EccentricGentleman
Scribe
I have often heard this quote: "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Something I love about fantasy and magic is that it is not technology, it exists beyond science, does things that science and technology are not capable of.
But we live in an age when technology is progressing at an unprecedented pace and doesn't show any signs of slowing down.
What I'm afraid of is that, eventually, magic in fiction will no longer be seen as something wondrous. Because the real world will be capable of something similar or even greater.
I once saw an episode of a TV show where one of the characters had a magic book, when she would write in it her words would magically appear in the pages of another corresponding book. Magical yes, but we have email and instant messaging that does the same thing.
A wizard can look in his crystal ball, sees and hears things that are happening on the other side of the world. In any other age, the audience would have listened to that with awe and wonder. But these days we have Internet and Skype.
I know it sounds silly but I'm worried. Worried that in time technology will advance so much that people will no longer read about magic and think of it with any sense of wonder at all. It's already starting now with the examples I've given.
What I want to ask is, is science and technology capable of doing the same things that magic can supposedly do? Can magic compete with ever advancing technology?
Something I love about fantasy and magic is that it is not technology, it exists beyond science, does things that science and technology are not capable of.
But we live in an age when technology is progressing at an unprecedented pace and doesn't show any signs of slowing down.
What I'm afraid of is that, eventually, magic in fiction will no longer be seen as something wondrous. Because the real world will be capable of something similar or even greater.
I once saw an episode of a TV show where one of the characters had a magic book, when she would write in it her words would magically appear in the pages of another corresponding book. Magical yes, but we have email and instant messaging that does the same thing.
A wizard can look in his crystal ball, sees and hears things that are happening on the other side of the world. In any other age, the audience would have listened to that with awe and wonder. But these days we have Internet and Skype.
I know it sounds silly but I'm worried. Worried that in time technology will advance so much that people will no longer read about magic and think of it with any sense of wonder at all. It's already starting now with the examples I've given.
What I want to ask is, is science and technology capable of doing the same things that magic can supposedly do? Can magic compete with ever advancing technology?