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---
date: 2022-10-31
title: Ubiquitous, Mundane Magic
+heroImg: /img/20221031-hero-laura-ockel-nIEHqGSymRU-unsplash.jpg
+heroImgAlt: "A macro shot of a silicon wafer with dozens of uncut ICs visible. Credit: Laura Ockel on Unsplash."
+tags:
+- magic
---
I've been thinking again lately about how we live in a world with ubiquitous,
@@ -8,22 +12,44 @@ mundane magic.
<!--more-->
-We harness lightning in intricate tiny structures made of sand and metal to
-make them think, keeping their own internal time using perfectly beating hearts
-made of crystals, sustaining themselves with energy sacs made of solid metallic
-acid, communicating to other thinking structures using meshes of invisible
-light all around us.
-
-We learn how to harness and direct the thoughts of these structures in
-school-how to make them think more quickly, or more creatively, or more
-aesthetically and approachably for those not familiar with the arcane,
-inscrutable languages used to form those thought-directing spells.
-
-We carry opaque slabs of inorganic materials in our pockets, capable of near
-instantaneous communication across the entire world, able to tell us our
-precise positions on the planet with the aid of artificial stars we've placed
-up in the sky with precisely manufactured atomic hearts that we've calibrated
-to accommodate for the measurable difference in the speed of time between what
-we experience on the ground and what they experience from their places in the
-sky, not to mention any of the other hundreds, thousands, millions of things
-the slabs can do.
+We feed lightning into tiny, intricate structures made of sand and metal to
+compel them towards thought, keeping their own internal time using perfectly
+beating hearts made of crystal, sustaining themselves with energy from blocks
+of solid metallic acid, communicating with other thinking structures using
+meshes of invisible light all around us.
+
+We have opportunities to learn how to harness and direct the thoughts of these
+structures in school---how to make them think more quickly, or more creatively,
+or more aesthetically and approachably for those not familiar with the arcane,
+inscrutable languages used to form those thought-directing spells. We routinely
+collaborate in the creation of these spells with people from distant cities
+with whom we have not, and likely will never meet face to face. We refer to
+spellcrafting techniques by the names of their original codifiers ("Kruskal's
+Algorithm for Minimum Spanning Forests").
+
+We carry opaque slabs of inorganic materials in our pockets, skeletons of glass
+and resin, veins of copper and gold, capable of near instantaneous
+communication across the entire world via metal obelisks placed in strategic
+geographic locations, able to divine for us our precise positions around the
+Earth with the aid of constellations of artificial stars that we've placed up
+in the sky and their precisely manufactured atomic hearts, calibrated to
+accommodate for the measurable difference in the *speed of time* that they
+experience from their homes in the sky.
+
+We have an incredible wealth of knowledge at our fingertips---literally, even
+setting the Internet aside, thanks to readily available thumbnail-sized flakes
+with memories capacious enough for entire books, entire shelves, entire
+*libraries.* This cannot be overstated: do you actually *know* how big a
+terabyte is? The human mind did not *evolve* to realistically comprehend
+numbers at that scale.
+
+And yet that's all just... normal? Even though there's a whole, real,
+fantastical world all around us? I find that blasé attitude fascinating.
+Clarke's third law---any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
+from magic (and the designer's corollary: any technology distinguishable from
+magic is insufficiently advanced)---seems to have... forgotten, or perhaps
+ignored, human neuroplasticity's capacity for forcing even the wildest reality
+into routine familiarity, and I feel like that loss of wonder is a shame.
+
+That's why today, for Halloween, even though I'm not wearing anything different
+from what I usually wear, I'm dressed as a wizard. :mage_woman:
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