After recently writing about the time suck factor of Web 2.0, Jenny from the Farm brought up my reluctance to sign up for Twitter. She joined recently and just registered her phone and here’s what she had to say about the experience:

Because of my new found love for Twitter, I went ahead and added a 250 message/month plan to my cell phone plan. I thought, 250, yeah that should be enough. Well, I recently checked my usage and I was up to 270, and the billing cycle wasn’t over yet. But, I think I like Twitter so much that I’ll upgrade even further to unlimited messaging. And then there’s the time I spend reading text messages and responding to them. It seems like there are some afternoons when my phone does nothing but alert me to a new message.

Damn! 270 texts for a partial billing cycle!!?? Yowza! I’ll get to the text charges momentarily, but first off, I don’t think I can handle my phone going off nonstop with friends telling me that they just ate a biscuit or used 3 sugars in their coffee instead of 4. Thanks to a post by Saxby’s Fifth Avenue, I read a few tweets that people post on Twitter and discovered that is some of the stuff people post. The other problem is that I’d be the idiot telling everybody else all the minutia of my life. Trust me, I’d tell you if I was just in the hopper. Does anybody want that? No.

Now then, onto the texting charges. Up until 6 months ago I didn’t even pay for text charges and I was quite pleased about that. I was getting free unlimited texting from Verizon as part of a class action lawsuit (I LOOOOOVE class actions!). Once the terms of the agreement expired I noticed a huge jump in my phone bill. I realized, “DAMN! Texting is expensive and suddenly everybody is using it more and more.” So I just kept on with my charges and bitched about it regularly and did nothing else. Finally, it was time for a new phone a couple weeks ago and I asked the lady what they have for text plans. I got some deal that gives 100 texts a month for $5. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay much more than that for texting! So another reason that I would not sign up for Twitter is that it’s not a free service if you factor in the cost of texting. Plus I think the names Twitter and tweet are really stupid. Honestly. Hell, I don’t particularly care for the word “blog.” That’s technology for you.

We had a pop quiz in class this past Wednesday. Garrett announced it in the morning via Twitter. Does that kind of advance knowledge make Twitter worthwhile? Nope. Not even with announced pop quiz capabilities! 

And on a final note, Garrett, what is with the chocolate milkshake addiction? (Click the link to Saxby’s above to see what I’m talking about) As someone who has suffered the indignities of lactose intolerance, I guess I just don’t understand milkshakes. So be it.

The impact that technology has had on war is profound. And massive. Think about the first Iraq war way back in 1991. Remember watching images of it on TV? I sure do. Remember where you watched the second Iraq war? OK, TV again; but a lot of what you saw probably came from online sources as well. Blogs, video clips, on-air interviews from overseas, embedded journalists. The war is on 24-hours a day, all day. And what you see or read is much more meaningful than anything that Dan Rather can report to you. The questions for class this week are: “Is seeing and reading about war a good thing or a bad thing? Should we have this much access to the front lines?” My answer is yes to both. As a defense contractor, I’ve been a strong proponent for ensuring that military personnel have unfettered access to blogs and also working on blogging policy (I’m with that branch that primarily flies planes). After a post in DangerRoom about the AF blocking access to blog sites, I talked to some co-workers who had blogged while deployed and learned a lot about the challenges they faced in getting their material out there, and more importantly learned what blogging means to them.

The people I spoke to cited the same similar reasons for wanting to blog while deployed: 1) It is a great mental outlet to be able to put into words the things they see, 2) It is a way to let their loved ones know what is going on and that they are alright, and 3) It is a way to get news from others who are living the same experience. We, the public, are beneficiaries of this front line access. If you are interested in reading about war, then you have thousands of soldiers to hear. If you don’t want to hear about war, then you can also read the thousands of sites dedicated to criticizing the war. Everyone wins. And even though it is not always easy for airmen and soldiers to access their blogs, they have creative ways of posting. To protect the guilty, I won’t post those here.

After reviewing some of the sites that were assigned for class, I went back to read an email that I had received a few months after starting my current job. Two of my co-workers (JV-a photographer, and JW-a writer) were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan when I started my job, so at the time I knew them only by name. In June 2007, their team came under mortar fire in Iraq and the broadcaster (not from my office) was badly injured (he received the Purple Heart). JW kept a blog while deployed and wrote an incredible story about the incident that our director sent to everyone in our division. I had read milblogs before, but this was the first time that a stronger human feeling was attached to it. Although I didn’t yet know JW and JV, the fact that they worked in the same office as me and that my other co-workers knew them made it personal. The detailed account transported me to that tent in Iraq and actually made me choke up (and anyone who knows me knows that I only get choked up during It’s a Wonderful Life!). It was real account of real life for airmen and soldiers. And now that I know JW and JV, it makes it so much more meaningful because you realize what could have happened that night in Iraq. I recently read some of JW’s other entries from her deployment last year and they still resonate strongly with me. They also make me look at other milblogs with a more personal touch even though I don’t know the writer.

From left to right: JB, JW, one of the Air Force joint tactical air controllers, and JV at a forward operating base south of Baghdad. Two days after this photo was taken, they got mortared. The team was underneath that tent shown – JW was laying on the green cot shown. The mortar landed next to that green bush behind them.

The emotional aspect is why I think that having ready access to the war is a good thing and military personnel should be allowed to tell their stories. There is no spin, no propaganda, no scripted version of the truth that you might find on a network news story. Milblogs are not about the debate between pro-war and anti-war. They are about humans. You can hate the war if you want to , but you can’t argue with the fact that it’s a human writing the blog entry.

My officemate will be deploying for Iraq on April 15 as part of the Joint Combat Camera Center and I’ve convinced him to keep a blog. I think that the stories you hear from the front line are one of the most valuable resources available to really learn what is happening out there.