are capitalizing. An information or communication technology becomes mature when it meets several criteria. First, it must be available off-the-shelf. Second, it must be affordable, something within financial reach of a decent percentage of the population. Third, critically, it must be small enough to be easily portable. Fourth, it must be available in most of the world, and not just in the developed countries.
In the last few years, several technologies have met these criteria. Cameras of increasing quality (even high-definition) have become progressively cheaper and smaller even in countries without dependable electricity. Laptop computers are similarly available worldwide and at progressively lower prices and higher quality. The software that permits images to be edited and manipulated is available worldwide, requiring no training beyond the instructions that come with the software. The Internet alone is a powerful, even revolutionary, tool; the Internet in combination with these other technologies has the potential to be used as a weapon.
Technology, however, and the rapidly improving ways to distribute and disseminate content that technology makes possible, is nothing without the content itself. Consider that, "… al-Qaeda [in Iraq] (AQI) and other terrorist organizations used to articulate their battle plan with rocks, and stones, and sticks, now we see them using power points with laptops and projectors on a wall."[1] The content is sophisticated and improved steadily (although there is evidence that, at least in some areas, coalition efforts did manage to ultimately degrade their sophistication substantially.[2]) Media labs are decentralized, (even as media strategies seem to be centralized) and the labs themselves are never connected to the Internet. Rather,
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- ↑ Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Jenkins, Director of Operations for the Combined Media Processing Center, Qatar, Interview by phone, December 3, 2007.
- ↑ Major David Jenkins, Psychological Operations Officer, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula (J-39), Interview with the Author, Ft. Carson, CO, May 19, 2009.
