Talkin' bout the new generation...

...of military hardware/software. Nice piece from The Economist:

The military-consumer complex
Military technology used to filter down to consumers. Now it’s going the other way

Illustration by Claudio Munoz

...The United States Air Force has just placed an order for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 video-game consoles, which will be the building-blocks of a supercomputer (see article). Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are using Apple iPods and iPhones to run translation software and calculate bullet trajectories. Xbox video-game controllers have been modified to control reconnaissance robots and drone aircraft. Graphics chips that power PC video-cards are being used by defence firms to run simulations.

What has caused this shift? Global defence spending, at about $1.5 trillion a year, far exceeds sales of consumer-electronics, at around $700 billion a year. But only a small fraction of defence spending is devoted to developing electronics. The consumer-electronics industry can therefore outspend the military in research and development, and spread out those costs over a far larger market...

Predate:

My generation.