The nature of virtual-physical continua, including their entanglements are explored by discussing how virtual sites for (language) learning emerge in practice, in policy and in research. Augmenting our arguments through a series of illustrative examples, we argue that learning constitutes the constant and ubiquitous ontological dimension of human existence. These examples focus upon - virtual sites (both as they have been explored in research and how they have been (re)presented in policy) as the loci for identifying answers to what is real and what is virtual, including their boundaries, - the myth of technology as educational panacea, and - the challenges that the dematerialization of our everyday wired lives brings to the future of the research endeavor. A “mind as action” theoretical framing with relevance to contemporary learning is discussed, the implications of such conceptual challenges are outlined and policy envisaging’s from the mid-1990s are compared to more recent promises of the “online revolution”.