Standards, Virtual Worlds and The Big Question

“It was not so long ago that most kids in school experienced a
predictable ‘Oh Wow!’ moment when they learned about atomic
structure (that’s ‘Oh Wow!’ as in, ‘What if our solar system is,
like, you know, just an ‘atom’ in this, like, really big ‘molecule’
thing called a galaxy and…’).

“Today, of course, that Oh Wow! moment is more likely to involve
a video game or, more recently, a virtual world. And after all, it
was time for a change anyway, what with the discovery of subatomic
particles, and the assumption that there’s no physical ‘there’
there anyway–just electronic charges. Or whatever. Personally,
I’ve always found the video game idea more appealing and amusing
than the atomic theory anyway. After all–how much difference is
there between energizing a monitor and the Big Bang? Oh
Wow…!”

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