Intelligence in the internet age: The emergence and evolution of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as an important component for understanding human problem solving in the 21st century. OSINT is in many ways the result of changing human–information relationships resulting from the emergence and growing dominance of the Internet and the World Wide Web in everyday life. This paper suggests that the Internet/Web changes the dynamic relationship between what Cattell and Horn have identified as the two general factors of human intelligence: crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. The Internet/Web open up new possibilities for accessing information and transcending over-determined cultural intelligence in problem solving. This offers fluid intelligence, which often trails off in adulthood, a new vitality across the lifespan. But the diminishment of crystallized intelligence, and especially cultural intelligence, also presents a number of important problems in maintenance of cohesive, social cooperatives. The development of OSINT (using tools and ethos created by the Open Source movement of the last few decades) offers both a framework for reaching beyond the boundaries of traditional cultural intelligence and ways to create cooperative, open, problem solving communities. The Internet/Web will continue to create confusion and fear as we move deeper into this new age, but also presents extraordinary possibilities for augmenting human intellect if we can understand it and learn to harness its potential.