How Hardware Changes Media

I was watching the war on CNN last night and saw streaming low-res video of the 7th Cavalry's charge across southern Iraq (taken from one of the transports as it drove across the desert). It was amazing to see how far we've come since the 1991 war when we were limited to a phone call from Bernard Shaw et al in their Bagdad hotel room describing the initial bombing.

News.com has an article about one of the products enabling such transmissions, the IPT Suitcase. It's basically a robust PC using Windows Media or MPEG encoders, a web server as user interface and a satellite uplink. Nothing that won't continue to get cheaper and better via Moore's law.

Much has been said about how software and the internet have democratized information flow. The blog movement is clearly the most recent example of this. However it's important to remember the role new kinds of hardware can play in this effort. As cheap, fast wireless networks get built out in more habitable places and satellite systems continue to develop for less habitable places, the idea of everyone being able to report instantly from anywhere and reach anyone is very much within our reach.