again, insurgents using terrorist methods) no longer depend upon the professional media to communicate with their own constituents and no longer depend upon the professional media to communicate with the outside world. (In fact, to an unprecedented degree, the professional media have become dependent upon them.) Technological developments permit any terrorist cell to film, edit, and upload their actions virtually in real time whether Western media are there to serve witness or not.
In this radically different information environment, a situation where not one, but a confluence of new technologies have all become available simultaneously, the possibility for synergistic effects is created, producing an entirely new environment from that of previous wars. Obviously the Internet is first among equals; a revolutionary information tool in and of itself, connecting the entire world in entirely new ways. It has been suggested that its impact is comparable to that of the first printing press.
The average citizen, meanwhile, has become empowered to film what he or she sees, to edit those images, and then to upload them for the entire world to see. It is an entire group of new technologies, all of which have become relatively mature at relatively the same time, which have together made for this new information environment, and terrorists and insurgents are capitalizing on this environment successfully.
For our purposes, an information or communication technology becomes mature when it meets several criteria. First, it must be available off-the-shelf, that is to say it must be commercially available to the general public, not only to military and law enforcement communities or reviewers for consumer product columns. Second, it must be relatively affordable, something within reach of a decent percentage of the
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