IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 40

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n this article we introduce the
concept of a human information appliance as a merging of advanced information
technologies architectures
(Martin Libicki) - Jeff Raskin's
1978 idea of an "information
appliance" - and advancing science
and engineering in cybernetics (the
fusion of human and machine into
a hybrid entity. That we create
this technology/entity for the purpose of conducting and advancing
situational awareness capability
in intelligence - homeland - and
diplomacy spaces - invokes the
primary environment of national
security critical infrastructures and
their protection (CIP) for which we
must investigate performance and
risk dimensions in the future states
that we describe. Due to the unique
nature of this technology as a function of human evolution and human
enhancement - we identify the
variable of public human ethics for
inclusion into the policy decisionmatrix for our open society. This
is initiated by examining the
ethics of human enhancement in
another national security scenario
that involves information technology for enhancement outcomes
within the realm of genetic therapy
applied to weaponization and corresponding defensive technologies.
This project has evolved from
two events that were designed
to investigate the intersection
of the logic of the disciplines
(and corresponding activities) of
political and economic science -
engineering - and computer and
information science to the phenomenon of intelligence production - its
corresponding critical infrastructure and particularly the ethical
environment within which it exists.
The first is a multi-year project that
is ongoing in the form of a graduate
and undergraduate seminar in science, technology, and international
affairs that has been this author's
primary teaching effort for sixteen
years (informed by his matriculation in the graduate program in

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international science and technology policy at The George Washington University's Elliot School of
International Affairs and his subsequent study of Eugene Skolnikoff
of M.I.T. per his groundbreaking
text, The Elusive Transformation:
Science, Technology, and the Evolution of International Politics).
The second event that has informed
this project was a one-day brainstorming workshop put on by the
Department of Integrated Science
and Technology at James Madison University (where the author
was a professor) for members of
the National Ground Intelligence
Center (NGIC) in the September
2004 as a post 9/11 exercise in
investigating the evolution of the
problem and potential solutions to
combating the effects of terrorism
within the construct of national
and homeland security and critical
infrastructure [2].
The rapid expansion of national
security information-based critical infrastructures along with our
growing dependence upon future
versions of them - details a growing state of complexity in this
realm. It is important that we continue to investigate future states
of operations in these information technology (IT) environments
for the purpose of expanding our
knowledge about how to preserve
and enhance capability and resilience into our future national security information infrastructures.
And we seek to do so in a manner
that will inform the community
with deeper thinking about the science, technology, social science,
policy, and ethics of future national
security infrastructures that are
increasingly a function of humanmachine symbiosis and integration.

Technology Visualization
and the Evolution of
Intelligence Infrastructures
Political/social science students
today become more value-added -
arguably competitively so - when
their curriculum of study expands

beyond the traditional liberal arts.
The liberal arts are not replaced,
but rather enhanced, to include
substantial work in the conceptual and/or applied physical and
life sciences for purposes of reimagining problems and solutions
for the international relations and
national/homeland security professional/scholar. Martin Libicki
reimagined war and deterrence
due to the application of his understanding of information systems
and corresponding technologies.
We will attempt to provide a similar reimagining of intelligence collection, analysis, production, and
dynamic application for tactical
situation awareness superiority in
three spaces: the battlespace,1 the
homeland space, and the diplomacy
space - for the purpose of conceptual problem solving in risk and
resilience infrastructure futures.
The value of this can first be
seen in our application of his 1996
concept of four-dimensional combat in the battlespace to the problem
of homeland security (the homeland space) and even the activity
of four-dimensional diplomacy (as
the counterpart of national power
to combat) in the diplomacy space
[3].2 We have often argued in our
seminars that if the Department
of State would decide to more
squarely mimic the integration
of technological imagination and
corresponding application of science and engineering activities into
the process of diplomacy as has
been the empirical record of the
Department of Defense - we could
expect similar types of operational

1

According to Martin Libicki's 1996 definition.
The full definition and concept is explained later
in this article. Correspondingly - our innovations
in the ideas of the homeland space and the
diplomacy space are derived fully from Libicki's
concept and logic.
2
See
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/nima/
masterplan/ vol1/. For the potential of this FAS
technology visualization to inform and impact our
discussion of the diplomacy space and the HIA,
see the section "How will Users Interact with the
Framework?"

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SUMMER 2013
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/nima/
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013
