The revolution will be videogamed

■"Dazed and Confused: Videogames, TV and movies are profoundly changing soldiers' experiences of war, and those experiences are already leading toward the next generation of war films," by Evan Wright, VLife (special edition of Variety), December 2005, p. 60.

■"In Iraq's War Zones, Therapists Take On Soldiers' Trauma: Thin Ranks Mean Repeat Tours For Troops Still Suffering From Last Round's Ordeal; Goal: 'Put a Lid' on Symptoms," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2005, p. A1.

Echo Boomers show up expecting a certain sort of war, thanks to videogames. The freaking-out factor is reduced. Images seem more familiar, and the ability to handle complex information environments where decisions must be made instantaneously at an amazing high bit rate can prove the difference between living and dying.

"Mad Max" meets "Apocalypse Now" is the shorthand of many soldiers currently on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. Raised by videogames and babysat by Nintendo, as Wright puts it, this generation has, vicariously to a degree impossible for previous generations, been there and Doomed that.

And yet, the length and repetition of tours wears people down. Truth be told, your average guy can handle somewhere in the range of 60-80 days of combat, and I'm talking lifetime dosage. You run them much past that number, and most will burn out.

Different names for it throughout history, but the data never really changes. Our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan may have faster trigger fingers, thanks to Nintendo, but their fractionated doses of combat can only take them so long. Get enough of them lined up across two or three tours, and the burnout is inevitable.

This fundamental human limitation, even more than the easily measurable and predictable impatience of societies after the cessation of wars/disasters, will drive the emergence of the SysAdmin force and the Department of Everything Else inside the Pentagon.

The market for our main public sector export (security) is simply bending our workforce to its preferred shape.

We either get good at SysAdmin or we get out, leaving the Gap for other nation to shrink militarily.

But since that will smack too much of letting China run the world, we'll bring that SysAdmin force into being, and our Nintendo generation will lead the way.