Brett [09.09.06 12:55 PM]

The Post-Modern Care Package: a pound of fudge, and a web camera... )-;

  sabadash.us [09.09.06 01:13 PM]

Without getting political:

Nam was weirder because of the tv coverage.

After that, wars were run for tv.

Now, the tv's in the hands of the soldiers.

But that last part hasn't hit yet. Not enough returning GI's with video. But it'll happen.

sabadash.us

  Tim O'Reilly [09.09.06 01:25 PM]

I was thinking of blogging this too, but you beat me to it. It has indeed been fascinating. I love sabadash's comment that we're just at the beginning of this revolution -- that way more will come out as the soldiers get home.

  John Dowdell [09.09.06 01:30 PM]

There are actually two new-tech dynamics at play here: the ability for individuals to directly record, publish, and distribute and what they see; and the increasing tendency of occult groups (in the sense of hidden, not supernatural) to influence the centralized stream of commercial media distribution.

The milbloggers were mostly under-the-radar until fauxtography hit popular awareness. These two trends are growing against each other, and it should be a wild ride ahead.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mediafield+battlefield

Cool how we're expecting buddylist presence anywhere, anytime now, too... realtime, persistent, personal communication from anywhere to anywhere... that's going to change tons of things, but we seem to be adapting well, would you agree?

  Tim O'Reilly [09.09.06 01:59 PM]

On a somewhat related note, Cory Doctorow just posted an entry about creative commons licenses allowing men aboard ship to share reading material. He reprints a gushing letter from a serviceman.

  Anonymous [09.09.06 03:00 PM]

Having returned from Iraq a little over a year ago, I can say that the situation described in Donesbury is accurate but not very prevelant. The default position of most of the people I worked with was to claim that, for a variety of reason other than combat (poor connectivity, not enough computers, etc, etc) communication with loved ones would have to be sporatic and unscheduled. This protected both the soldier from some of the daily pains of life and the family from the continual stress of the knowledge of danger. We tended to paint a very rosey picture for back home (everyone seemed to have the "absolute safest job in Iraq, Mom, and I hardly go outside the wire at all.") The technology was often there, but the immediacy of the issues make for an easy decision to "opt out"

  Anonymous [09.10.06 04:51 AM]

Of course you miss the flip side, every article I have seen about this always does. The problem with soldiers having all of this technology is that they don't give a damn about security of the Gov't network or those that use the network.

It's not that they don't know about security, we teach them the basics, a large number just don't care. They ignore the regulations, rules and often do their best to bypass the security measures.

I'm not talking about operational security (OPSEC), but computer security. People will put crap on their home computers, then transfer it to the Gov't systems. They will bridge multiple networks at the same time (usually unclassified and MWR), install programs or watch media from questionable sources that are often infected with malware. You wouldn't believe the number of times we have a Sony Rootkit show up on one of our networks, or the number of machines with active wireless cards that anyone can connect to.

The usual reponse we get is something along the lines of "We're fighting a war here, we don't have time for this."

But they have to learn how to make time:

http://www.gcn.com/print/25_25/41716-1.html

...I'm glad I was over here, but I will really glad to get away from this nonsense for good.