Geoffrey Darnton, Bournemouth University, UK
- “if you can get into people’s heads you can achieve anything”
- different consequences if people fear being killed vs. wanting to be killed
- scope and key issues
- currently, mainly conceptual
- conflics vs. war
- war and conflict can only occur if people are willing to play
- “willing” – coercion or real willingness
- belief systems are critical in info warfare
- war v conflict
- technically war is a legal state
- iw = information warfare
- maybe should be saying information conflict
- Civilian-ization of warfare via info technologies
- origins of war
- technology
- law
- social organization
- opinions and attitudes concerning basic values
- willingness
- religion and ideology
- same thing or not?
- both are complex sets of characteristics
- why does it matter in the discussion of IW?
- many acts of conflict and war are done n the name of furthering or preserving some important value of belief
- meta ideo-religious framework?
- experiential
- ritual
- mythology
- ethics
- doctrine
- social
- framework extensions
- symbols
- key personalities
- faith
- deification or reification
- example religions
- middle eastern
- indian
- far eastern
- example ideologies
- capitalism
- marxism
- humanism
- social anarchism
- democracy
- are there characteristics similar to religions?
- proselytizing
- done both by religions and ideologies
- often accompanied by behaviour to discourage “non belivers”
- studies of war
- stats based on religious wars
- extensions to ideology
- how many wars have been fought based on ideology?
- empirical questions
- how many have been killed as consequence of the pursuit of religion
- …pursuit of ideology
- predict that now ideology now kills more than religion
- Information operations
- targeted at belief systems
- goal to move people within info space
- change beliefs
- change value judgments
- relies on underlying epidemiological model for spread of beliefs
- causes of war
- seeking causes may be futile if war is a persistent human phenomenon
- suggests that something like “Information Peaceware”
- conclusion
- characteristics of religions and ideologies are similar for practical purposes to have the same effects when it comes to war and conflict.