Nintendo surgeons
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We already knew that video games calm kids before surgery more effective than tranquilizers or parental presence. During the Video Game/Entertainment Industry Technology and Medicine Conference, Dr. James Rosser Jr. explained how video games can also help doctor improve their medical skills. Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 per cent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 per cent faster, he says, basing his claims on tests using video games.
Rosser has had over 5,000 subjects play "Super Monkey Ball" as well as practice techniques of laparoscopic surgery (that uses minimally-invasive techniques to repair injuries) by suturing a sponge with long probes and dropping a pea into a hole. Video games also have much to offer the military. For example, the TATRC "STATCare" is a virtual simulator for combat medics that lets them bandage wounds, apply tourniquets, administer intravenous fluids, inject medications and make other assessments they would be required to do in a battlefield. "The Journey to Wild Divine," a $160 game that relies on biofeedback, features heart-rate and skin-conduction monitors hooked to players' fingers. They must control their heart rate and stress levels to bring responses in line with the demands of the game. Another product is a system that applies technology to hand rehabilitation -- patients wear a special sensor-laden glove and control a video game by doing exercises. In the classic game "Asteroids," rotating the wrist moves a spaceship left and right, while making a fist fires cannons. Via The New Zealand Herald (photo). |
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There is an aspect to this which smacks of Stephen Jay Gould's notion of Spandrels : "a feature of an organism that exists as a necessary consequence of other features and is not actually selected for"
So : is this something that should be a problem? After all, if video games help, then that's a good thing, right? Well, actually, no. There's a world of difference between something having beneficial side effects and being beneficial. And that in itself is removed from the question begged in the above article : do we really want to achieve tasks faster?
Think of St-Exupery's Little Prince : when given more time in his day through alleviating thirst, he would have liked to use that time drinking at a small fountain. I paraphrase, but the meaning (I hope) remains.