This book presents an assessment of the importance and content of network science as it exists today. The book also provides an analysis of how the Army might advance the transformation to network-centric operations by supporting fundamental research on networks.
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Research on networks is fragmented. It is supported in disciplinary stovepipes that encourage jargon, parochial terms, and local values. Fundamentals of network structure, dynamics, and simulation are being rediscovered by different groups that emphasize uniqueness rather than a common intellectual heritage and methodologies. The fragmentation is aggravated by funding-agency policies and procedures that reward narrow disciplinary interests rather than results that are demonstrably usable for addressing national problems. Nor is funding focused in areas with widespread application, such as the development of predictive models of social networks, which could directly impact vital national problems, from secondary education in urban slums to military command and control.
Although researchers, especially the best researchers, are reacting rationally to the incentives placed before them, these incentives reflect poorly the national interests of the United States in a globally connected world.
