Dear John M.,
You wrote "digital reality costs money, although much less than before." Perhaps you meant digital virtual reality and compared it with perceptually equivalent not yet digitalized alternatives.
I rather felt reminded of the cost for equipment like LHC that is designed as to search for a suspected digital structure of time and space. I see these efforts similar to the intention of medieval alchemists to make gold. Tschirnhaus and Boettger made white gold: china. Isn't the www a spin-off of Swiss physicists?
"Despite Aristotle"? Isn't his view "infinitum actu not datur" still correct? By the way, there were already ancient symbols for zero. Most likely ancient and medieval mathematicians hesitated using it because they understood the two the first number after what we are calling the neutral element of multiplication: the one. Not by chance, Leibniz invented the dual numbers and also the infinitesimals. I see an overlooked problem not in infinity and not even in zero but in a strictly ideal understanding of the basic measure one.
You complained: "I fear the unintended side-effects for my children." If I guess correctly, you do not like your children excessively consuming digital pleasures like gameboys, headphones, TV, internet, etc. Well, as I wrote: "Signal processing is superior if based on digital values." I even partially ascribe the present turmoil in Egypt and elsewhere to the desire for participating in such tempting pleasures. However such questions are off-topic. At least my essay deals with deeper issues.
Since I am retired, I do not fear side-effects that put my employment at risk when I frankly utter what is definitely highly unwelcome to many experts.
Regards, Eckard