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Posted on 06/25/2002 11:01:57 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
A recent article by Caroline E. Mayer in the Washington Post's National Weekly Edition tells an interesting tale about what might be called our national inclination to high-tech laziness."Americans," Ms. Mayer reports, "buy the most sophisticated computers, the coolest digital cameras, the most advanced automobiles, the most versatile cell phones and handheld organizers, and then...and then we forget, or decline, or flat out refuse, to read the directions."
Mayer goes on to detail some of the results of this endemic aversion to reading the users' manuals: unnecessary and costly product repairs and returns, clogged manufacturer "Help" lines, frustrated consumers, and, not least, a routine failure to exploit all the advanced capabilities pricey high-tech products were designed to deliver.
"Why Americans don't read directions is no mystery," Mayer insists. "Consumers want instant satisfaction--they don't want to wade through pages and pages of directions after they buy a product, especially if the directions are hard to understand or follow."
The article struck a nerve, because I had just finished reading a concept paper enthusiastically endorsing a future military automation system promising "a dramatic reduction in training challenges, particularly if it is designed with the same 'look, see, feel' of universal commercial and educational systems and applications such as MS Windows and the MS Word application that this concept paper uses."
That's comforting. As a writer, I use those applications a lot. The thought that tomorrow's computer-endowed soldiers might come to rely as heavily on muddling through as I do, and as Ms. Mayer claims most other high-tech consumers do, is a truly frightening prospect.
Of course, compared with some military computer applications--the Army's automated artillery fire direction system comes to mind--Microsoft Word is a model of user-friendliness. And the military does train its people. But the latter also lack the market power of civilian consumers, so developers often have little incentive to discipline their appetites for complexity.
Recently I had the opportunity to observe some of the advanced automation being developed to assist in the future command and control of tactical operations. The technology itself is astonishingly versatile and able. It also is complicated, however. In experiments using the technology in simulated battles, players more than once became so immersed in the sheer challenge of making the system work that the battle itself suffered. Similar problems have accompanied other efforts to automate battlefield activities.
Nor are computers the only high-tech systems that are vulnerable. After-action reports from Afghanistan, for example, describe battle staffs becoming so mesmerized by the video pictures transmitted by the much-publicized unmanned aerial vehicles that the business of the headquarters more or less stopped.
In a culture weaned on video games, that should come as no surprise. But it bodes ill for an American military in which computers and video displays are propagating down to very low levels of organization.
Of course, the danger can be overstated. Pilots routinely use such displays and the computer systems supporting them without penalty to situational awareness and efficiency--on the contrary, to their considerable enhancement. So do other military specialists from tank gunners to ship drivers.
The difference is disciplined training. Far from diminishing the need for such training, in fact, modern technologies only increase it. It is a different kind of training to be sure, but no less demanding and important. There are a host of very good reasons to expand the military's use of advanced technology, but diminishing the training requirement isn't one of them.
Noting the growing tendency of high-tech manufacturers to imbed in new consumer products what amounts to a user interrogation as the price of operating the item, Mayer comments, "The moral there: You can learn to control technology--or it will control you."
The more extensively the military invests in technology, and especially in automation, the more it will confront the same challenge. Thoughtfully designed and properly employed, automation and communications technologies vastly expand military capabilities. But in the military as elsewhere, technology is non-selective: It will magnify the effects of error and confusion as readily as it does those of prudence and good judgment.
On the battlefield, however, unlike the living room, "Help" lines are in short supply and there are no refunds. The soldier confronts, not just impersonal if occasionally frustrating machines, but also a thinking and actively malicious enemy.
Muddling through in these conditions is not a prescription for victory. However cavalierly they treat their Palm Pilots, when it comes to warfighting, if tomorrow's soldiers are to be the beneficiaries rather than the victims of America's technological creativity, they will need to read the directions.
Richard Hart Sinnreich writes regularly for The Sunday Constitution.
As an example think of a digital camera that doesn't take a lot of knowlege to use yet gives you good looking pictures every time. Compare that to a digital camera with every "bell and whistle" in the book, and then see the quality of the pictures taken by the average duffer with both cameras. One camera is working harder than the other one is, and one camera produces better pictures more easily than the other one. Which is the more sophisticated camera?
In a similar manner, the soldier of the future won't have one "master computer" in their battle uniforms, they will probably have more like a dozen different systems, all performing one or two specific functions, and doing them very well, perhaps even transparently to the user. Each system will be about the size and weight of a stick of gum, yet the functions performed will be amazing, especially in the realm of observation, communication, target identification and command.
This is only partially true. There is a point where situational awareness of one's external surroundings is far more important than what's being displayed on a screen. Failure to transition between the technology that's providing an enhanced awareness of the threat and the real world that it's designed to replicate can be fatal. I see it all the time where I work. People fall into the same trap with alarming regularity, basing their decisions and actions soley on a screen display rather than taking a few extra seconds to see things for themselves to confirm or deny what the technology is portraying.
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Bottom line: garbage in, garbage out.
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