Technology Substitution

New technology is always being created and when it does it usually replaces existing technology.

There have been many significant examples of technological substitution over the years, such as:

• With music it went from the gramophone to record players, to cassette tape players, to Compact Disc's. Now a days music is becoming more likely to be downloaded from the internet straight to an iPhone or MP3 player.

• With movies it went from movie projectors videos to DVD's and now onto Blu-Rays but like with music, it is also becoming increasingly popular to download a movie from online movie web sites.

• They way we take photo's has changed from the camera obscura, a device dating back to the ancient Chinese and ancient Greeks which uses a pinhole or lens to project an image of the scene outside upside-down onto a viewing surface. It has in more recent times changed from a camera which takes film to the digital cameras we have today.

So when, as a business or organisation, do we shift to using the new technology and when do we phase out the old technology?
It is not an easy thing for a business or organization to know when it is right to make a change or to just leave things running as they are. There are a lot of people out there with the attitude "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", which is all good if the technology is working fine and business is pumping.
But if they are not willingly to make the change, how are they going to keep up or ahead of their competition? and how do they know that the new technology is going to work for the better?
There are lots to consider. For example:

• How much is the technology going to cost?
• Will the way we run the business/organization change much?
• Will we need to retrain staff?
• Will we need to add new departments, such as an IT department?
• What concerns will there be for OSH (Occupational Safety and Health)?
• Are there any government regulations to think about?

With all these considerations it cannot be an easy task for a business/organization to change the technology they use. Sometimes the consequences of implementing a new, sometimes even unproven, technology can lead to disaster. For example, the INCIS project which has been described as "One of the biggest bureaucratic bungles in NZ history" (Dale, 2000). Just a few of the reasons why it was a disaster were:
1. It was too over ambitious - "INCIS was big and was going to lead the world" (Dale, 2000)
2. INCIS specified a lot of high technology at the start, but as it was such a big project, quite a lot of it became obsolete along the way.
3. Having an unrealistic timetable - the INCIS completion date slipped from March '97 to, eventually, August '99 when it was canned.

A lot of time, money and research needs to go into the thought process of implementing a new technology.



Bibliography
Dale, T (2000). How to plan a computer disaster. Retrieved August 19th, 2012 from http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/research/RG/svg/tony/papers/incis.html