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Real Warriors Trained In Virtual Worlds
The Washington Post has a piece looking at the U.S. military's increased reliance on gaming for training the next generation of soldiers. From the article: "'The technology in games has facilitated a revolution in the art of warfare,' says David Bartlett, the former chief of operations at the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, a high-level office within the Defense Department and the focal point for computer-generated training at the Pentagon. 'When the time came for [a solider in training] to fire his weapon, he was ready to do that. And capable of doing that. His experience leading up to that time, through on-the-ground training and playing 'Halo' and whatever else, enabled him to execute. His situation awareness was up. He knew what he had to do. He had done it before -- or something like it up to that point.'"
"'Ctrl+Alt+Del,' " the U.S. Army noted in a recent study, "is as basic as 'ABC.'"
Are they really saying that rebooting a PC is as fundamental and commonplace as reading??
Sure, we like to joke that Windows is unstable; "The US Army reports that every time they try to read an email message, they have to reboot Windows". It's so sad that people put up with such instability from their OS and applications.
Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim
This is a question I asked myself several times when I did my training and the answer, to my surprise, was always yes. And again, no hesitation. You may think I just brag, but the thing is, even if I'm not ashamed of it, I'm certainly not proud of it either. I guess I may sound crazy to someone who never had military training, but this is what military training is about. It's not only about using a weapon and running, but also about changing how you view the world around you. It took me about one year after my military service to become "normal" again (by normal I mean not viewing civilians as worthless pieces of shit).
I ended my military service 8 years ago, and even now, my views are still... let's say shocking for some people. For example, I don't think that killing a 12 year old boy (or girl) is worse than killing an adult. Particularly because a 12 year old boy is certainly less predictable than an adult. I also don't have a lot of problems with a soldier raping a woman. I do think he should be punished, but more for a lack of discipline than for the rape. Let's just say that being under fire by a 12mm machine gun is kind of stressful and I can understand a soldier who decide to relieve some of that stress (no, it never happened to me, but I saw what this kind of weapon can do and it's really not difficult to imagine how someone could feel in that situation).
Having said that, I must add one thing. I am against war. And most people I knew who would kill a 12 year old kid without hesitation were also strongly against war.
Now that I think of it, video games are probably a very bad idea for soldiers. Killing should be a duty, but it should never be fun. I fear that in a few years, instead of disciplined soldiers we may end up with a bunch of trigger happy who shoot everything.