From Palm to iPhone

Everyone take a powder; we've been here before.

"There were a lot of people who thought this was a marketing thing – we're going to give you a cellphone if you enlist," says Mr. McCarthy, director of operations for the Army's Brigade Modernization Command.

But that was the furthest thing from his mind. Instead, he was hoping to recast how the Army thinks about technology.
It was a simple idea – allowing soldiers to use the smart phones they're familiar with to be more connected on the battlefield, whether to check maps or relay information. But it has profound implications for the military.

For the soldiers, the smart phones have already begun to unleash torrents of ingenuity, with some designing new soldier-friendly applications, such as links to the video feed of the base security camera.

I was one of the first people to show up at their command with a laptop in the very early '90s.

I was one of the first people to show up with a Palm PDA later that decade. I had a YN1 who wrote programs. I get technology.

I remember all the hype especially about the PDA and how it would revolutionize how we did work on board a ship. I remember commands buying all their officers and Chiefs PDA ... etc ... etc.

Tools. Just tools. On the margins they can help - but just tools. Don't get excited - forget the fundamentals and you won't program your ships navigation computers properly and will run aground while the Commodore hold awards quarters ... or you will drift your just out of the dry dock CG on to a reef on a calm, clear, Pacific day.

Relax. None of them are EMP hardened anyway.