Читать книгу The Digital Big Bang - Phil Quade - Страница 57

As imperfect as any static representation of cyberspace might be, the model is now complete. The components of the model have been layered in a manner that presents the whole of cyberspace as if captured in a still photograph. But although it is useful to consider any particular layer in isolation in understanding the building blocks of cyberspace, its operations can only be understood by analyzing the interaction of and between the layers as users and processes leverage cyberspace to achieve their end purposes. To wit, whereas it is easy to perceive that cyberspace enables one user to communicate directly with another (an activity that may be perceived to take place horizontally across the people layer of this model), the reality is that users interact with their devices. Those devices connect to one another using communication pathways heavily influenced by controlling logic and so forth, thus effecting a flow of data and actions that is more vertical than it is horizontal—up and down the layered stack. And although it is tempting to consider cyberspace as being principally comprised of the technology components of the stack (the middle three layers), the whole can only be understood by considering these layers and their intimate relationship with the outer two layers: People and geography.

Insofar as a hinge makes little sense in the absence of both the door and the wall, so it is with cyberspace and its intimate weave of people, technology, and geography. It is also impossible to exaggerate the dynamic and roiling nature of these vertical connections as communications, transactions, modifications, and additions surge up and down, to and from, across the length and breadth of cyberspace. The result is very much like a living organism, varying in character and scope from moment to moment, defying all attempts to statically define its character or its properties. This latter point has significant implications for security insofar as the constant creation and lapse of connections combines with the inexorable transformation of software, hardware, and user behaviors to make the task of defending cyberspace quite literally the defense of a moving target. And so it is that the metaphor of a video constitutes a truer character of the result than does a still photograph. Put another way, the dynamic and ever-changing interactions between the layers must be considered to understand and, more importantly, predict the true nature of cyberspace in action.