November 7, 2007
School leavers addicted to their PSP, XBox or Wii (pronounced wee Guru is reliably informed) may now be able to find the perfect job... as an airport baggage screener.
They may even be actively encouraged to maintain their gaming habit as an effort to improve performance, after researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, discovered that playing computer games gives people a sharper eye for finding things on a cluttered computer screen, even when the target objects rarely appear.
One of the researchers points out that it's a particularly tricky task, baggage screening. Indeed "you can go your whole career as a screener" and not see one weapon or even set of nailclippers. (Don't tell the console-lovers that or they'll quit before they begin).
With such a limited number of hits the operators, unsurprisingly, get a little distracted. Their minds wander and they start to miss what they're looking for. But, not only did gamers miss fewer targets in the research than non-gamers, they also found the targets faster. Problem solved.
Yours truly envisages a points-based performance regime:
cigarette lighter = 1 point
scissors = 5 points
kitchen knife = 25 points
gun = 1000 points
Jodie Foster = 5,000 points
snake = 10,000 points and an extra life
Guru was disappointed to see that BAA has yet to implement these ideas and recommends some rebranding work to the security jobs on its website along the lines of Warhawk or perhaps Halo 3.
