In the twenty-first century, information technology (IT) has become an essential tool for the global circulation of power, waging of war, and imagining of peace. Since the 1990s, IT has taken a more potent role in the organization, execution, justification, and representation of violence worldwide as witnessed in the first Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo air campaign, and the terrorist attacks on September 11. The current war in Iraq has revealed an unprecedented infiltration of IT into all aspects of warmaking. Whether in military technology and intelligence capturing, embedded journalist and 24/7 newsmaking, or organizational strategies for peacemaking, the second Gulf War was the first, but certainly not the last, web war.
The Watson Institute's Information Technology, War, and Peace Project (InfoTechWarPeace) was created to track and analyze IT's influence on traditional statecraft and new forms of networked global politics. InfoTechWarPeace challenges the traditional discourse on world order, which is defined by state-centric, realist interpretations of power. Yet, in the past decade and especially since September 11, very different global actors have emerged ranging from fundamentalist terrorists to peace activists, who gain advantage through the broad bandwidth of information technology rather than through traditional state-centered sovereignty. The project interrogates how these individuals and groups make use of IT to influence world politics.
Professor James Der Derian, a Watson Institute professor of international relations (research) and principal investigator of the project, explains: "InfoTechWarPeace seeks to supplement traditional theoretical approaches with rapid conceptual analysis, beginning with our effort to understand how information technology not only enables the continuation of violence through infowar, but also provides the means to prevent, mediate, and resolve conflicts through infopeace."
Since its inception, InfoTechWarPeace has pursued three goals: research new global networks of conflict and cooperation; promote critical thinking, networked knowledge, and ethical authority; and raise public awareness and inform new policies on information technology. To this end, InfoTechWarPeace has produced four critical dialogues on global information technology, an innovative website, a multimedia exhibition, and several important documentaries, teleconferences, and webstreamings for international distribution.
Because IT is its primary research vehicle, the project has been able to respond to world events rapidly, filling knowledge gaps left by traditional publishing methods in the social sciences. Merely two weeks after the terrorist attacks in the United States, the project staff inaugurated a website (www.infopeace.org) for conceptual analysis, information interventions, and interactive discussion.
"911 InfoInterventions" (infopeace.org/911) has commissioned essays by a breadth of experts and concerned individuals from the academy, business, military, government, nongovernmental organizations, and activist arenas. The website has been highlighted in the September 11 Digital Archive's Guide to Websites and cited by several major news sources.
Four international conferences or dialogues have been convened at Brown University drawing a diverse group – again from the academy, media, policy and information technology worlds, military, and nongovernmental organizations. "VIRTUALY2K" (infopeace.org/vy2K) explored the technical, political, and ethical implications of a new virtual condition on the eve of the new century. Participants considered how new digitized and networked technologies collapse distance, merge fact and fiction, and generate virtual worlds.
"Technologies of Anti/Counter/Terror Symposium" (infopeace.org/tactsym), held nine months after September 11, questioned – philosophically, strategically, ethically – the role of technology in terror through three themes: terror (the technologies of attack), antiterror (the technologies of reprisal), and counterterror (the technologies of prevention, deterrence, and justice).
On the first anniversary of September 11, InfoTechWarPeace organized a 12-day international multimedia exhibition and forum titled "911+1: The Perplexities of Security" (infopeace.org/911+1). The event examined the aesthetics, rhetorics, and politics of security and terror in the information age, drawing together the work of artists, humanists, policymakers, military experts, and social scientists. "911+1" transformed the new Watson Institute building into a living cultural laboratory through media installations, videoconferences, public lectures, panels, and a student short-film competition.
"The Dis/Simulations of War and Peace Symposium" (infopeace.org/dissim), held in June 2003, explored how simulations (war games, training exercises, scenario planning, and modeling), dissimulations (propaganda, disinformation, infowar, deceit, and lies), and prophecy (dreams, myths, and other cultural forms of revelatory story-telling) predict, anticipate, and work to preempt the future. For this event, InfoTechWarPeace collaborated with the Brown Journal of World Affairs, an internationally recognized publication in the international studies field edited and managed entirely by Brown undergraduates.
In addition to the website and symposia, InfoTechWarPeace has produced documentaries, teleconferences, and webstreaming for international distribution. Drawing on material from the past three years, these products include: a "VY2K" documentary released in 2001 and distributed through the Media Education Foundation; a teleconference with the Israel Democracy Institute and Al Quds University in June 2002; videostreaming of the "911+1" Forum in September 2002; a teleconference with Hebrew University and American University in Cairo in September 2002; audiostreaming of the "Dis/Simulations of War and Peace Symposium" in June 2003; and a documentary entitled "After 911."
Also developed in tandem with InfoTechWarPeace have been "Beyond Terror: A New Global Security Agenda," a two-day conference in June 2005; the Global Security Matrix, which addresses the prospects when the 'Digital Age' and the "Age of Terror" converge; and the Global Security Blog.
InfoTechWarPeace intends to continue its interactive research mapping the influence of IT on a post-September 11 world. Building on substantial work to date, the project plans to commence major initiatives on the emergence, efficacy, and ethics of new IT-based operations in several critical areas of intelligence, military, media, and peacemaking.
The support of several groups has been critical to the project's success to date: the Ford Foundation and Watson Institute throughout the project, the Rockefeller Foundation for the "911+1" initiative, and the Carnegie Corp. of New York for the "Beyond Terror" conference, the Global Security Matrix, Global Security Blog, and other related activities.
Other Researchers: Annick T. R. Wibben (now University of San Francisco), Benjamin Mauer (Quitled, a design firm), and Caleb Waldorf (practicing artist), Watson Institute; Solon Barocas '03, Brown University (now Russell Sage Foundation); Colin Murphy, murphy and murphy, Providence, RI; Michael and David Udris, Amedia Productions, Providence, RI; Emily Paddon (Oxford University); Keith Stanski (Oxford University).