The complexity of cyberspace and international relations requires a multidisciplinary global approach for assisting stakeholders-everyone including governmental, scientific, and industrial stakeholders to (a) share a common understanding of challenges, (b) access relevant knowledge bases, (c) exchange expertise and perspectives, and (d) enhance and improve all cyber-related capabilities. All this must take place in what is, in effect, “real time”
Almost every part of the world is affected by the construction of the Internet and international dimensions of the “virtual.” Many of our approaches are ad hoc and “imported” from prevailing ideas and theories born of the “real” domain.
Conceptually:
While everyone recognizes the salience of cyberspace, there is as yet not a shared understanding of its interconnections with various facets of human activities or diverse forms in the “real” world. This situation is especially evident in general international relations. Mapping interconnections among the “virtual” and the ”real” requires a certain degree of intellectual discipline to generate a coherent method for framing, organizing and unbundling the diverse knowledge-content of issues central to cyberspace and international relations.
Strategically:
Mapping the vast and seemingly incoherent knowledge arena is intended to help organize our understanding of a rapidly changing dual context, in all its forms and creative ventures. It is also designed to facilitate access to cutting-edge analysis, innovative technologies, and multidisciplinary knowledge.
Operationally:
Framing this joint domain requires robust ways of organizing knowledge content and provision, and draws on diverse forms of expertise and interests. The result is to reduce barriers to knowledge regarding rapidly changing virtual and real situations, and to alert us when the ‘solution’ of one problem is the source of another.
Functionally:
To the extent that the mapping “works,” it provides the foundations for the design of web-based systems to enhance knowledge management, networking, and sharing, devoted to ‘sustainable development.’ This is very useful for educational purposes. It is essential to enable and/or encompass ‘voices’ from diverse perspectives.