Balance between Magic and Modern

[Addison]

I think I hit a snag with my world.

My world is based on the question of "What if magic didn't disappear?". For those who have seen "Grimm" you may remember when we saw the infamous Adolf Hitler turn into a Wesen. That's this world. Magic and Man living peacefully side by side.

My problem is it's set here, now, 2014. Right now I'm seeing both modern and magic coinciding based on a mini battle solved by a treaty that states magic may not inhibit the evolution of man and technology. Man and technology may not inhibit the evolution of magic and the races. Obviously by this contract some technologies and other things wouldn't develop. But I'm having a little trouble figuring out what.

The technologies I have in my story now are: public transportation, phones, computers and related games, TV, radio, cars, walkie talkies, automatic weapons (enchanted ammo), carnival rides, newspapers...that's all I have so far. How the heck did Jasper Fjorde do it in "The Last Dragon Slayer" ?

I'll be working on this more but input would be HUGELY appreciated.

 

[CupofJoe]

I hate to break it to you we are already in 2015...
If Technology and Magic are to survive/coincide, then they have to be able to do something the other cannot...
So for example, Technology may be more reliable but Magic can give you the really big Event/Bang...

I like the idea of a Treaty... and limitations are a good thing... Rules and Treaties are made to be bent and broken. Someone will try to find a way around them, legally or not.
So any prohibition of X not being used for Y reason and somebody somewhere will want to try and see what happens.

I usually start from what I DO NOT want my Magic/Technology to be able to do and work backwards.
[ If Magicians can hurl fireballs as effective as nuclear weapons then there will have to be some serious downside to doing that... OR If Technology can change Lead in to Gold on an industrial scale... who needs Alchemy?... ]
Once I have my limitations worked out I can usually fill in the blanks...

 

[2WayParadox]

I don't think your treaty works as a treaty, it's too vast.

treaty that states magic may not inhibit the evolution of man and technology. Man and technology may not inhibit the evolution of magic and the races.

It suggests that there are a number of institutions powerful enough to govern the evolution of technology, magic, man and different races. If you'd said it was some kind of creed, or central religious message, an ideal of sorts, that would've been easier to accept. The politics and economics behind enforcing this would be incredibly complex and would need to be global.

But let's get back on point. Magic isn't hidden in your world, which means it's part of everyday life. I think a good starting point for deciding which technologies have and haven't evolved is the expense of doing magic. If it's really cheap, then stuff like electric cookers might not even have been invented. If it's more expensive or difficult, then it might be restricted to the military and science (plus the objects that result from science).

 

[Letharg]

I think that technology would be more hampered by magic then magic would be by technology. Let me explain. If magic is readily available and exist in large amounts much technology would never have been invented, because magic came before all advanced technology and most development of technology is driven by financial gain.

Take for example medicine, let's say healing magic is in abundance and every city has it's fair number of healers there would be no economic gain in developing medicine for say cancer. The development cost would be far to expensive if there is a cheaper and as efficient magical equivalent.

The same goes for every part of science, as long as there is an easier and more efficient way to do it with magic what is the point of developing something else? And this works the other way to, if something is really difficult to do with magic someone would have developed a way to do it with technology because it's better and more profitable.

I think you need to specify what magic can and can not do, that would give you a good basis to know what technology would have been invented in your world. It would also help us come up with ideas if we know the limitations of magic as well as the abundance of magic users.

 

[Hainted]

Letharg-Magic wouldn't necessarily inhibit the development of technology. You have to take into account people who would refuse to use magic of any kind because of background/culture/religion/personal reasons regardless of how safe or reliable it's proven to be. Look at the anti-vaxxers in America. Replace vaccines with magic and you've got one group that would be really interested in technology.

It does come down to what's cheaper, easier, and most importantly gets public opinion on it's side as to what would be developed as magic and what would rise from technology.

 

[2WayParadox]

I think that the most realistic picture would be Magic/Science dominating separate fields of knowledge. Mechanics might be science, whereas communication might be magic.

Here's a suggestion: to get the thought process started, gather all the relevant areas and write them down on a piece of paper. then randomly pick half of them and say 'these are mainly magical'. See if it works for you. If it doesn't, hold what does work and mix up the rest. It might be also be worth to include some areas with magic/science that you weren't planning on allocating there.

 

[Letharg]

Letharg-Magic wouldn't necessarily inhibit the development of technology. You have to take into account people who would refuse to use magic of any kind because of background/culture/religion/personal reasons regardless of how safe or reliable it's proven to be. Look at the anti-vaxxers in America. Replace vaccines with magic and you've got one group that would be really interested in technology.

It does come down to what's cheaper, easier, and most importantly gets public opinion on it's side as to what would be developed as magic and what would rise from technology.

Yeah I understand that there might be people who resist the development in one way or another. Of course there would always be "mad scientists" and magic haters etc. But I understood the world where magic is widely used and accepted as an alternative to technology.

What I was refering to was what the general populance would use and develop. If there was a magic solution for one particular problem and it worked well with no particular drawbacks, then sure someone might try to solve it with technology instead, but the general public and cooperations would not bother as there is no real drawback to the current way.

Nearly all technological developments are driven by financial gain or military gain, if there is no financial gain to developing technology in that particular area why would someone bother? There would be no major power behind the technology which means development would be extremly slow even if someone wanted to develop an alternative.

 

[wordwalker]

How are your magic and technology even different?

We usually think of magic as hidden ("occult") and hard to discover, but in your world they live side by side. So what is it about your magic that keeps it "beside" technology rather than having merged with it over the centuries?

Is your magic more limited to people with certain gifts (you mentioned Grimm's Wesen), so there's been conflict between "the gifted few" and their powers versus society at large and the opportunities that industry can make for everyone (for a price)? Does iron interfere with magic or magical force with electricity, so different places were given over more to one method than the other, and did that balance change as one power advanced faster than another?

Your world needs something like this in its magic, if it isn't simply hidden, because "a history of suspicion and trouble" only happens if there's something to build on. Otherwise everyone will simply look for whether magic or tech is better at solving a given problem, plus how each can still add support to the other; machine-printed runes and enhanced-herb vitamins are just too good an opportunity for your people to pass up. It's from using how your magic works differently from technology, and how various groups and history have latched onto that, that you get situations like you're talking about.

 

[WooHooMan]

I think you should look-up how "real-world magic" operates. By which I mean: occult, chaos magic, new age stuff. It's quite a bit different from how magic in fiction operates.
If fiction magic existed at any point in history, the world would be SO different that we probably couldn't even make a plausible guess of how different it is.

In short, you got to lay down the how your magic works before you build your setting around it.

Also, I think the idea that magic and technology are mutually exclusive or polarized is a really dumb convention. It's human nature to want to use all resources that are available to us. If magic is there, we'd use it along with technology or have the two develop together.

 

[Devor]

I would start by figuring out what magic can do, and then deciding which pieces of technology wouldn't develop because you can do it with magic. And then I would look for a clear framework for what's different or not.

For instance, in many settings magic can usually be pretty good at creating light. So why would Eddison have invented the lightbulb? It wouldn't have been necessary. But now I'm thinking, for all the tech geeks out there, if you just take it as an excuse to scratch Eddison, you could put Tesla at the forefront and the whole last century of technology would look very different. You can Google some commentary on that one.

Or think about cars. Right now we have a frame, an engine, and all the computer gizmos. If magic could have done some of the computer gizmos sooner than computers could, then all the features in our cars (like GPS or our speedometer or the radio) might be magical instead of tech. That gives you a good place to expand from - it's magic behind the radio, and the GPS, and the heating and air conditioning. Where would that lead you?

Finally, I'm going to second the others, I don't really understand the treaty as something that you can enforce. If both are out there then there's no way to keep one from shaping the other. And why should it? Maybe there should be a treaty against mixing the two too much, like the whole magitech genre. That would make more sense to me.

 

[Svrtnsse]

The setting I'm working on is very similar to the one Addison describes, only it's set in an alternate world, with an alternate history and geography.

Magic is a natural and accepted part of life in this world, no one doubts it exists and it has a function to fill. The one impact it's had on scientific and technological development is that it's taken longer. The availability of magic has meant that the need for non-magical alternatives hasn't been as great. However, since not everyone's able to use magic, there is a need for non-magical alternatives.

I'll list some of the rules I've set up for magic in my setting:

• Magical power can't be stored. There are no "magical batteries"
• Magical enchants will lose power and expire with use and over time.
• Magic can not be reliably wielded through mechanical means.
• Unpredictable mechanical effects can be triggered through Critical Instability (see below)
• In order to target a magical spell, the caster must be able to see the target location, or be very familiar with it.
• In order to successfully cast a magical spell the wielder must fully understand the effect which they are trying to achieve and how to achieve it ("it's not enough to just say the words") - this includes intuitive understanding.
• Roughly 4% of the world's non-elf inhabitants are able wield magic (all elfs can do it, but there's relatively few of them).
• Only about 4% of magic wielders are capable of wielding magic without the assistance of another magic wielder (weaving and channeling).

Critical Instability
Energy released (intermittently) at high frequency, such as in a car engine or a high speed automatic rifle, can cause a spontaneous magical reaction. Usually this results in some kind of sudden, violent, energy release, such as an explosion of fire or ice (or both).
A consequence of this is that car engines as we know them here in the real world don't exist.

Weaving and Channeling
All magic ultimately comes from the aether. Before the aether can be woven into a magical spell it needs to be channeled into a stream or thread that can be split or woven. Most individuals capable of manipulating the aether are only able to either channel or weave. Only very few are able to do both.
As such, most magical spells are cast, not by a single caster, but by two working together.

For more details, check out the magic page on my wiki, here.

 

[Hainted]

Even in a world where magic would be as widespread and easy as technology in ours, not everyone would use it. You would have the equivalent of Amish or sections of the world where magic isn't as advanced or where only the elite have access to powerful spells. If it's dependent on certain materials or an outside source, like mana, there could be places where magic is more common or harder to perform or certain types can't be performed.

Plus there's the general laziness of people in general. If I have to chant a specific spell to activate a crystal to see my favorite show versus pressing a button on a remote, I'm pressing a button.

There's also the possibility of technology being developed to keep magic in check or stop it's spread. "Oh, you can throw a gout of flame 100 feet? Nice, How's that work against a sniper? Apache helicopter? Orbital Laser?

 

[Addison]

Wow! Lots of replies, thanks to all of you. I'll be clicking "Thanks" when I'm done posting.

Okay let me make the gist of the treaty, as in the world's history all races and countries sent a few people to work out the rules they live by. Those who have read the Artemis Fowl novels know that the technologies of man have, in that world, polluted the lands fairies call home. So when I say that Man and Magic can not inhibit magic, I mean the races too. So if someone invents...an engine that can get a train across the country before the "woowoo!" fades away but sends a hundred times more smog into the air then that is scrapped. So basically the technologies had to be green. If, for the sake of man and the world, that wasn't possible then man and magic, or just man, had to find some way to clean up the mess so it wouldn't greatly hurt fairies, mermaids etc.

Wow, again. You guys gave me a lot to think about. So yes magic would make some technologies obsolete, if not extinct, yet some technologies may not be able to replace magic. True crystal balls and other spells could replace phones, but with magic you must know who you're calling. I don't mean the name I mean the person them self. So how do you contact someone, a witness, classmate or such, without a phone number and a phone?

As for medicine there is a rule of balance still. True that magic can lead to healing diseases. "A cold? What is this cold you speak of?" But then, with magic abundant and so much else there are new diseases and maladies in the world which need cures. I mean come on there's no protection spell for Rowling's killing curse.

....A LOT to think about, with much of the credit to all of you. Thanks again, keep posting! Happy Writing.

BTW I know it's 2015. The first post was a stupid typo. Cleaned my keyboard this afternoon.

 

[2WayParadox]

Really, I'd keep the concept behind the treaty, but I'd drop the treaty itself. You don't need it. The races you talk about will protect their homeland regardless. Also, it sounds like wishful thinking more than anything.

Maybe consider making one or more races non-magical, so they're forced to rely on others for their magic needs. Have them develop technology to compensate --> natural flow of conflict

 

[Penpilot]

Other's have mentioned this above, but I'll add my support for it. First figure out what magic can't do and work your way out from that. Brandon Sanderson says when he develops a magic system, which this kind of is, he starts with what it can't do first.

It kind of makes sense, because once you limit the magic, the questions of why start popping up. When the why starts to get answered, it limits the magic even further. This makes a great foundation for the rules of how magic works.

When you focus on what magic can do, it's a massive/almost infinite list, even with limitations in place. It's simpler to just establish a rule that it can't do X, so when you come up with an idea, it's simple enough to test if it breaks rule X.

IMHO this is the better approach than compiling a list of what it can do and then trying to establish a set of rules that apply consistently to them all.

Michael Stackpole once said in a podcast something to the effect that if you have magic that can produce light with little to no cost then you have to deal with the implication that candle's and candle makers are no longer necessary. Applying that to the modern world, then light bulbs and flashlights and to a certain extent electricity and fossil fuels may not be necessary.

Now, depending on the type of story you're telling, you can hand wave a lot of that away, but they are questions, IMHO should be thought of when creating a magic rich world.

 

[Hainted]

Here's something to consider. If it's a modern style world, do they have space travel? Does magic work in the cold vacuum or only in places that living things can exist?

And as far as limits I did a couple of posts on creating a magic system on my blog.(that I need to update as soon as the mandatory overtime stops.)

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'll ditto what most of the others have said. You have to find the limitations of magic to work out what technology would be developed. If its easy to create light through magic by everyone, then light bulbs would never have been invented etc.

But I'll add two more things to that. The first is that rarity is an ally here. If magic is rare - only some people can use it - then it becomes more of a curiosity than something useful to the common man. So technology will still advance because there will still be a need for it.

Second have you ever played the game Arcanum (yes an awesome old RPG). It has magic and technology being natural enemies of a sort. So because they interfere with one another, strong magic users have to be seated in the rear most carriages of trains so that the engine isn't affected by their presence. Meanwhile bringing advanced technological items near an enchanted magical field will corrupt it.

Last, I'd say dump the treaty. There's no point in it since you can't isolate the magic to just one people living in one place and the tech to another. If some people can use magic, then preventing the elves from using magic anywhere but elfland is pointless.

On the other hand if you had two lands, one primarily magical, one primarily technological and each land enacted laws that none of their own could use the magic / tech of the other, and that if they tried the punishment was banishment to the other realm, then you'd have the basis of a whole new story. I.e. human convicted of being a wizard - exiled to elfland, while elf scientist forced to live in humanland.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Terry Greer]

It's tricky mixing magic and technology - I've always thought they should be handled as largely interchangeable.

If something is reliable, can be explained (even if that explanation is magical in nature) and can be replicated on demand - then effectively its technology - with its own rules and laws.

Magic really is just a word used by someone who doesn't know how something works.

In a world where magic is reliable and common place it would be technology - unless - only certain people had the ability to control and use it. That's really the only dividing line I can think of that makes sense.

I am reminded of a story I heard from David Attenborough at a talk about a native remedy in south america where (and I'm certainly getting the details wrong here because its years since I heard it - but the overall story is the point) to cure a disease.The anecdote goes that a certain root was chewed by the village shamen and that and a few other ingredients were added to the pulp of a hollowed out gourd which was then hung and allowed t ferment over a river for several days. The result was fed to the patient - who got better.

That's effectively a magic potion - but the rationale he gave was that that those conditions led to the growth of a fungus with pencillin-like properties that killed the disease bacteria.

Now is that technology or magic?
From the point of the village members it was magic, from the point of the shamen it was magic - as technology (as it was reliable and worked), and from the point of those westerners who witnessed it was magic/mumbo-jumbo until the reason behind it was uncovered and then it was a process ripe for development with more modern technology.

In a world where magic is that reliable there will be people who will set out to quantify exactly how and why that magic works and optimise the steps/ingrediants/activities needed to make it even more reliable and technology like. They will treat it as technology to be refuined. That's unavoidable and a natural part of human intelligence - the drive to improve something (be it technology, a spell, a magic glyph or potion).

A more 'magic' example might be if the power of a glyph depended upon the accuracy that they were drawn then practitioners would develop a whole range of aids for drawing those gyphs (protractor, thread, ruler and spirograph-like wands perhaps?). Unless that is you grafted on an artificial constraint that because of some philosophical reason for how magic works in your world then all such marks MUST be made freehand - thereby making it more akin to art (and to skills such as being able to draw a circle freehand).

 

[Hainted]

My biggest problem with magic in a tech setting is it's just treated as free energy. No one factors in a cost for all this magi-tech so it renders the magic meaningless. Take a magic broom that cleans your house for example. Terry is right that we would reach a point where this enchantment would be refined to a point it would be reliable and efficient and readily available to everyone, but what is the cost to use it? Does it need to be used once in a regular fashion to "train" it? Does it make the user tired as if they cleaned the house themselves? Do you have to sacrifice a small animal to activate it?

Or maybe take another tack. Do spellbooks have to be handwritten or does the modern wizard have his entire library on a Kindle?

 

[Terry Greer]

Hainted has a really good point about the energy or other costs for magic. Something that's rarely given much attention (with notible exceptions such as Larry niven's Magic Goes Away series) but deserves to be considered.