A crazy idea, actually, kind of an analytical magazine article in an urban fantasy setting. You’ve been warned!
Technology is really on the rise today, with its compact and sleek mobile devices, which put the whole world directly at our fingertips. The ability to immediately being able to reach the other side of the planet makes us dizzy with opportunities. There hardly was any other time in the history since the Creation itself, when anyone would feel oneself as a separate yet integral part of the world community. And as technology advances, we can enjoy more individual apps and services, tailored exactly to our diverse needs and even being capable of predicting our desires!
Wait a minute, many of you would interrupt me, but what about magic? Haven’t we been picking the same fruits of bespoke products and convenience from the other tree and aren’t we doing this now? I’m by no means diminishing the significance of the power, which itself is embedded into the core of our existence and lay at the beginning of all things. In fact, magic is as contemporary and relevant as it was billions of years ago, when magical particles were collapsing with chemical elements to form the stew which our planet later was cooked from.
Moreover, magic, running inside of all inanimate and animate objects, humans included, is truly individual and honest. Unlike your newest fancy smartphone, you can fully expect that even the cheapest amulet, professionally tuned or course, will never fail to serve your needs and yours only. I’m not talking about military magicians, who can easily trace any piece of magic exactly by personal signature, but sorcery here isn’t the only culprit. Our online footprint is even more evident as technology evolves towards bespoke approach and we become targets to more tailored advertising techniques based on AI. To add to complexity, all these techniques sometimes happen not without the assistance of digital magic consultancies.
But back to magic, which still is miles ahead when it comes down to tailoring the products and services. Why so? – some may ask, predominantly those, who tend to be only consumers and not the creators of any types of magic. We all live in the information society and are bombarded every day with reports on the next big technology breakthrough. The digital world does look like magic to the outside: fast-paced, challenging, solving problems before customers face them, juggling unknown terms and providing all of these mind-blowing filling in a slim-designed package. By contrast, the adepts of Ars Magica may seem slow, retarded even, and so out of fashion that one is left to wonder how these bunch of bookworms could possibly produce anything, which isn’t a couple of centuries outdated.
The astonishing truth is, they actually don’t need to! As human anatomy or physiology, magic has undergone only insignificant changes in the last three thousand years, or even more. The fundamental laws, which all magical interactions in and around us are built upon, have stayed almost the same. The only thing that needs to be modified is the designs of magical items in the consumer market. In this sense, let’s face it, tech geeks outrival their sorcerer counterparts completely. And if it’s not enough, magical devices and wearables simply don’t need so many actions around them for creation, tuning and troubleshooting once it’s in use. Where the clumsy technology has to code complex algorithms, which model and predict human behaviour with least possible approximation, magic already does it as precisely as possible.
The reason is, when one buys an amulet of any sort or invites a sorcerer specialising in home-magic solutions to equip one’s house, it’s not an independent device that is acquired but a tool to transform a certain type of energy surrounding us through the prism of magical device’s purposes and limitations. You can draw an analogy with wifi but keep in mind that magical item cannot perform its functions either without a ‘carrier’ or magic energy supply. The ability to tune to become one with the owner and never fail to recognise and predict their conditions, emotions and desires is the magical artefacts greatest strength. Total dependence on the source of energy, which isn’t usually stored in households or anywhere apart from the places of serious magic – its greatest weakness.
And obviously, that’s where technology kicks in. Sure you can conveniently forget about your amulet within urban settlements, it’ll perform flawlessly. But in the countryside, with no sorcerer’s towers around, it may struggle. Same with wifi, however, you are saved by satellite and 4G, which have no equivalent in magic terminology yet. So travelling across a picturesque landscape, one just needs to know how far the next village is, for which purpose a map app would suffice, and can manage without a magical device guessing the tiniest nuances of one’s mood at the moment. Personally, I’ve seen even Master sorcerers guiltily hiding the latest smartphone in their robe pockets to say nothing of non-mags, who wish to harvest both magical and technological innovations. Be advised though, that despite being of different nature, the fields nurturing these mechanisms can cause interference. So, rephrasing a popular warning, beware of device clash.
That said, we come to an interesting question: is there a real need of opposing magic to technology? Of course, until the next breakthrough brings us symbiotic devices, which would bear advantages of both, the functional of what is currently on the market from each side is going to intersect. However, we frequently see a CEO of another tech ‘unicorn’ bringing a certified psychic on board and never leaving for office without their set of business amulets – and on the other side of the spectrum there are city magicians not bothering to unwrap their crystal balls, while the colleague is just one text or Skype call away. So I ask you once more: should we really create this (artificial) contrast? Let’s face it, technology and magic belong to such different domains that it’s almost stupid to make them rivals.
To be honest, I’m a huge advocate of the magic-technology collaboration. While doing my research for this article and for the series to follow, I’ve talked to a number of influencers from the both sides. You’d be surprised, but they aren’t at all hostile towards a ‘competitor’ as you imagine. In fact, these sectors have formed so many mutual connections over several decades of technology boom, that maybe the time has come already to start talking of ‘mag-tech’, by analogy with ‘fin-tech’. Despite sorcerers and engineers still struggling to make both physically compatible, magic is realising its impressive potential outside the traditional service sector. Just think of the possibilities, drop your mag/tech snobbery and join ‘mag-tech’ club instead!
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