A LEADING INDICATOR: THE MILITARY

If technology is the instigator of organizational change due to economic selection,
is there an instigator of technological change? Yes. Military demands have been the
driving force in the development of most technologies throughout the ages. From
gunpowder to atomic energy, early digital computers to microprocessors, telegraph
to Internet, semaphore to satellite, DaVinci machines to space shuttles, military needs
have pushed the boundaries of science to implement practical solutions. One key
reason for the military’s role as the leading source of technology innovation is that
military survival supersedes economic competition. Typically, such demands are
accompanied by a national attitude of survival at any cost.
Technology leaps are often generated in an environment where numerous possibilities
are pursued, and the end work product does not have to stand the economic
pressures of the consumer marketplace.
Generous military expenditures for nascent
technologies become the incubator in which ideas and possibilities become fieldtested
realities.

The military potential, fueled by fear of the unknown enemy rather
than the economic return, becomes the motivational seed for cultivating a host of
futuristic technologies. The journey from concept to proposal to prototype to early
adoption traverses the most treacherous territory for any new technology, whether
or not it is related to military endeavors. Many innovations do not cross this chasm
for lack of financial resources, but far fewer would ever begin the journey without the lifting of the economic constraints spurred by military considerations.

This is a techonomic observation, not a judgment on the morality of this arrangement.
Obviously, it would be preferable for the world to become so safe and peaceful,
universally inhabited by such civilized and enlightened people, that the need for
military protection could fade away. The reality is that we do have militaries and
that, when they are large and well funded, the scientists and technologists working
for them escape economic pressures, vastly increasing their ability to extend the
boundaries of science.

Xerox Park created the foundations of
the modern personal computer interface only to have its own corporation fail to
grasp the value and potential of the visual operating system. Technological descendants
of the Xerox Park operating system were popularized by Apple and made
massively profitable by Microsoft. Even when a research laboratory supports a
corporation, the risk of marketplace deployment may cause many valuable innovations
to remain in the lab due to the lack of a controlled, early-adopter market. These
are stages in the life of a new technology for which military applications provide
the gestation: need identification, conception, theoretical development, experiment,
prototype, refinement, and field trials.
Military application of technology, as a general rule, provides the bellwether of
future mass applications of commercial technology. To anticipate the technologies
that will emerge in the consumer market tomorrow, one need only study today’s
military technologies with an eye toward potential civilian applications understanding
the possibilities of mass-application cost reductions. The Web, cell phones, global
positioning systems, bar codes, lasers, biometrics, radio frequency identification tags
— the list of currently expanding technologies derived from military beginnings is
almost endless.

Although the military is not the only site of technological development,
it is the premiere entity with resources, focus, and urgency to develop
and field-test technologies on the cutting edge of science.

What remains for the
consumer market is the shifting of technology application to civilian needs, cost
reduction to meet market expectations, and improvements in operating reliability to
satisfy the demands of mass applications. These things take time, even in our fastpaced
Internet world. Therefore, if you watch military developments, you may just
be struck by an insight about what is coming to your market in the next few years.