August 2008 Archives

Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This thought was also expresed in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: a modern man who travels back in time to the middle ages and awes the primitive locals with his "magic" modern technology. I think it is not too much of a stretch to say that most of our current technology would indeed appear magical to the people of the 19th century - what with iPhones, the internet, MRI scans, and so forth.

But I don't think that will be true any longer. Take a moment and think what the future could bring: immersive VR multiplayer games, anti-aging drugs, space travel, even hand-held laser weaponry... none of it sounds like "magic." It just sounds like very advanced science. If someone walked up to me with an alien teleporter from 2200, I'd just start asking them how it worked. I wouldn't think: "Oh noes! Magic!"

This reflects a two-part change in modern society, I believe. Firstly, because of the rapid advances in technology and their saturation of our daily life, we have come to accept that scientific mystery is not magic. We are surrounded every day by complex and amazing devices whose inner functions we couldn't ever hope to understand. Most of our gadgets were designed and built by whole companies of people with individual specializations. We are the product of Ford's assembly line, each doing our own little part as best we can and trusting that everyone else is doing the same. Mysteries are easier to attribute to the intellectual genius of another person than to mystical forces. Even in the most artfully executed staged displays, we look for wires and sleight-of-hand, not telekinesis.

The second part is that the idea of magic has become so very popular in the Oughts. Which probably hasn't been true for nigh on a thousand years, once the Christians started burning people at the stake for suspicion of it and all (actually, the Romans had some similar laws on that matter too, come to think of it). As near as the 1970s Dungeons and Dragons was linked with Satan-worshipping child-murderers in most people's minds. But now pretty much everyone can read Harry Potter and say they're a Wiccan without being tossed willy-nilly into prison on false-memory child abuse charges. Magic is a nice dream - an adult fairy tale to make life seem a little less cruel.

And I think these two changes have necessitated a shift in what we perceive as magic. Before, magic was just the unexplained. But now the unexplained can be very boring (advanced technology). Magic has needed to move into new ground - the unexplainable. Not just advanced science, but the anti-science. It exists outside of the laws of physics. Whereas wizards of the past were the most educated of their day, utilizing the forces of the universe in grand and unbelievable ways, now most fantasy stories internalize it into their characters as a talent, an innate ability that is powered by emotion or spirit. Magic is like perfect pitch - a special gift that only a few people have at which the rest of us can only wonder from afar.

There's something a little sad about that change. It's the difference between believing a great artist is made by working hard for years and years and becoming a master of his craft, versus believing that a great artist is born that way and produces his greatest work in his 20s and then drifts on into obscurity or monotony. It makes it easier for us to dream that we could be special, but a lot harder for us to achieve it once we have recognized that we are not.