Representational Practice in Command and Control

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Representational Practice in Command and Control

• Jon Lindsay
• MIT Security Studies Program
• lindsayj_at_mit.edu

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Roadmap

• What is Information?
• Communication Engineering
• Intentionality
• Representational Practice
• Implications

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Excel and Explosions
?
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Adolphe Messimy
Conscious of the gigantic and infinite results
to spread from that little piece of paper, all
four of us felt our hearts tighten. Adolphe
Messimy, French Minister of War, on delivering
the order to mobilize, August 1st, 1914.
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Information

• Where it is
• Networks, databases, images, files, steno pads,
  Post-It notes, brains,
• What it means
• Events, plans, units, people, threats,
  opportunities,

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Roadmap

• What is Information?
• Communication Engineering
• Intentionality
• Representational Practice
• Implications

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Information Theory
The fundamental problem of communication is that
of reproducing at one point either exactly or
approximately a message selected at another
point. Frequently the messages have meaning
that is they refer to or are correlated according
to some system with certain physical or
conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of
communication are irrelevant to the engineering
problem. - Shannon Weaver, 1949
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A difference that makes a difference

• Physical Patterns
• Circuits between systems otherwise separated in
  space and time
• Signal, Channel, Noise With respect to what?

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Cybernetic Feedback
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Using representations to predict reality ( avoid
surprises)
Joel Lawson, 1981
John Boyd, 1986
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A systems environment includes other systems
Coordinated
Nested
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?
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Chain of Command
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Roadmap

• What is Information?
• Communication Engineering
• Intentionality
• Representational Practice
• Implications

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Whereas most contemporary discussions of command
and controlpay strong lip service to the
importance of the human element, there is little
in the theoretical literature of command and
control that does not have the commander boxed up
in a wiring diagram. - Builder, Banks, and
Nordin, 1999
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Intentionality

• Mental states are directed toward something other
  than themselves
• e.g.,
• Will, desire, belief, vision, purpose
• Commanding, knowing, planning, spying

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To the things themselves!
William James
Edmund Husserl
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Practical Context(Projects, Embodiment,
Institutions)
Salient Features(Objects, Properties, Events)
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• (Subject?Technology)?Object
• Technology is transparent
• Subject?(Technology?Object)
• Technology is a problem

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Roadmap

• What is Information?
• Communication Engineering
• Intentionality
• Representational Practice
• Implications

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A man is never much more powerful than any
othereven from a throne but a man whose eye
dominates records through which some sort of
connections are established with millions of
others may be said to dominate. This domination,
however, is not a given but a slow construction
and it can be corroded, interrupted, or destroyed
if the records, files, and figures are
immobilized, made more mutable, less readable,
less combinable, or unclear when displayed. In
other words, the scale of an actor is not an
absolute term but a relative one that varies with
the ability to produce, capture, sum up, and
interpret information about other places and
times. Bruno Latour, 1990
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Representational Transformations
amplification
reduction
Universal Mobile Immutable Reproducible Formal Sta
ndardized
Local Situated Perishable Particular Material Chao
tic
Much Political, Organizational and Technological
Effort
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What do I know?
Intentional object
Chaotic Material Reality
How do I know?
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every possible innovation that offers any of
these advantages will be selected by eager
scientists and engineers-Bruno Latour, 1991

• Mobile easily moved from the place it was
  created
• Immutable durable, error resistant, or
  error-correcting
• Reproducible produce, distribute, and archive
  faithful copies
• Mastery better understanding and control of
  complex reality
• Recombination customize, modify, reuse, and
  repurpose
• Incorporation seamlessly integrate with other
  technologies present in-line with writing and
  presentation media
• Formal express and manipulate abstract
  regularities of complex reality

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Adam Lowe, On the Origin of Objects 2, 1995
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Practical Drift
System Coupling
tight
loose
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2
high
Adherence to Managerial Representation
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low
Snook 2000 Ciborra 2002
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Combined Air Operations Center (Doha, Qatar)
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Distributed Adaptation
Hutchins 1995
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Taking Stock

• Communication
• Physical patterns circuits
• Alternating connection disconnection
• Intentionality
• Rich purposive context
• Technology as cognitive prosthetic
• Practice
• Cascades of representations
• Messy, improvisational drift
• Distributed cognition adaptation

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Representational Practice

• Representation (n)
• An image, likeness, rendering, performance
• Represent (v)
• To indicate, communicate, symbolize, present
• Practice
• Ongoing manipulation of technology,
  organizations, and politics by all actors at all
  levels
• Situated, messy, improvisational

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Working the Seams
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Roadmap

• What is Information?
• Communication Engineering
• Intentionality
• Representational Practice
• Implications

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Blurring boundaries

• Design vs. Use
• Content vs. Service
• Technology vs. Policy
• Intelligence vs. Operations
• Command vs. Control

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Help Wanted Ethnographers

• What kind of representation is in practice?
• Who actually makes, manipulates, and transforms
  information artifacts?
• How do new objects, concepts, and distinctions
  emerge?
• What conditions changing processes technology?
• Cost, user technical competence, tolerance for
  experimentation, etc.
• What conflicts emerge across strategic,
  organizational, technological boundaries?

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Field expedient solutions features, not bugs

• Users already adapt system design at run time
• Leverage and improve user development
• Open standards programmable interfaces
• Technical mentorship support
• Reduce systems management risk aversion
• Recruit, reward, and retain military
  professionals who understand what information
  means and how it works
• Not just the systems geek
• Operational participants in ongoing development
• Embedded at all levels of C2

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What about Network Centric Warfare?
Effects-based operations are about the human
dimension of conflict. They revolve around the
interactions between two or more of the most
quintessential of complex adaptive systems human
decision-makers and human organizations. -
Smith, 2003
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Selected References

• Cybernetics
• Wiener, Norbert. 1948. Cybernetics Or, Control
  and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
  Cambridge Technology Press.
• Intentionality
• Sokolowski, Robert. 1999. Introduction to
  Phenomenology. Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, Brian Cantwell. 1996. On the Origin of
  Objects. Cambridge MIT Press.
• Social Construction of Technology
• Latour, Bruno. 1988. Science in Action How to
  Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society.
  Harvard University Press.
• Mackenzie, Donald. 1993. Inventing Accuracy a
  Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance.
  MIT Press.
• User Innovation
• Von Hippel, Eric. 2005. Democratizing Innovation.
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press.
• Practical Drift
• Ciborra, Claudio. 2002. The Labyrinths of
  Information Challenging the Wisdom of Systems.
  Oxford Oxford University Press.
• Distributed Cognition
• Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the Wild.
  Cambridge MIT Press.