Down Time in the Digital Age.

If you have seen any older war movies, most will have a scene or two were smbrs, during down time, will exchange stories and pictures about their past lives or future aspirations. In the movie HAMBURGER HILL, one of the soldiers passes around a picture of his girl back home. In the movie FORREST GUMP a bunkmate throws GUMP a particular type of magazine after lights out. Well the digital age has had an influence on this pretty standard war time experience.

A civilian will be hard pressed to understand the significance of digital forms of media down range. On today's battlefields and forward operating bases, instead of sharing a single photo, or magazine....which is still done.....smbrs can exchange entire 20-500gigabitts hard drives with each other in as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette.

Now what kind of exchanges do you imagine taking place btw a fair percentage of smbrs, especially those of the male persuasion?

I remember the first time I went to hang out with the guys from the Battery we were attached to and the first thing that we did was exchange Down Time Documents. Exchanging DTD was so easy, you just connected hard drives via a laptop pressed copy and poof, everything you had is shared and visa versa. Thousands of images and video shared in minutes. It was a great way to 'share the wealth' so to speak. I'll never forget asking a smbr who came through our base on his way to another if he had any DTD.

Hell yeah he did, 150gigs, the mother goad.

What made surfing through DTD so enjoyable was your control over it and it's ability to take you from a shitty place to a more enjoyable one. In this other place you had control over your enjoyment and for at-least a few minutes were outside the war.

Hahaha, remember this creed from FULL METAL JACKET?

This is my rifle......this is my gun....this is for fighting.........this is for fun.

Well smbrs, your not going to like this and forgive me females but this is directed at the guys.....as a civilian now you have to switch this understanding around and start treating your 'gun' as a training tool, not as something used for fun.

Tomorrows' post will explain how.