ANY TECHNOLOGY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC IS INSUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED: Richard Fernandez: The Coming Age of Magic.

Two hundred years ago the average person probably understood virtually everything he encountered in daily life. Today the average person is surrounded by objects far more complex than the Apollo 11 guidance computer. Under those circumstances, as help desk workers all over the world will attest, technical ignorance is the rule rather than the exception.

Modern smart devices are purposely designed to be operated even by an idiot. Technology has allowed the burden of intelligence to be shifted away from the user to the machine. As a result people routinely use tools they barely understand implicitly believing they will work. It works but there’s a danger. As Arthur C. Clarke famously observed, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In our high technology present an increasing percentage of the global population must relate to their world in terms of magic.

The classic characteristic of magic is wish fulfillment. Sigmund Freud argued that “the motives which impel one to exercise magic are easily recognized; they are the wishes of men … At bottom everything which he accomplished by magic means must have been done solely because he wanted it.” Psychologically it is a most unscientific world. Desires replace the laws of physics.

Ironically that primitive attitude accurately describes the contemporary public attitude toward technology better than rationality.

Well, the political class has spent decades quite deliberately fostering irrationality on the part of the public.