The Killing Game: How the US Army uses video games to train killer American children

For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That's why the Army spent $10 million developing its own. But there's a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.

©Larry Dalton

Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.

For gamers, the attraction of online play is obvious. In the cyberworld, you're not hunting down slow computer-generated Nazis. You're matching wits with real humans (sometimes real Germans), which somehow makes a kill all the more satisfying.

Moreover, computer graphics and sound have evolved to the point that it is easy to think you're in a tangible world. Your immediate surroundings vanish. Crickets chirp, bushes rustle, bullets whiz by your head and shower you with chips of concrete. Shell casings clatter to the floor. Mortars crump in the distance, and grenades send up gouts of rock and dirt. It's a loud, bloody, violent and altogether alarming world. Yet it is oddly exhilarating.

"I have to laugh when someone says, 'Oh, the people playing these games know it's not real,' " said Dr. Peter Vorberer, a clinical psychologist and head of the University of Southern California's computer game research group. "Of course they think it's real! That's why people play them for hours and hours. They're designed to make you believe it's real. Games are probably the purest example yet of the Internet melding with reality."

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/148541-The-Killing-Game-How-the-US-Army-uses-video-games-to-train-killer-American-children

Powered by ScribeFire.

Israel developing autonomous "digital general"

Israel is reportedly developing a sophisticated piece of software meant to help troops make quick decisions during battle and, under the right conditions, autonomously manipulate the nation's defense systems.

First reported in Defense News (subscription required), the unnamed system would primarily be used for tactical decisions during periods of heavy bombardment, although in a worst-case scenario, the complex algorithm would supposedly be capable of taking over total military control. Yes, we know what you're thinking, but don't worry: Israeli officials have already sworn up and down that "there's no way we're letting this thing go Terminator on us -- no freakin' way."

Comment: Unfortunately the worst case scenario is where we are heading and this gadget gives the psychopaths in power a way to make sure that soldiers endowed with conscience won't get in the way of their murderous rampage.

Coincidence that it is being developed by Israel?

Technorati categories: News, technology, Politics internet, digg, wired