Permission to Launch

Anyone with a passing interest in quantum theory (no, seriously – bear with me) will probably be familiar with Schrodinger’s Cat. For the uninitiated, the moggy in question is part of a famous thought experiment in which a cat is sealed into a box, and there’s a random chance that it may be killed while in this box. However, according to Erwin Schrodinger, who thought up the experiment and presumably didn’t like cats very much, in quantum mechanics, the cat is neither alive nor dead while it is in the box – instead, it exists in both states, and those states are only resolved when the box is opened and someone peers in.

All of which is, in a somewhat convoluted way, not dissimilar to what will happen this Saturday in Japan – when the PlayStation 3, after literally years spent in a half-conceived state of rumour, speculation, postulation, discussion and more often than not, criticism, will finally go on sale in Japan. By the time lunchtime rolls around in Tokyo on Saturday, 80,000 Japanese consumers will have opened the box, peered inside – and will be drawing conclusions on whether the kitten is alive or dead.