There are a lot of examples of people working on stuff that is technically possible, but totally unnecessary. When I see this stuff and ask "why are you doing this?" I usually get an answer of the "because we can" or "because we're getting paid to" genre.
I have a really specific example, but I will omit some details out of courtesy. I was at some professional organization's junket and the presenter was demonstrating, quite proudly, a solution his firm developed for dispensing liquids. Let's say it was soda on a cruise ship.
The business case behind it was to reduce costs. Yeah, I know, big surprise.
The system was designed to control the number of refills people could get in their pre-paid cups. Each cup had an embedded chip (probably an RFID) inside that was tied to an account which tracked how many refills a person had coming to them. The self-serve soda fountain read the chips, and had a touchscreen interface so people could check their pop quotient and upgrade their accounts.
Don't get me wrong. I think the solution is kind of neat, in a Rube Goldberg sort of way. If it's goal was to reduce waste I might even applaud it. But I'm sure these "smarter" cups are being thrown out along with their embedded chips.
Ultimately, the presenter's firm developed what was asked of them. And that's the problem. Too often, the implementation people don't scrutinize the business cases for the things they make. When they don't, they really only have themselves to blame when things don't turn out as planned.
An absurd business case will most likely lead to an even more ridiculous solution. Just remember, it's much easier to change a business case than a solution that's already in development.
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