In computer news this week, 09/17/2001

In computer news this week, 09/19/02

It didn't take an evil genius .........

I read that the most recently captured terrorist had incriminating data on his laptop, including the flight simulator program, which was also found on the laptops of the 9-11 terrorists.

Last year in watching the horrible events on September 11th, a tv commentator said that it looked almost like a computer simulation instead of reality. Other tv news people were using the term "evil genius" to describe the terrorist who had thought of using airplanes to crash into the World Trade Center.

When I was awakened by a frantic call from my daughter in Seattle, and turned on the tv, the first thing that came to mind was Microsoft Flight simulator and other flying games. Over the years Microsoft started adding specific city landscapes that you could buy, so that you could try to fly under the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge, or perhaps buzz the Empire State building.

Computer games became increasingly violent; games such as Mortal Combat where you control fighting gladiators, and the object of the game is to tear your opponents's heart out , in full gorey animation with sounds. These games triggered a congressional investigation into their impact on American youth.

Do these games desensitize kids to death and destruction, and warp their sense of reality? What long term effects do they have? Go back to the early days of black and white television in the 50's, where children watched tv characters hit people in the face with pies, or squirted them with water, or saw cowboys in fist fights with bad guys. The children began mimicking the behavior they saw on tv.

Just by watching tv - a non-interactive participation - a child sees something like 10,000 acts of violence a year; images that bury themselves in a child's mind. Then kids actively participate in violent computer games, adding to these buried images, and at some point, in some situation, can this learned negative behavior emerge in some way, and distort their thinking?

In the aftermath of the 9-11 disaster, with the FBI and CIA conducting massive investigations, we know now that the terrorists involved had computers and used computers extensively, even buying their plane tickets online.

The most recent stories reveal that many of the terrorists used the flight simulator game, in addition to actual flying lessons at airport schools.

I had gone to the CNN site where they have pictures of the Trade Center victims, innocent people who had come to work on a Tuesday morning, and were sitting at their desks and computer terminals doing their everyday work. I find the Internet has an intimacy you don't get at all with television; you can stare as long as you want at a page, reading the text of who they were, where they worked there, and see their picture smiling at you. People of all races and nationalities; company presidents, secretaries, mail room workers, janitors. I slowly clicked through the pictures, my eyes tearing up over strangers I didn't know. And then I came to a picture of a young woman who looked remarkably like my own daughter, and I just totally broke down.

Contributing to the overall sorrow of this tragedy is the sad fact that it didn't take an evil genius to think up the idea of airplanes crashing into buildings. It just took someone from another country observing the games we let our children play.

( This is an updated edited rebroadcast of the show I did last year on 09/27/2001 based on recent confirmation in press stories that the terrorists had the MS flight simulator program on their computers.)

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

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