Here's an interesting lecture (15 min) on the value of gaming. Escape is good and a necessary thing sometimes, and anyone that reads, goes to the movies (or plays games), is escaping reality for a moment. But this lecture puts electronic gaming in another perspective, what if it is training you to think differently? What if game technology can be used to solve major problems both global and personal? It's an interesting premise.

By the way - Eric has offered to help OCF with some of his code warrior expertise to use technology, (some that I only vaguely understand, and certainly not the way he does) to better the oral cancer patients experience, and change the way the rest of the world (decision makers and perhaps those that could be more engaged in screening to find the disease early when treatments are far less invasive) behave because we have shown them something that they think of only in abstract terms. Not in the real way WE experience it.

I won't speculate more right now on where this idea goes, but technology, and the proper application of it via the web, was responsible for launching OCF into the mainstream of the debate even as a small entity. We are in front of congress, in meetings at the CDC, FDA, and NCI... we are players because fo the reach of the technology that makes our web site possible. Eric's skill set is way above web work. What that manifests itself as, could be something that changes the paradigm of the disease in the US, and further if the right people see the disease the way WE experience it. They need to feel things to motivate them to action. Technology is a means to that end.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html