[espeed]

The people who are making these decisions do not understand what they are doing.

Yes, exactly -- to paraphrase Feynman -- you don't fully understand something until you "turn it over, to see why it's true, from every angle you can find." You don't understand all the benefits, the issues, the problems, the gotchas -- until you explore it from every angle, you're just taking someone else's word.

The problem with adoption of any new technology is there is no shortage of advocates making claims that you should use X for... but there aren't enough hours in the day to explore them all. Which ones are you going to take the leap of faith to learn, and why? The more foreign and ambiguous the technology, the bigger the leap of faith required.