Old Practices – New Technology : Observation of how established practices meet new technology

• Most technology for command and control units is developed from top-down visions and models of an ideal team and technology fit. Such models seldom pay attention to social and historical practises. In Sweden there is a futuristic command and control post under development. The system is intended for civilian and military handling of crises. In spring 1999, a training session was carried out in an elaborated virtual environment. The session was video recorded. In this paper we present and discuss our observations from this session. We have especially focused on the team organisation and use of technology from a bottom-up perspective. As we suspected we found a clash between old practices and what new technology affords. We describe our observations and discuss them in connection to how the system is coupled to external units. One main conclusion is that the team members seem to be more coupled to their subordinate units than to the command and control team.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Mänsklig interaktion med IKT (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Human Aspects of ICT (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Command and Control

CSCW

Decision system

Human Co-operation

Practice

Information Sharing

Information System

Shared workspace

System Evaluation

Team Processes

Virtual environment

Datavetenskap med inriktning mot människa-datorinteraktion

Computer Science with specialization in Human-Computer Interaction

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)