Technology and magic

Arthur C Clarke postulated three laws:

1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he almost certainly is right. 2) When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I agree with the first two, but I have issues with the famous third.

It can be argued then that any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. But any technology, however insufficiently advanced, is magic to a person who doesn't understand it. I feel technology has advanced sufficiently enough to be magic to most of us.

(Ponder Stibbons, the only sensible wizard on the Discworld where magic not only works but is in the very fabric of the universe, muses that any magic sufficiently advanced is technology.)

Consider our lives. When we flip a switch and turn lights on do we really know what happens? We know that the lights come on, certainly. But do we know how that miracle occurs? Do we understand what goes into making that daily miracle happen?

How many of us know how electricity is harnessed and stored and traded as a commodity and gets delivered to us at a price? We know enough to realise a bulb must have blown when the lights don't come on. Some of us know enough magic to change the bulb and make light again. But who knows the complete process from manufacture, storage, delivery and consumption?

Basically we are incanting a spell when we flip that switch: let there be light. Or breeze, or a magic lantern show via the miracle of television. Do any of us even think about how these magical things are achieved?

What do you do when your bed-side clock dies on you? You change the battery and if still acts up, you give up and take it to the shop you bought it from if it is still under warranty, or to your friendly neighbourhood watch-repair man.

Other than changing batteries, what do we know about how things work? Turning the idiot-box on with the remote, filling a washing machine and pressing controls, loading a microwave oven with stuff to re-heat... Isn't it all a bit like saying abracadabra? We don't really comprehend how these gadgets work but we are so dependent on them, all the same.

Do you wonder what makes an elevator work when you are riding one? Doesn't that make you nervous?

If I were planning a terrorist move, me, I'd kidnap all technicians and engineers rather than blow up places of worship. But hey that is my take, not a recipe for successful terrorism.

In their excellent novels about alien invasions and natural disasters, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle explore the consequences of our dependence on electricity and our methods of procuring it; they explore how a world that suddenly lost all its industrial capabilities will cope. Footfall deals with the aliens geo-engineering our climate to suit their needs before we can fight back. Lucifer's Hammer deals with the all too possible scenario of a comet strike and what the aftermath would be if power plants die, weather patterns change, governments collapse, if experts and technicians become extinct and nobody knows how anything works. Stephen King too, explored the issue in his mega novel The Stand.

If we lost our industrial capabilities in one go, our society would be just a couple of days away from becoming a mob and reverting to isolated groups suspicious of outsiders.

Just think a bit about this.

We are so dependent on things we don't even bother to understand. Refrigerators, television sets, microwave ovens, computers, cell-phones... Like the stickers on some gadgets used to say, none of these have any user serviceable parts. Good grief, we wouldn't even know how to get to the innards of these things, let alone fix them. We live in tall apartment towers that would be death traps if there was a disaster. Which among us can imagine functioning without a phone, a computer and an internet connection? How would we communicate, or amuse ourselves?

Technology has made our instant gratification lifestyle possible. But as it keeps evolving and forging ahead, technology has already become magic to most of us, making the only people who understand and can manipulate it the shamans and wizards, the new elite of this century.

Do you know how to make fire? Can you survive without mass-produced things? Will you be able to live off the land and take care of yourself if the world reverted to, say, the civilisation levels of a couple of centuries ago? Technology has become magic already, Sir Arthur.


Cheers!