Information Assurance in the Information Age; Towards an Historical and Social Context

Ours is the Information Age; a period of profound change across a global canvas wrought by technological developments occurring at a sustained rate of acceleration unprecedented in human history. There is no part of human life untouched by the process of disruptive transformation centred on the Internet. Societies and economies now depend upon the good operation of ubiquitous and pervasive computer based information and communications systems. Although the Internet is at the centre of this construct it is not the totality. This totality might usefully be referred to as the Meta System. Information Assurance is the means by which we can obtain good and trustworthy operation of the Meta System. To obtain this we need new ways of thinking. Our old ways of thinking were formed when the world was a very different place. These new ways of thinking must be informed as much by the humanities and the social sciences as by mathematics and the physical sciences. If the impact of the Information Age on individual privacy is one or our preeminent concerns, and if we sense a need to renegotiate the Social Contract, we will not succeed in this endeavour with maths and physics alone. As social networks evolve and further permeate the fabric of daily life, questions about their safety and security cannot be answered without anthropologists and sociologists. Our technical ability to undertake offensive cyber war has far outstripped our current capacity to locate sate prosecuted cyber conflict in a legal, let alone an ethical, framework.

This seminar will seek to locate the social disruptions and transformations of the Information Age in an outline historical context and by so doing will aim to highlight some of the specific areas where a truly interdisciplinary approach to IA might reward further investigation.