It is not difficult to envision a 21st century utopia of citizens effectively served by government. Whether we get anywhere close to that ideal is another thing entirely. In the microcosm, such concepts as solidity, continuity, location and inertia lose their meaning. An electron, we discover, does not necessarily occupy any specific position in space and, as one famous experiment proved, can pass through two completely separate holes at the same time.
Electrons act like particles in some situations and like waves of energy in others.
It is only by conceiving of the quantum world as a domain of ideas that these paradoxes begin to make sense. The atom, it appears, is largely a system of information and thus is governed less by the laws of matter than by the laws of mind. Gilder argues that many of the paradoxes of the Information Age seem to mirror the paradoxes of the quantum world. Even those leaders of the new technologies who operate deep within the microcosm often seem to forget or ignore its most powerful truths. In economics and political theory, in sociology and philosophy, these laws are mostly unknown.