Exploring the Unknown — Learning to Create New Mental Models
February 2004
The formation of a Proteus Consortium and the creation of Proteus Media, a research project, resulted from a two and a half day faculty research seminar in September 2003 sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and hosted by the Cebrowski Institute.
The project team identified ten Proteus perspectives, which offer the mind a new lens about the nature and directions of global change. Once the mind learns to use these perspectives, then the mind is better equipped to blend the conflicting mental models of global change. Proteus Media is follow-on research based on this work. Continuing to nurture this emerging research, the Cebrowski Institute hosted the NSF-sponsored design workshop for Proteus Media, a computer-assisted political war-game. Organized by Joanne Kim, National Security Agency Cryptologic Innovation Chair, and Pamela Krause, futures researcher in InnoVision Directorate, Frontiers Office at NGA, attendees included:
NPS faculty
Professor Dorothy Denning and Associate Professors John Arquilla and Glenn Robinson, Department of Defense Analysis
Research Professor John Hiles, Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation Institute
Capt. Steven Ashby, USN, Department of National Security Affairs
Professor William Waddell, Center for Strategic Leadership
Professor Cynthia E. Ayers, NSA Visiting Professor of Information Superiority
National Research Council
Jack Smith, Leader, Office of Technology Foresight
Office of the Director of Central Intelligence
William Nolte, Deputy Assistant DCI for Analysis and Reporting
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Robert Bridges, InnoVision Directorate, Frontiers Office
Professor Leon Fuerth, Research Professor, Elliot School of International Relations (teleconference hookup)
Proteus Perspective
In world situations, there is a continual confluence of politics, newly formed nations, economics, environmentalism, social upheavals, biosciences and terrorism to mention a few. Fueled by technology and communications that are efficient, fast and cheaply available, the landscape of war and peace has changed forever. Small is powerful. Virtual life has become a form of reality. Going beyond the physical and terrestrial worlds, we see new opportunities for influence. They are space, spectral, psychological and virtual. Focusing on what is knowable may be more important than focusing on truth. Emergent forms of human behavior and thinking patterns are not quite understood or appreciated. Within one chronological generation, technologies, human behaviors and thinking evolve multiple generations. In this milieu, time takes on increased importance because it is the one thing that these disparate actions across multiple planes have in common. They all sit on a timeline.
The Proteus approach can prepare and equip the minds of the military and civilian forces to enable them to increase the speed of Military Transformation and the Revolution in Intelligence. It opens the door to a knowledge harvesting strategy. Using the Protean lens, the approach stretches the mind to permit the eye to recognize things it didn’t see before and to comprehend the complexities of emergent forms of human behavior and thinking patterns. It is an innovative approach to helping us develop new rational models of complex worlds.
The Proteus approach offers a context for the uncertainties and an elaborate description of the resulting implications and environments that are being shaped by the emergent human behaviors and thinking. It offers a means to discover the unknown, to see what is not recognized, to understand the complex and to comprehend the consequences. Proteus provides a rational construction to explore the unknown. Using the new lens of the ten Proteus perspectives, the propensity of threats to the stability and resilience of global culture and societies can be learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment