US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
Last Updated: Friday, 27 January 2006, 18:05 GMT
By Adam Brookes
BBC Pentagon correspondentA newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Commentary from Wanttoknow.info
"A Google News search on the military's "Information Operations Roadmap" reveals that, of major media in the US, only the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and ABC even mention the recently released "Information Operations Roadmap," and none of these give much detail. Why is the U.S. media so reluctant to report on these matters which are vital to the preservation of freedom of speech guaranteed in the first amendment of the U.S. constitution?"
Meaning and Social Hierarchy
Social and cultural systems can be conceptualised in terms of shared system of meanings and values which permit the development and maintenance of shared linguistic and behavioural spaces.
Basically, one can imagine two levels of operation on such systems of meaning: One can focus on operating within the system of meaning -or one can focus on the way these systems gain (or have gained) their meaning. The former is a "pragmatic" approach concerned with how to behave under certain circumstances -while the other is a more "theoretical" approach which is more concerned with either deciphering existing systems or designing new ones.
These two levels correspond to what was formerly the division between "training" and "education". In the first case, one is taught how to do things properly -while in the second case one is taught how to think things out in order to find (new) ways (for others) to do them. Traditionally, "education" is considered to have a higher social status than "training". Presumably, this is because any changes in the system generally requires a "retraining" to provide the new skills required for the new situation -while the "educated" are presumed able to adapt to new situations on the basis of their own analytical and cognitive skills which were developed as part of their "education".
Presumably, one can consider "training" to be a way of "programming" people to perform the required tasks -while "education" gives them the skills to "programme" themselves. If this is accepted as being true -then it should become clear that any system that teaches people to use digital systems simply on the operational level is basically a "training" which does not allow them to have full control of the machine.
To voluntarily use a machine without understanding the system of meanings upon which it is based -is surely a form of voluntary feudalism which puts humans in the power of the machines they use.
Why, one might ask, do we need to "programme" people to carry out basic tasks -when with a little more effort we could programme our machines to do all the menial tasks -leaving the more interesting task of researching systems of meaning to humans. Why do we need human slaves-when we have machine slaves? Are humans being turned into machines so others can exploit them -without them questioning their own slavery?
Surely, one would not consider a person fully "literate" if they could read but not write anything. So why do we consider somebody "computer literate" when they can only operate the controls of a (commercial) computer system?
