Is it really magic or just a bunch of procedures and algorithms?

When I was a little girl (in the early 60’s) I wondered how the little people got into my TV and made all kind of things to make me laugh. If there was something boring in TV I wanted to take the little people out of it, so that the cartoons would come back. Several times I tried to move the big console and looked behind it to see if I could do something about the programming. The explanations my parents gave me were not enough, I wondered about the little people for a long time.

Was it magic? At that time, it seemed to me it was. But growing up takes away the magic of things you encountered as a child, and you come to understand why things are the way they are (or at least we think we do). You might not want to believe it, you might try to run from it, but no matter how far you go, it seems you will never go far enough, sometimes it even hunts you.

Facing the truth is not easy, re-evaluating the lessons we learned as little kids with the ‘facts of life’ is disturbing. So, what do we do? Should we go along and keep doing the same things we were taught to do? Should we adjust our thinking or even change it taking into account the new information we have come across, trying to understand the world we live in today, adjusting to the world we live in, being true to ourselves?

About the article

Stefik is concerned about a lot more than magic; he is concerned about responsibilities. He argued, “we need to consider how we can apply the lessons of the magical literature about power and control to the world we live in” (p. 257). As apprentices of new technology, he contended we ought “to learn awareness, patience, and responsibility” (p. 256). We could become amazed, marveled about new gadgets, we might even embrace them without considering the outcomes, and this is precisely what Stefik says we need to be aware of.

Beepers, wearable computers, smart houses, the ‘new’ IPv6 (Internet Protocol, version 6), new technologies that can transport masses and information seem to be the order of the day. Humans relate to them in one way or another. In some cases they become so attached to them it is almost as an integral part of themselves. And we forget we are part of something bigger, the world we live in, the environment we have tried to control. Responsibilities, Stefik reminds us. How responsible are we with the environment, with the world we live in as a whole? Are we destroying it little by little? Are we allowing this to happen?

Reference:

Stefik, M. (1999). The Internet Edge. MIT Press. [Chapter 10: Indistinguishable from Magic: The real, the magic, and the virtual, pp. 253-290.]