The notion of ‘shared understanding’ in coalition contexts is an important focus of attention in our attempt to understand the role of contemporary networks in shaping, guiding and influencing cognition (at both the individual and collective levels). At the collective level, networks provide the means by which agents are able to communicate, exchange and manipulate information in order to coordinate their collective actions in the service of joint or common goals. At the individual level, contemporary network systems are potentially poised to play a transformative role in our notions of cognitive and epistemic (knowledge-guided) competence. As we move towards an era of ubiquitous network-mediated information access, the processing loops that drive our thoughts and actions will surely become increasingly sensitized to the possibility of deep and potent forms of biotechnological integration, forms of integration that increasingly blur the (already fragile) boundary between the cognitive agent and her wider social and technological environment. The guiding vision, then, is one of networks playing a dual (i.e. individual vs. collective) role in shaping, augmenting and (sometimes) undermining cognitive processing. This does not mean, however, that our explanatory frameworks need to be divided along similar lines. The mechanisms that shape our individual thoughts and actions may align themselves, at some level of abstraction, with those that enable agent coalitions to direct and orchestrate their behaviours in the realization of common goals. In its most extreme form, the claim is that the patterns of information flow and processing within a highly inter-connected community of collaborative problem-solving agents are similar (perhaps functionally-identical) to those seen in the more localized (agent-centric) versions of human cognitive processing.

In understanding the power and potential of network systems to support mutual understanding and coordinated action, we face a number of interesting challenges and issues. These include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

1. What is the relationship between network parameters (such as topology, hodology information diffusion dynamics, etc.) and cognitive performance at both the individual and collective levels? Do specific types of network structure impair or improve the quality of team-based decision outcomes?
2. What is the value of network scientific analyses in understanding the distinctive contributions of a network environment to individual and collective cognitive processing? Do such analyses shed any light on how rich ensembles of heterogeneous, but interconnected, elements are able to realize the kind of properties we equate with human intelligence?
3. How can network-accessible information content be adapted to suit the specific cognitive and perceptual processing biases of distinct agent communities? How can we improve the reliability, quality and trustworthiness of information content? And how can we maximize the functional poise of information content so that it is better able to scaffold and augment thought and action?
4. How can we reconcile the inherent tension between the potential of networks to empower cognition and the fact that networks provide new routes to social deception and social manipulation? How can we protect network-mediated forms of shared understanding and collaborative problem-solving from the negative effects of mendacious information?
5. How can we optimize the flow of information in a network environment so as to better support, create and maintain shared understanding? How do changes in network structure affect our ability to ensure continued shared understanding? And how can we use networks to detect breakdowns or shortfalls in shared understanding?
6. What is the effect of using semantically-enriched representations on the shared understanding established by agent coalitions? How can we improve the human consumability aspects of the underlying logics?

In addition to these challenges we must also confront the possibility that network systems are poised to impact individual and collective cognitive capabilities in profound and largely unpredictable ways. By engendering the kind of capabilities that promote shared understanding at the collective level, it is entirely possible that our information and communication networks will become ever more apt to form what we have called ‘network-extended minds’, a term that is meant to capture the potential inter-dependence between bio-cognitive processing and the rich nexus of surrounding props, aids and artefacts that limn the space of environmentally-extended reason. According to this network-extended vision, the very fabric of our cognitive constitution may be woven from the networks of representational and computational resources that comprise our socio-cultural and technological surroundings. Networks may do more than just enable cognition; it may be difficult for cognition to exist without them.

This project (Project 12) is an attempt to further our understanding of the role that networks play in enabling, shaping and scaffolding thought and action at both the individual and collective levels. The project is organized into three tasks, each of which aims to tackle specific, but inter-related, issues concerning the impact of network environments on cognitive processing and coordinated action. The tasks are:

Task 1: Cognitive Extension in Network Environments.

This task seeks to understand the value of a network scientific approach in evaluating, analyzing and perhaps engineering environmentally-extended cognitive circuits. It also aims to explore the kind of technological interventions that might be used to enhance the transformative and augmentative potential of large-scale information and communication networks when it comes to individual and collective cognitive processing.

Task 2: Collective Intelligence and the Network.

This task explores the ways in which network environments can be exploited to support collective intelligence and coordinated action. One issue to be addressed by the research concerns our understanding of how knowledge representation formalisms can be used to enhance the potential of network environments to act as cognitively-empowering epistemic resources, resources that, like other parts of the symbolosphere [e.g. 1], are apt to influence individual and collective cognition in useful and productive ways. This research includes an analysis of the role that logic plays in expressing and communicating knowledge, but it also addresses issues associated with the human use and exploitation of that knowledge.

Task 3: Representation and Shared Understanding.

Task 3 explores a number of issues associated with the representation, communication and exploitation of a specific cognitive artefact within a collaborative and distributed problem-solving environment. The artefact in question is the military plan, a key resource in the effort to coordinate collective action. The research in this task is geared to explore the role of military plans in recording aspects of the planning process, as well as delivering representations that guide, constrain and influence the temporal unfolding of thought and action by coalition teams during the course of mission execution.

The research within these tasks is designed to further our understanding of the power and potential of networks to augment, enhance and transform cognition. Each task addresses important and fundamental questions, and each is geared to deliver scientific and technical outcomes that directly or indirectly impact the way in which military agencies use networks for the purpose of realizing military objectives. Outcomes of specific relevance to coalition operations include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. An improved understanding of what ‘shared understanding’ in a coalition context actually means and how it might be achieved.
2. An improved understanding of how the informational and technological elements of a network system can be used to augment shared understanding in coalition contexts.
3. An improved understanding of how network-accessible information content can be adapted, modified and manipulated so as to better support distributed cognitive processes that criss-cross cultural and national boundaries.
4. An improved understanding of how state-of-the-art techniques for knowledge representation in a network environment can be used to improve inter-agent coordination and ensure ‘unity of effort’ at the collective level.
5. An improved understanding of how coalition artefacts, such military plans, can be delivered in semantically-enriched formats, so as to better support the successful realization of coalition military objectives.

The research within these tasks is also poised to have a much broader impact in terms of our scientific understanding of the role that networks play in enabling individual and collective cognition. These outcomes are not just progressive advancements in our understanding of the relationships between network environments, human cognition, and the great edifices of linguistic and cultural scaffolding; they are also (potentially at least) discontinuous shifts in the way we conceptualize ourselves and the world around us. For what the vision of network-enabled cognition offers is a vision of environmentally-extended networks as both the products of and the producers of the human mind. Our minds, it suggests, are self-made minds, and the networks we create, assemble and maintain are as much a part of our cognitive and epistemic profile as the neuronal substrates that, until now, have gone unchallenged in our intuitions about how the human mind may be materially grounded.

• Task 1, Project 12: Cognitive Extension in Network Environments
• Task 2, Project 12: Collective Intelligence and the Network
• Task 3, Project 12: Representation and Shared Understanding

Table 12- 3 summarizes the relationship between Project 12 research tasks and the ITA hard problem areas.

Table 12-3: Impact of Project 12 research on ITA hard problems.