What simulations are good at capturing that books are not

I wrote a two-page piece for Brown University's Conduit magazine, on page 8 and continued to 15, downloadable for free here: http://www.cs.brown.edu/publications/conduit/conduit_v15n2.pdf

Here's a quote:

"The next breakthrough will be when simulation and game design is not taught as a vertical skill, like Russian History, Clinical Psychology, or Biblical Archeology, but a horizontal skill, like researching, analysis, writing, and public speaking.

The philosophies of simulation design permit different types of knowledge-capture to augment linear approaches such as writing, taking pictures, and making films. And the full assimilation of post-linear content will change every aspect of universities, from research agendas, to which will be the most influential, to the critical issues of what is taught, how, and why.

There are at least four major constructs – situational awareness, understanding of actions, awareness of patterns over time, and conceptual dead reckoning – that are as natural to simulations as internal monologues and narratives are to books."