Creator of Worlds


My 8 yo has never taken to Lego, something that always pricks at me. Thankfully, the Spock in me knows that you can’t force a kid to play with a particular toy, so I never push her on this.

Just when I’d abandoned all hope, she took to this Android game called Multicraft. It’s like a very crude, digital version of Lego, and very limited in features since it’s a free game. Call me a geek, but once I saw the game allowed her to build (digital) structures like buildings and bridges, zoom in and out, and view objects from various perspectives, the engineer in me was happy. Good, I thought, she’s getting trained on using tools like CAD…

Plus, you know how they say we might be living in a simulation and not even know of it? This might be her baby steps in creating such a simulated worlds…

She’d save stuff she built and give each “world” (a term from the game) a name. Better that she be a creator of (digital) worlds, I thought, than her having “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” ideas. (Those were the words from the Bhagvad Gita that came to the mind of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man behind the first atomic bomb).

But who knows? Maybe I’m just deluding myself like Calvin’s mom, even as my daughter has Calvin-like thoughts as she builds her “worlds”…

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarNovember 22, 2019 at 10:34 AM

    Very interesting blog!

    Well, children create their fantasy worlds! If they [if they follow Calvin's example :-) ] destroy, it would still be fantasy - as long as they are children!

    ReplyDelete

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