Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

Earlier, I described the way in which a videogame such as Time Crisis enables you to simulate the form of killing while being happily dissociated from the morality of the acts represented, because there is no actual killing going on. This in itself is an innocent phenomenon with respectable sporting forebears. But in the specific military context, it becomes a real danger. For modern hi-tech wars are increasingly fought and seen through videogame-type graphic systems. One has only to think of the disturbingly gleeful American generals of Desert Storm showing off their smart- missile videotapes, or of the television commentators on the bombing of Belgrade cooing over grainy film images of tracer bullets and explosions— for all the world as if they were watching fireworks and no one was actually dying.

Military aircraft and tanks used by NATO now have weapons of such range that it is not at all usual to make direct visual identification of a target; instead, icons are tracked on computerized displays and weapons are locked automatically. Since attacks in Desert Storm and Serbia were fought at the greatest distance possible in order to minimize American casualties, these procedures directly caused numerous widely reported instances of friendly fire: Allied tanks

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