More commonly referred to as the “Deep Web“, it’s defined as “World Wide Web content [that is] not part of the surface Web indexed by search engines”. I prefer deepnet myself because a) I can use it for the word of the day, and b) it sounds cooler.

I found a reference to it while searching for DARPA on Google, and was interested to discover that they had funded (along with a host of other US groups like the NSA and the US Air Force) an AI-based deep web search engine that is now being run under a commercial company called Fetch. According to another news article on Computer World, the search is “used by government agencies seeking to rapidly import and integrate data from multiple Web sites and databases for emergency response, location intelligence and antiterrorism efforts”.

Yet another great example of how the military-industrial complex continues to drive technology.

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging technologies linked through to an interesting bit of research that looked at “Preferences for Psychological Enhancements”, and reluctance by test subjects to allow enhancements. Specifically, they point out that “Ad taglines that framed enhancements as enabling … the fundamental self increased people’s interest in a fundamental enhancement, and eliminated the preference for non-fundamental over fundamental enhancements.”

With that in mind, I came across an article in Wired discussing Darpa’s latest forays into human enhancement, and I couldn’t but help notice the wording of Tony Tether, head of Darpa, the US’s Advanced Research Projects Agency: “[The Defense Sciences Office] isn�??t trying to create posthuman troops, Tether says. �??You know the old Army saying, �??Be all that you can be�??? Well, that�??s really what we�??re doing.�?� In training, soldiers �??become extraordinary in strength and endurance. But it�??s not any better than their body can be. And what we try to do is come up with techniques that allow them to maintain that level.�?�

The Wired article also showed that, in order to avoid scrutiny and accusations “of funding a Frankenstein army”, the names of various programs “were changed to dull their mad-scientist edge”. For example, “Metabolic Dominance became Peak Soldier Performance”.

So there really is a lot in a name. Hey, it’s all in the branding.