Could Minecraft be the next great engineering school?

On the Boulevard Saint-Michel, near the center of Paris, just off the edge of the Jardin du Luxembourg and just a short stroll from the Sorbonne sits the main campus of the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. Known now as Mines ParisTech, this venerable school was set up in 1783 by decree of Louis XVI as the center of education for the finest civil engineers in France. Nearly 230 years later, just an hour’s drive to the east at Disneyland Paris, some of the next generation of the world’s most innovative mining and industrial engineers convened this past weekend—but not for a seminar on metal stress or a lecture on geology. At this gathering, over 4,500 teens, pre-teens and some brave adults swapped server addresses and toted 8-bit pick axes around Minecon, the second annual gathering of hardcore players of Minecraft, possibly the hottest, yet one of the most low-tech games on the market today.