| Dr. Colleen L. Phillips is the Sociocultural Tactical Area Manager at ASI. Colleen has over 15 years experience in software development, human factors, and applied artificial intelligence. Her current interests are in small-group population modeling and visualization. Current research efforts involve determining the sociocultural factors that are effected by group interactions, developing computational capacities for predicting changes in group belief states based on these interactions, and visualization techniques for strategic use. | |
Q: What are your interests in sociocultural effects? A: At the intersection of humans and technology is where you will find ASI. The primary goal of ASI's software suite is to augment an individual or a group's cognitive reasoning power under a variety of situational circumstances. ASI can create an immersive, virtual environment for cognitive modeling in air, space, and cyberspace. Sociocultural effects models can be represented in many different forms. Some of the most useful models come from computer science, psychology, anthropology, and social science:  | Agent-based Computer Modeling | | | Ethnographic Decision Trees | | | Cognitive Replicates | | | Computational Cultural Dynamics | | | Defining and Measuring Shared Situational Awareness | | | Situational Awareness in Military Setting | | | Klein Cultural Lens | | | Spatiotemporal Cognition | BACK TO TOP Q: What is Sociocultural Modeling? A: Sociocultural modeling is an umbrella term for theories of cultural and social evolution, which aims to describe how cultures and societies have developed over time. Such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, the beliefs, values and goals of a society, and how and why they change with time. Such models are of particular interest to the military in helping unstable regions transition to more stable sustainable states. BACK TO TOP Q: What Product/ Offering does your organization provide? A: A Computational Sociocultural Dynamics (CSD) Tool that can be specifically designed to model any population or group whose behaviors, beliefs, goals, and intentions are important to a specific outcome. You supply the situational setting, and ASI will create knowledge-specific solutions for modeling the groups involved and how this knowledge can give you a competitive edge. BACK TO TOP Q: What are some of the features of the CSD Tool? A: CSD Tool has a capability of a rich representation of causal data, is best for short-term predicitons of small-group intent and future states of a population, has an explicit capability to model group state and intentions, capable of assessing a community's behavioral response to a course of action, and has a capablility of augmenting actions with mitigating intervention strategies. BACK TO TOP Q: Who are Users of the CSD Tool? A: Among the users of sociocultural modeling services are those that strive to continually adapt the belief system of the groups they work and interact with as they learn more about their's and other's cultures. Often tasked with resolving a social conflict, the CSD Tool user will explore various scenarios of actions taken within an environment to evaluate how the various groups involved will respond and whether the actions taken were beneficial or not. This will allow the decision maker to simulate the effects of different policies and procedures on the groups affected quickly and inexpensively. These users include: | | Commercial Partners – companies acquiring new employees or new companies, those working outside the US (supply, mfg, service), business intelligence on exploiting known similarities and differences among cultures or marketing segments (e.g. males vs. female buying/spending patterns; young vs. old, etc.). | | | Universities – work abroad programs (acculturalization) and recruiting from outside US, joint departments with other universities outside the US. | | | FBI/police units/other intelligence agencies – interrogations, mind manipulations. | | | Government (defense customers) – Joint, net-centric models of group’s beliefs, desires and intentions for SSTR, warfighter survivability, FCS, C2andI2, and COIN efforts. | | | NGOs and others involved in relief aid. | | | Social scientists or anyone working in the humanities. A government employed historian may offer insight on counterinsurgency tactics of past conflict, a political scientist may project strategic patterns across several terrorist groups, or a psychologist might look at tactics to counter inner city violence. All of these individuals can use the tool to instantiate cultural groups and test theories about how to influence their behavior. | BACK TO TOP |
