Encoding Reality Through Techno-Magic (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of performance magic, 2015
This paper is an attempt to show that a large part of Western society no longer operates on the rationalist principles that most of us thought it did, but that it instead runs by magic more akin to that in fantasy works. The term 'magic' is not meant metaphorically or in science fiction author Arthur C Clarke's sense that 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' (Clarke 1962), but is meant literally in the sense that Frazer (1890, republished 2003) used the term. This means that instead of trying to understand the present and near future by looking at the works of science fiction creators who put forth a rationalist and technological view of the world, we would understand the future better by looking to the fantasy of authors such as Jack Vance, Matthew Hughes, Ursula Le Guin, Piers Anthony and Michael Moorcock. This magic is manifested through magical thinking and irrational behaviour, where the majority of us use literal spells and incantations in our daily interactions with each other in the networked world, and where we worship capricious gods; most importantly, those spells, incantations and worship actually work, and those gods have actually come to exist. This paper will also show just how the spread of the computer technology propounded by scientists, technologists and SF writers has inevitably led to the creation of this irrational and magical world. This is partly because of limitations built-in to the formal systems on which these systems are based, leading to an extreme example of the law of unintended consequences. Finally, the paper will explain the mechanism by which magic is literally becoming real by reference to Frazer's two laws of magic: the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion.
(Online) Spelling the (Digital) Spell: Talking About Magic in the Digital Revolution
Sophia, 2022
The lexicon of religion has been widely used in the context of the social and cultural transformations associated with the 'digital revolution', whether in metaphoric (digital as religion) or in realistic terms (digital and religion or digitalised religions). The study of digital magic/magic in digital times, the other side of the coin of the Sacred 2.0, is still in its infancy. Yet, references to magic (in a loose and broad sense of the term) are made frequently in reflections about the rapid development of the digitalisation of society and culture, and they deserve more in-depth study. This paper tackles the issue of magic in and of new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) devices. After a broad outline of the presence of magic in the digital ecosystem (websites, apps and other devices offering 'supernatural' services), this paper will focus on the lexical surface and semantic references to 'magical thinking', explore the underlying reasons for such references (apologetically or critically addressed) and unveil the regimes of existence for magic ('real', 'fictional', 'analogical'). Finally, the paper questions the role of language in the construction of a 'digital magic' and the transformations of the semantic category of magic as seen through the prism of a cultural revolution, that of the digitalisation of societies.
Magical Code and Coded Magic: The Persistence of Occult Ideas in Modern Gaming and Computing
This paper examines the correspondences between the magical codes of the Renaissance wizard and the virtual “magic” produced by the coding of modern computer wizards, who use the information inherent in symbolic, programming language—their own form of incantations—to program systems that embody impressive aspects of human cognitive capabilities and, often, formidable physical power. Coding is the primary tool of modern scientists and gamers who try to make digital artifacts, and coded incantations that derive from occult knowledge are the first methods that Renaissance scientists resorted to when trying to create and control their artificial servants and intelligent artifacts. This coded correspondence between words and reality goes beyond metaphor in the realm of artificial servants and artifacts in both the modern and early modern periods. In the case of the sixteenth century legends of the golem, for instance, the Cabalistic combinations of the Hebrew alphabet and the various secret names of God that its creator chanted literally made flesh out of earth. In the modern world, the special codes comprised of algorithmic combinations of words, numbers, and symbols that today’s computer specialists type into their machines actually weave together the fabric of virtual worlds and creatures like bots and, in some modern systems theory and in the world of science fiction, have the potential to create full-fledged human simulacra, such as the robots in Asimov’s I, Robot, and the avatars in online games.
Spelling out A General Theory of Magic: An Intellectual Quest
In this paper, I embark on an intellectual quest, set in motion by a simple question: What is magic? My interest comes from the fact that scholarly literature on the subject of magic tells us a great deal about what it is not, while sharing little on what it is. Therefore, I begin with a brief review of theories on magic, particularly those which juxtapose magic with science. The first section outlines foundational theories in anthropology given by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Sir James George Frazer. The second section looks at the sociological treatment of the subject by Marcel Mauss in his book A General Theory of Magic (1950). Thereafter, I invoke Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard’s famous ethnographic work among the Azande to ground Mauss’ ideas in empirical fact. The final section presents a personal reflection on the discoveries made by this intellectual quest, along with some comments on the nature and need for such inquiries, which start with one simple question and end with many more questions.
Introduction: magic in the world
Conjuring Asia
First of all, I promise not to fill this book with puns about magic being tricky, or with a long series of bad jokes about things happening 'as if by magic'. But magic is a tricky business, and the extent to which this is true has become increasingly evident to me as I have worked on this project. For one thing, it's not very clear what magic actually is. Even leaving aside the deceptively difficult (and completely incoherent) question of the difference between 'real magic' and 'fake magic' (which will preoccupy us for much of the first two chapters as I search for some form of unifying theory), it's even tough to know when a stage magician has just performed something that you recognize as magic. Of course, it's always clear when they've failed. And their failure often has nothing whatsoever to do with the success of whatever feat they were trying to accomplish: a magician can successfully pull a rabbit from a hat or a coin from your ear without your really knowing how he did it, but such accomplishments can be cringe-worthily mundane in the hands of Uncle Geek while being transportingly magical in the hands of Professor Sparrowhawk. So, magic is not an object, not a prop or a mechanism, not even a technique or an accomplishment. As least, not per se. Magic flows from the hands of a magician only when an audience feels magic happening. It is an interpersonal and intersubjective phenomenon. And that, more than anything else, is the secret to magic: a magician is one who causes you to feel that magic has transpired, no matter what has transpired.