How would you define Cyberspace?

2019

One of the most significant challenges of the 21st century is to define cyberspace and its processes, and to provide responses to them. Determining definitions and basic characteristics is also indispensable as all segments of this area have multidisciplinary nature, so it is indispensable to formulate them for a common understanding of each discipline. In this light, this study seeks to define – at least in a schematic way – the concept and basic characteristics of cyberspace from a multidisciplinary approach.

Contexto Internacional

This article is based on the premise that the increasing human interaction in cyberspace elevates it to the level of a strategic domain and, as such, raises theoretical and practical challenges for International Relations. It is founded on an epistemological reflection on the fundamental assumptions of the paradigms that permeate International Relations. The main objective is to conceptualise cyberspace as the strategic domain in the 21st century, as well as to develop an analytical framework that will both provide evidence and investigate the resilience of the foundations of current International Relations, these being specifically, the following precepts: i) sovereignty based on territoriality, ii) state monopoly of power, and iii) accountability between international actors. With this in mind, the approach refers to defence documentation and scientific sources in order to reach a definition that will characterise cyberspace, considering its technical, scientific and strategic asp...

International Journal of Advanced Trends in Computer Science and Engineering, 2020

Cyberization gives rise to divergence of cyberspace concepts-cyberspaces to general cyberspace; cybermatics to cyberSciTech; cyber-enabled worlds to cyber-physical-social-thinking hyperspace etc. That is, Cyberspace perception and conceptualization have become more complex with time, due to scalability and as new terms and ideas are added, leading to continues proliferation creating a need for solid characterization. Existing theories are reach and therefore articulated to better understand the physical social thinking hyperspace notion of cyberspace. This paper presents a meaningful inter-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary integration of cyber philosophy, cyber science, and cyber information to present theoretic perspectives on cyberspace-Formal cyberspace. Three main aspects ontology, topological dynamics, and information respectively considered in terms of philosophy, theory in network science, and information theory to define existence of cyberspatial entity.

2022

The objective of this thesis is to identify the extent to which defining cyberspace as domain will affect the formulation of Homeland Security Enterprise (HSE) policy related to cyberspace in the future. However, as cyberspace lacks a consistent definition, a prerequisite for this discussion is establishing exactly what cyberspace is. Having provided a framework for understanding cyberspace, the policy approaches of the last five presidential administrations were examined to determine whether they treat cyberspace as a domain and what this suggests about future policy development. In the end, there appears to be a tendency for each presidential administration to treat cyberspace as an instrument rather than a domain, which is an approach that will likely require adjustment as threats within cyberspace evolve so as to adequately address them.

2011

This project has at least two facets to it: (1) advancing the algorithms in the sub-field of bibliometrics often referred to as "text mining" whereby hundreds of thousands of documents (such as journal articles) are scanned and relationships amongst words and phrases are established and (2) applying these tools in support of the Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) research effort. In international relations, it is important that all the parties understand each other. Although dictionaries, glossaries, and other sources tell you what words/phrases are supposed to mean (somewhat complicated by the fact that they often contradict each other), they do not tell you how people are actually using them. As an example, when we started, we assumed that "cyberspace" and "cyber space" were essentially the same word with just a minor variation in punctuation (i.e., the space, or lack thereof, between "cyber" and "space") and that the choice of the punctuation was a rather random occurrence. With that assumption in mind, we would expect that the taxonomies that would be constructed by our algorithms using "cyberspace" and "cyber space" as seed terms would be basically the same. As it turned out, they were quite different, both in overall shape and groupings within the taxonomy. Since the overall field of cyber international relations is so new, understanding the field and how people think about (as evidenced by their actual usage of terminology, and how usage changes over time) is an important goal as part of the overall ECIR project.

Various academics have tried to develop the best definition of cyberspace, but almost all lack the most important character of cyberspace – its fluidity. It means that rules, principles, usage habits, services provided and then the influence of physical world are continuously changing the shape of cyberspace during the time by our use of it. This article stands on several interlinked theoretical perspectives: a common approach in constructivism introduced by Berger and Luckmann, a structuration theory developed by Anthony Giddens in sociology and an addition from the second wave of constructivism represented by Bruno Latour who added fluid character to a social construction of reality. The application of these theories is made along with empirically observable characteristics especially of technology development and thus constantly changing the way of interaction between human beings and the technology. We have been shocked by particular changes in our lives during the last decade repeatedly and we have been convinced that this is an advancement of civilization whereas the cyberspace has been changing our perception of norms and rules that have been stable for centuries; norms that have provided stability, certainty and trust. These conditions developed social structures as a reflection and vice versa. The article proposes a perspective why the above drafted conceptualization of cyberspace as a fluid entity along with several variety of emerging dilemmas may never develop into a stable regime where states define rules of the game. However, states may be motivated in exercitation of their interests such as smooth intelligence gathering gaining them strategic advantage and they do that apparently. The article concludes with a variety of implications to cyberspace security based on the conceptualization of cyberspace in the light of constructivist and structurationist theory. The proposed implications for international security are to be used as a reflection tool for possible cyberspace regime theorization where concepts such as stability, certainty and trust have be understood differently.

2016

Cyberspace is an integral part of modern societies and has transformed global social and economic relations in the 21st century. From an arcane and technical domain on the margins of international policy debates, cyberspace has entered the realm of high politics and is an important feature of contemporary debates on global governance. This note introduces the special section in Global Policy of the same title, which provides insight into how freedom, openness and security can be achieved in cyberspace by making global cyber relations more stable, predictable and productive. It brings together four updated and revised contributions on cyber governance and cyber security that were first presented at the conference on "The Future of Cyber Governance" at The Hague Institute for Global Justice in May 2014.

The ongoing securitisation of online space has contributed to the establishment and development of the ‘norms-building’ discourse over the past few years. As the development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) poses more security and safety questions, be it at the end user, business, national or international levels, the narrative is shifting from a focus on ‘response to conflict’ to ‘conflict prevention’. This has also led to the emergence of a few norms development initiatives and platforms driven by various actors, which introduces an element of rivalry into the process. At the end of the day, the competition will most likely be led by those formations and thought leaders that have the greater trust capital and control.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017

When The Anarchical Society was published in 1977, the world was on the doorstep of seismic technological change. Forty years later, the information age has placed cyber security at the centre of many global political concerns including armed conflict and international law. The ongoing difficulties associated with accurately attributing cyber attacks introduce a new dimension of anarchy in international relations. This essay draws on Bull’s ideas about social interplay to explore the problem of attribution in cyberspace. It finds that the difficulties of identifying (even) state actors undermine some of the processes and institutions upon which Bull based his ideas. However, it also finds that Bull’s work is useful in unpicking exactly why attribution is so problematic for international relations. Ultimately, Bull’s expectation that actors will look for social solutions to maintain order appears to be holding up in the information age much as it did in the industrial age.