Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Technology Is Not The Answer

Article at Popular Mechanics website talks about how the US government spent 15 years and almost $500M dollars on military tech but apparently the soldiers don't really like it! Wow.

A soldier is quoted saying "There are a lot of things I'd never use in my position. It seems like a lot of excessive stuff."

From general feature and technology bloat to details like lack of consideration in equipment lag times, this could be a good example of techno-centric development that forgets to address the critical question of the user's experience and helping the soldiers actually work better instead of just working differently (and blowing R&D money).