cyberspace even as we seek to understand more about it. You can get to all SENDS-related "Armed with Science" blogs directly from the link on the right.

Steven Johnson’s "Where Good Ideas Come From": Cyberspace and the Adjacent Possible

By Carl Hunt

The web, global brains, emergent intelligence, crowd “wisdom”: these concepts have all been associated with the enabling, connective power of cyberspace, and before that the connectivity of towns and cities and forms of media that emerged from collectives of people. In fact, one could argue that these concepts of collectivity are parts of the essence of cyberspace as it exists today. Perhaps today they are also the outcome of cyberspace?

The complex, massive interconnecting fabric often obscures causes and effects so that it’s difficult to identify what’s a process and what’s an outcome. Oh wait, that’s the same way we talk about exchange and emergence in previous blogs (here and here, for example). There’s a consistency here, even if obscured, that might be pointing to a future theory about cyberspace.

If there is a new theory shaping here, it has to do with how we form ideas and how these ideas grow into a way of thinking by which we can test hypotheses about our new ideas and eventually propose actions to take. From actions, we can invent new technology (or reuse the old in new ways) and even discover new science.

It starts with an idea. And, if it’s a good idea, and survives the pressures of selection, we might just make things better for our world. Where do these good ideas originate and how do they help us discover and invent new opportunities for greater success across our species and the world which nurtures us? Those are the great, fundamental questions Steven Johnson explores in Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (Riverhead/Penguin Books, 2010).

Johnson has published several previous books on how ideas became a science or technology, providing context to better understand big ideas. Where Good Ideas Come From follows a similar vein, providing interesting stories about how great discoverers like Darwin worked through the process of bringing to birth new ideas. His examples also generally follow the themes we’ve covered in these blogs: collaboration, emergence, exchange, self-organization and another of my favorites: the adjacent possible.

First popularized by Stuart Kauffman in his book, Investigations (Oxford, 2000), Johnson shows how the adjacent possible makes it possible to visualize innovation and the ideas that lead to it. The adjacent possible “captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation” Johnson notes. The adjacent possible tells us “that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen.” In thinking back about Harold Morowitz’s definition of emergence and the “pruning action leading to the rise of the actual from the possible” that emergence manifests, we can see that these lines of thinking synergize beautifully!

“One of the things I find so inspiring in Kauffman’s notion of the adjacent possible is the continuum it suggests between natural and man-made systems,” Johnson writes. In fact, the history of ideas and creativity is an act of pushing against the limits of what we knew and believed to be true since the dawn of human time, according to Johnson. What towns and cities first made possible in terms of exploring the adjacent possible, cyberspace now empowers in ways barely conceived of outside science fiction even 50 years ago.

Johnson also helps us visualize another wonderful environment for the development of good ideas and the creation of great innovation and novelty: the reef. Using Darwin’s great insights on exploring the ecosystem of the reef, a “tangled bank,” as Darwin described it, Johnson helps us see the relationship of creativity and innovation as a natural consequence and purpose of life.

Although Johnson’s purpose was not to explore cyberspace as a medium for the growth of ecologically-based innovation, his examples of emergent platforms, exaptation, serendipity and the role of error in discovery, clearly relate the connecting power that cyberspace brings today from what was the connecting power of cities and towns before modern forms of communications.

In teasing out the importance of the adjacent possible and emergence, Where Good Ideas Come From helps us explore connectivity and innovation in imaginative ways, rooted in the history and traditions of human creativity and discovery. In fact, if read simultaneously with Kevin Kelly’s new book What Technology Wants (Viking/Penguin Books, 2010), the insights you stand to gain can really synergize! We’ll talk more about Kelly’s new book in the near future.

A Center for the Science of Cyberspace

by Carl Hunt

In the 14 October blog, I discussed strategies for SENDS and described one of the four SENDS Pilot tasks dealing with the development and application of sophisticated modeling and simulation tools. Specifically, I described a project we call SENDSim. As you recall, SENDSim provides a laboratory for experimentation in SENDS.

There are several purposes for SENDSim, but one of the most important deals with visualizing interactions of people, technologies and policies in order to design a better process of inquiry for understanding cyberspace both tactically and strategically. The discussion of inquiry (and thus evidence-based) strategy and tactics is as important to cyberspace operations and defense as it is to national security and prosperity, as we’ve noted throughout these blogs and the entire SENDS Pilot Project.

In speaking about strategy for cyberspace, we turn now to another of the SENDS Pilot tasks: Prototype a Center for the Science of Cyberspace. This task has two main purposes, supported by all the others.

The first main purpose of this task is to foster the development of a Science of Cyberspace (as we have proposed here and discussed here and here). We want to achieve this objective while simultaneously accomplishing the second purpose of creating a virtual center for collaborative inquiry, discussions and hosting of the laboratories we are deploying through SENDSim and other similar projects.

The quest to develop a scientific discipline follows an interest of the original SENDS project leadership to think about cyberspace as an ecosystem, a synergistic collection of entities that thrive in balance with each other and the sustaining environment. This description points to why we cannot think of cyberspace as any one "big thing" and why cyberspace protection and security can never be composed of any one technological approach: we need science to frame an objective, inquiry-derived discussion about cyberspace.

In the current Science of Cyberspace White Paper, we devote a good deal of space to describing the sustaining environment of cyberspace. For this blog, we only point out that it is a blend of people and technology that empower the processes of exchange and self-organization to produce emergent effects and behaviors, as we’ve previously described here and here. It is these cyberspace-enabled effects and behaviors that we want to study and understand.

To help sustain and better formalize the development of the Science of Cyberspace, we are using the SENDS Substrate as an initial “Center for Cyberspace Science.” This allows us to collaborate through reviews and comments without having to come together to meet physically. We still intend to meet several times a year, but science requires plugging along consistently, openly and collaboratively challenging ideas and testing, and refining inquiry and evidence. At this point, the substrate can do this in a rudimentary way and allow us to make initial progress with smaller financial investments. It also harnesses the power of cyberspace connectivity.

As the Pilot Project progresses, we'll continually open the SENDS Substrate to more and more people interested in progressing the Science of Cyberspace and the studies that will support it. This blog, for example, is already generating what appears to be an international audience with readers (we hope) from the UK, Singapore, France and the Philippines, as well as the US. This is in keeping with developing the Science of Cyberspace as “Open Science.” We are pleased to welcome these readers.

You’ll note that I used the terms “evidence-based” and “inquiry-based” several times in today’s blog. We’ll close the discussions today on why those terms are so important, pointing back again to the work of David Schum. When it comes to science, inquiry emerges from many sources, including the process of discovery through tools such as SENDSim. Refinement of inquiry into something useful that helps to prove or refute the “answers” we uncover in our questions requires analysis and testing of evidence: the more open, the better.

The process of inquiry and testing evidence that can then be modeled and subjected to further scrutiny turns curiosity into science. It is in this area that Dave and his years of work in developing a “science of evidence” have made such a great contribution. His inspiration and the insights of those he exhorts us to study will help guide SENDS in developing and refining a Science of Cyberspace and a Center in which to explore it.

As promised, we’ll discuss the other tasks and more about SENDS in the near future. We’ll also present some brief book reviews of contemporary texts (just released) such as Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From and Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. Both of these works apply directly to SENDS and the Science of Cyberspace. We look forward to sharing their insights with our readers.

Some Thoughts on Topics, Trends, and Science

by Jack Holt

Some of the main topics within the federal government right now, and have been for the past 18 months, are transparency, participation and collaboration stemming from President Obama’s Jan 21, 2009 memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. Social Media is the enabler for these interactions with the public in an effort to listen to the public discourse and guide our efforts to inform the public understanding of what our departments and agencies do for them.

In order to effectively use social media as an enabler for dialogue with the public, we should also explore using it as the enabler for knowledge management of the departments and agencies. Web 2.0 improperly cast winds up knotted on the floor of the Knowledge Management boat. There are some efforts underway to study social media within DoD and we’re finding that social media is enabling more agile and effective operational responses. We need more studies. We need a social science look at Intelink, milSuite, and any of the other efforts being generated as well as an organizational science look at how these tools are affecting our operations. I expect them to be positive effects as my personal experience has been postitive. These spaces help me to define my tasks, enlist help, and to gather knowledge to complete my mission.

To have a robust dialogue with the public, we must have a robust network to dialogue among ourselves to have a robust and effective response.

So the topics are Open, Transparent, Collaborative, Effective, Efficient and Responsive Government; and the trends are in using social media to meet this vision.

Now is the time to apply the science to understand what it means to our organizations and our ability to respond.

Strategic Questions in a Tactical World

by Carl Hunt

My adviser in graduate school, Dr. David Schum, used to tell me it was rare that someone would “ask the right questions” in critically important situations. Dave, both a George Mason University School of Law professor and School of Information Technology and Engineering professor, knows what he’s talking about. I have always admired Dave’s position on inquiry and evidence, his specialties as a law professor, epistemologist and as true philosopher. I particularly like his emphasis on asking better questions about the world(s) around us. So have several important government agencies, but that’s a story for Dave to tell.

It’s the questions, not the answers, which most guide us in strategic thinking and understanding, Dave would point out. And equally important, it is the order in which you ask questions and experience discovery through responses to those questions that help you form strategies.

From the strategies we develop, we form tactical solutions to the opportunities and dilemmas the strategies pose and learn about exploiting insights the strategies and tactics make available to us. We make strategic plans, but execute tactics. To use the soccer and hockey sports metaphors, we try not to run or skate to where the ball or puck is now, but to where it will be – that’s where strategies and tactics converge.

Such an approach to discovery and learning is perhaps what best separates man from other species. Not only do we learn, but we also learn how to learn through inquiry, strategy and tactical responses based on strategies, as we make and test predictions. Our human essence drives us to be interested in learning and discovery, nurturing our intellectual livelihoods.

Dave Schum taught me that you may not ever formulate “the right questions” but you can learn how to ask strategically important questions, and set them up to maximize discovery and learning. Hence, I’ll pose some strategically important questions that SENDS and the Science of Cyberspace seek to ask. If we get it right, these questions will “set us up” for maximum learning.

Since the SENDS Pilot has four basic tasks, I’ll use those tasks as the organizing construct for posing the inquiries. I’ll only cover the first task in today’s blog but will present the remaining three tasks at the end to help us think about questions to pose when we come back around to those tasks in future blogs.

The first of the four SENDS Pilot tasks is roughly labeled: Build and utilize advanced Models and Simulations in network defense problems. I pose the strategically important question that is at the root of this task as follows: Given the hypothesized magnitude of cyberspace, what are viable ways to visualize and leverage what takes place in this environment?

This suggests several supporting questions of course, but in the interest of space I propose that this question is effective in shaping strategy because it focuses on the challenge of visualizing and thus better understanding what takes place in the cyberspace environment, most specifically network defense problems. It suggests that it’s important to visually interact with the mechanisms of cyberspace, which we have previously discussed as exchange, self-organization and emergence (discussed here and here). It also suggests that we leverage or apply what we learn.

As posed, this question prejudices us in thinking that cyberspace is a world of great size, but that’s an observation we now accept as valid after many years of experiencing its growth. We have also learned through experience that the magnitude of cyberspace, along with its underlying complexity, compounds the challenges related to defense and security of the environment.

The deep complexity of cyberspace recommends why we propose a science-based approach to understanding cyberspace and cyberspace security. It also compounds the challenge of orienting ourselves, e.g., visualizing, what goes on in cyberspace and what we do with what we learn. Since we ask about “viable” ways to visualize cyberspace, we are not presupposing there is one “best” way. Enough on the analysis of the question…

The initial response to this “strategically important” question is: use advanced models and simulations, the root of the first SENDS task. It forms the strategic level approach and sets the condition for the proposed tactical level responses: designing agent-based models and simulations that incorporate evolution and optimization, called SENDSim in previous blogs.

Visualizing exchange, self-organization and emergence through the laboratory lens of SENDSim that Craig Harm suggested in the last blog offers us an effective way to not only address the strategically important question we raise here, but to discover other important questions the response to which drive new discovery and learning. SENDSim, as described in these blogs, offers us a lab in which we can validate and tune questions, as well as form new hypotheses about the environment of cyberspace. It also offers a highly visual medium in which to observe what takes place.

Through SENDSim, we will build a modest but reasonably faithful representation of the complexity of cyberspace (admittedly on a small scale). This model will include significant social and technical interactions that take place within several of the domains that compose cyberspace. Using an iterative design and construction process, we’ll ask questions about the interactions we simulate and discover new, perhaps more strategically important questions to ask.

This process of visually informing an evolving inquiry process will enlighten us and subsequent users of SENDSim about even better questions. We may not know the “best” or “right” questions to ask of the SENDSim tool to start with, but we will learn not only about the modeled environment but also discover better questions to ask. This is at the root of the inquiry-driven science that drives SENDS, and in fact will drive all of the SENDS Pilot tasks.

The remaining three SENDS Pilot tasks are: Prototype a Center for the Science of Cyberspace; Review and Recommend Academic Curricula; and Expand and Enhance the SENDS Consortium. We’ve discussed a bit about all but the last task already (here, here and here), but will take up those tasks in future blogs as part of the process of asking the “strategically important questions.” Stay tuned for more!