Curbing Innovation / 4 / 4.3 / 4.3.1

4.3.1 Network Centric Language

At first sight the Network Centric language sounds a lot like English; it uses words such as information, knowledge, understanding, and awareness, all of which are words quite familiar to English-speaking people. However, the more one reads the writings describing the theory of Network Centric Warfare, the more one realizes that subtle differences are at work. Take for instance the word information. According to David S. Alberts et al. [1],

Information is the result of putting individual observations, such as sensor returns or data items, into some meaningful context.

This definition appears in the Computer and Internet Dictionary published by the Microsoft Press and therefore reflects a computer professional’s view of information. In that view, observations are generally represented by the readings provided by some sensor device, say the energy level of the electromagnetic wave received by a radar antenna, and the meaning we associate with those readings derives from detection theory which establishes a statistical correspondence between that energy level and the presence of a target. Consequently, information is generated only when observations result from indirect sensing, not when humans perceive reality directly with their own senses; moreover, the resulting observations are data, and data are facts, concepts, or instructions suitable for communication, interpretation or processing by humans.

According to the Webster dictionary of the English language, however, the word information can be used to convey a much larger set of related meanings. To understand the difference, let us consult what the dictionary says about the word information:

an endowing with form; the act of animating or inspiring; instruction; the communication of knowledge or intelligence;

knowledge communicated by others or obtained from investigation, study, or instruction; knowledge of a particular event or situation; facts and figures ready for communication or use as distinguished from those incorporated in a formally organized branch of knowledge; and a signal purposely impressed upon the input of a communication system

the process by which the form of an object of knowledge is impressed upon the apprehending mind so as to bring about the state of knowledge

The fundamental difference between the Network-Centric usage and the Webster dictionary consists in the degree to which the apprehending human mind is at all involved in the process of generating information. While in the Webster definition of that word, human knowledge is always somehow present, either as the form impressed by the world upon an apprehending human mind or as that which is communicated between humans, in the Network-Centric definition the human is largely absent; for the proponents of this doctrine, information is an objective entity provided by technology for eventual consumption by a human being, an entity consisting of impersonal observations aided by scientific theory.

The same subtle modification of meaning intended to objectify the world of information takes place when Network Centrists define knowledge. According to them [2]:

knowledge involves conclusions drawn from patterns suggested by the available information.

But, according to the Webster dictionary, “knowledge is the fact of knowing” and knowing comes from the old Greek gignoskein which means to become acquainted with or perceive something. Therefore, knowledge is “familiarity gained through experience of, or contact or association with, the individual or thing so known”, not the discernment of patterns present in information one receives from sensors. In fact, the dictionary goes on and specifies that knowledge is “the fact or condition of apprehending truth, fact, or reality immediately with the mind or senses.”

In Network Centric language understanding involves [3]:

having a sufficient level of knowledge to be able to draw inferences about possible consequences of the situation, as well as sufficient awareness of the situation to predict future patterns.

In the common English of the Webster dictionary, on the other hand, understanding means:

the act of grasping mentally; the power of comprehending, analyzing, distinguishing, and judging; the faculty of subsuming the particular under the general or apprehending general relations of particulars, and therefore the power to make experience intelligible by bringing perceived particulars under appropriate concepts; the capacity to formulate and apply to experience concepts and categories, to judge and to draw inferences.

Nothing therefore about a threshold of knowledge and awareness below which there is no understanding, and nothing about the ability to predict the future.

These differences between Network Centric language and common English are not the result of an inadvertent misreading of the dictionary, but a deliberate modification of meaning intended to serve the needs of the doctrine that is being developed. Since Network Centric Warfare doctrine is intended to justify the rule of information technology in war, it must construct a story line in which technology, not humans, play the crucial role in securing the ultimate victory in war.

Indeed, if one wishes to argue credibly that continued increases in information technology, understood as a netted collection of sensors, would eventually provide humans with the ability to win a war by accessing and controlling the enemy’s cognitive processes, one must be able to argue in successive turns: that information technology produces information, that information is additive, that consuming information produces knowledge which itself is therefore additive, that only a sufficient quantity of knowledge will produce understanding, that understanding will provide us with the ability to infer possible consequences of, and predict future patterns in, enemy action, and that, therefore, sufficient information technology will provide us with the cognitive leverage to win the war. But since the conventional meanings of the words information, knowledge, and understanding are inextricably entangled with each other in the process of human perception, no such argument could have been constructed on the conventional meaning of these words; to make Network Centric Warfare palatable, their meaning had to be changed to fit the notion that they successively feed into each other as required by the Network-Centric-Warfare story line.