Rubbish, Excellence and Saving a Life

Video games and simulations have a bad reputation. They are seen as entirely frivolous by a large segment of the population. I want to change that perception, of course, so I am always interested in story's like this one. Game training helps to save a life. The short version is that a man was driving down the street and saw an accident. He had been train to respond to a crisis by Americas Army, the controversial Army recruiting tool.

"Paxton took him clear of the vehicle, found a towel and kept it pressed against the man's lost fingers, and examined the head injury to determine what he could do to help. He decided the head injury wasn't as serious, so focused on the hand, telling the man to sit down, relax, and lift his hand high above his head. Five minutes later a soldier in plain clothing arrived on the scene and took over, informing Paxton that he had done all the right things and thanks to him the badly injured man wasn't in any immediate danger. With the ambulance on the way, Paxton went back to his car, and continued his drive home." - from Gamernode

Here's another example of a video game teaching:

“Formula 1 racing drivers such as Toyota’s Jarno Trulli and BMW’s Kazuki Nakajima have been seen practicing in front of a console. Whenever a new track comes onto the racing calendar, like Fuji Speedway did last October after a 30-year absence, and drivers cannot get there to practice for real, many fire up “Gran Turismo.” They say it’s the only way to memorize the track layout and braking markers — the points where you must start killing the speed to take an upcoming corner.” - Japan times as quoted in jgadgets

Any airline pilot will tell you that video games (very expensive video games) are indispensables tools for flight training.

I think we will look back at this era and the video game critics will appear very short sighted. Like the folks who undoubtedly came out against film, television, radio...

Even books:
"The introduction of the printing press opened up networks that allowed new knowledge, ideas and creativity from new kinds of authors to emerge. People were no longer restricted to receiving knowledge from the authorities (the church, academia etc), they could publish their own. Academic debates were taking place in coffee houses and people were publishing their conclusions. But the printing press was an agent for rubbish as well as excellence." from Jenny-bee.net