Old practices – New Technology: Observations of how established practices meet new technology1

Most technology for command and control units is developed from topdown 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.