a network's professional sound people adding the finishing touches). The implications are staggering: in a combat theater awash with soldiers' personal digital media, commanders now must carefully instruct their people to secure not only weapons, ammunition, and other combat gear, but also their personal media, because any personal images lost in a combat zone can easily be used by the enemy in the creation of propaganda that has the potential to be quite effective and do serious damage.
The amount of personal digital equipment carried by the troops has continued to skyrocket because the technology available to average citizens in terms of their own capacity to produce information and communicate with others has changed in ways that are nothing short of revolutionary. Digital cameras, both still and moving, of increasingly high quality, are now available in sizes that are not just portable but small enough to be embedded in a cell phone, and this technology is more and more affordable to the average person. Also available is the software that permits images to be edited (and manipulated) right on a laptop computer, before being uploaded onto the Internet.[1]
The modern battlefield is awash in digital cameras, video cameras, and MP3 players that store images as well as music, personal computers, and cell phone cameras. And all of this technology—and the way it permits troops to stay connected to the home front—is so essential to the morale of the force (and, just as important to retention, to the morale of the families), there is simply no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Beyond mere email, we now have a force grown accustomed to using webcams to read bedtime stories to their children.[2]
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- ↑ It is not clear that professional journalists are using editing software any different from what the average citizen would use. For the combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, CBS was preparing to use Adobe Premiere for producers and photojournalists, and the basic free MovieMaker 2 program that Microsoft includes with its Windows XP operating system. Mike Wendland, "From ENG to SNG: TV Technology for Covering the Conflict with Iraq," Poynteronline, March 6, 2003, available from www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=23585.
- ↑ There are a variety of sources on the Internet offering advice to families preparing for a soldier or marine's deployment, and inevitably, particularly if there are young children involved, "get a webcam if you don't already have one" always makes the list. See, for example, Tom Gordon, "When a Soldier Comes Home," The Birmingham News, November 10, 2008, available from blog.al.com/living-news/2008/11/when_a_soldier_comes_home.html. This is, of course, the high tech way to make sure a very young child doesn't forget an absent parent. The low tech solution is "flat daddy," a life-size cardboard version of the deployed soldier.
