PTSD Combat

Every step of progress in tackling paralysis has been hard won. One of the early demonstrations that it may be possible emerged in 2003, when José Carmena, then at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, successfully created an interface between brain and machine that allowed his lab monkeys to play a computer game using only their minds.

Keiffer P. Wilhelm

Chad Olson

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- whose previous job, I might add, was Chief of Naval Operations -- tweets near-daily. The Pentagon has a new principal deputy assistant secretary of defense who has focused a lot on social media. The U.S. Naval Institute, one of the most respected pillars of military thinking, has a blog, and even more surprisingly, it has a good blog, written by some of the best navy-bloggers around.

What is the Naval Institute Blog? An independent online forum where you can express thoughtful, productive ideas, insights and opinions on issues affecting our Nation's defense. We're not the Navy nor any government agency.

In his book, Hindman points out that technologies like the telegraph, the radio, and television were all heralded as democratizing breakthroughs in their early days, but even now, we're still debating whether TV has accomplished this goal. The Internet is still new, compared to those technologies, and its landscape changes so quickly that the Pew report-though released today-is already, in some ways, outdated. It does not include Twitter in its "social networking" category, for example, since just a few months before the data was collected only 6 percent of American Internet users Tweeted. That still-rising number hit 10.7 percent in June, and Twitter has now become a popular conduit for political activity; in the past year, people across the world have Tweeted fundraising pleas, key information about terrorist attacks, and, famously, calls to protest.

Iraq war veteran Kevin Rodrick of Racine took his own life Aug. 15, the day he was scheduled to meet with his Marine commanders and former comrades in Madison to discuss entering the reserves. A few days later, something arrived in the mail.