Friday, March 16, 2007

Spore

I hate to give you such a disturbing mental image, but I was in the bath the other day thinking, as you do, about religion. Children are saturated in superstition from birth. If they were given as much exposure to science as they are to mythology we'd have a better world, a more rational world but most importantly a world in which the vast majority of people were not standing on the wrong side of a chasm of ignorance, unable to participate in the great intellectual adventure of our times.

What would it take, I wondered as I reached for the shampoo (it's not strictly necessary any more, but I find it comforting), to bring about a revolution, so that children were brought up steeped in genuine knowledge? What earnest, well-meaning, educational initiatives could we introduce to make a better world?

I needn't have worried:

It's the equivalent of a new Beatles album for computer gamers: a $20 million sequel to the world-beating "Sims" franchise that lets players control life, their Universe and everything.
[...]
The game begins with a drop of water emerging as a single-celled organism.

Players then develop their cells to create their own species, build civilizations, colonize their planets and ultimately send missions into outer space.

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