Before turning to the operational features of CyberIR@MIT – including the basics of its knowledge system, the structural elements, and the operational features – we introduce four global challenges at a high-level aggregation. These constitute the high-level “subject-matter,” or focus, of our initiative and shape the logic for the system as a whole.

These are noted below with the understanding that each are highly complex system factors – including actors, actions, interactions, and outcomes – individually and jointly, that are near-impossible to isolate from one another. Nonetheless, as we move on to the knowledge system and later to ontology matters, their distinctive features become more clear, as do their interconnections. There are:

What follows is a short essay on each and further in this site we elaborate on matters of knowledge, content, structure, and ontology.