A new twist on an old technique. Technology works its way into our lives every day, but is it really creating new items or just improving the ones already here? Take the ipod for example. A record player played music decades ago and so does an ipod now. They do the same exact thing but on an extremely different presentation format. The same is true for one of the most technological rich environments of all time, the military. A new Humvee simulation is just another form of training troops, the same thing which has to be and has been done for centuries.
This new simulation uses amusement-park-ride hydraulics attached to a Humvee to create what seems to the driver and passengers as a real Afghanistan environment. The sole purpose of this simulation is to familiarize soldiers with the situation of a roadside bomb. The Humvee has a screen inside, responsive to the driver and passenger controls. The simulation is so realistic as to smoke pouring into the cab of the Humvee after being hit with a roadside bomb.
Irony takes over next. An extreme technological advancement created to fight a simple and antique style of warfare. So much thought is put into the realness of the simulation along with the hard-work it takes to set up a simulation and develop the technology while so little time and effort is put into the roadside bombs.
With the irony of the new technological twist to combat an old style of war, is would seem to make you wonder if we are overdoing ourselves. Should we switch back to our old ways? Is the new training procedures preparing the troops too much? This question is one I find very interesting and thought probing. Since the simulation is assumed to be so accurate, will a soldier limit themselves to only their capabilities inside the simulation and not be able to evaluate something that hasn’t shown up in the simulation. Does this new technology make the soldier have a sort of “tunnel vision”?
Whether it be record players to ipods or war games to virtual reality simulations, technology is bettering the environment all around us. One has to look and think though, is technology creating new things or just making existing ones better? If your answer is that technology is there for the betterment of existing materials, how much better can things get?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/us/23simulator.html?ref=technology
You can definetley see a need for greater graphics in todays video games. They are almost becoming as realistic as possible. With more and more animations becoming evident people will start to want the best of the best. It is interesting to also look at how the army uses various animation to help their soliders experience reality.
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