Thinking of VVIZARD

[daaaveman]

Web Addiction Gets Conscripts Out of Army

2 hours, 29 minutes ago Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!



HELSINKI (Reuters) - A number of Finnish conscripts have been excused their full term of military service because they are addicted to the Internet, the Finnish Defense Forces said Tuesday.



Doctors have found the young men miss their computers too much to cope with their compulsory six months in the forces.


"For people who play (Internet) games all night and don't have any friends, don't have any hobbies, to come into the army is a very big shock," said Commander-Captain Jyrki Kivela at the military conscription unit.


"Some of (the conscripts) go to the doctor and say they can't stay. Sometimes, the doctors have said they have an Internet addiction," Kivela said.


There are no official figures for the Internet addict dropout rate.


"They get sent home for three years and after that they have to come back and we ask if they are OK ... they will have had time to grow up," Kivela said.


Finland called up 26,500 men in 2003, nine percent of whom were relieved of duty for medical reasons.


However, the Internet drop-outs have not dented national pride in "sisu," a Finnish quality of being tough and resilient.


"We are very proud of our Finnish men. Eight-two percent of all Finnish men manage their whole military service," Kivela said.

[PacAce]

Very interesting article.

Now, if I were the Finnish government, I wouldn't excuse the draftee because of their internet and computer game additions. What I would do is set up a special forces team made up of these people and equip each man with a nifty game controller and a nifty laptop attached to a nifty wireless communicator. On the nifty laptop I would load a nifty softare that can control a nifty robot tank, plane and what-have-you. With the exceptional hand-eye-coordinated skills kids have these days playing video games, it wouldn't take long to have a crack team of gamers playing a real war game in real life. :D

[Scottes]

That's pretty hysterical considering VVizard.

And Leo, I agree wholeheartedly. Work their skills, don't give up on their deficiencies.

That reminds me of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" (the original short story is way better than the book). Basically they had kids playing video games, ducking and dodging and blowing things up. In reality the kids were controlling drones several light-years away (it's sci-fi!) and they were fighting off an alien invasion. Great concept, great story.