hello delight

The Economist has an interesting opinion piece recently called "The military-consumer complex".

"THE earliest computers were used to crack codes and simulate nuclear explosions. The internet grew out of a military research project. In-car navigation systems rely on satellites that were put into orbit to guide ships, troops and missiles....but lately some kinds of technology have been moving in the other direction, too. The United States Air Force has just placed an order for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 video-game consoles, which will be the building-blocks of a supercomputer. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are using Apple iPods and iPhones to run translation software and calculate bullet trajectories. Xbox video-game controllers have been modified to control reconnaissance robots and drone aircraft."

Alone, that's a very interesting trend and one that represents not only consumer/private innovation, but also public adoption and integration of those goods.

But, another interesting way to look at it is from the perspective of a challenger brand.  One of the classic challenger brand strategies is to find something that's going really well in another industry and bring it home to roost in yours.  This strategy has many benefits but chief among them are an ability to capitalize on a pre-existing set of gestures.  This is exactly what the military seems to be doing:  People use iPods already, leverage them.  Xboxes, leverage them too.

It's an interesting story of interaction design whereby seemingly unrelated technologies and industries are capitalized for new purposes.