Re: [9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

Re: [9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

[rog]

> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Clarke was the original source of this, I believe.

the one in the subject (actually "distinguishable"?) was just playing
silly buggers with the original quote, i think.

what does magic look like anyway?
those microsoft wizard things perform magic - you're never
quite sure why or what they're doing, and god knows what
newts' eyes will have spilt onto your disk afterwards.

what we want isn't magic, but seamlessness - things should
behave quite ordinarily and naturally (whatever that means!) on top,
regardless of what's going on underneath.

like the swan: "all grace and beauty above water and paddling like hell
underneath".

i tend to like an interface when i can understand its interactions without
having to understand how it's interacting with the layers beneath it.

  rog.

Re: [9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

[Matt]

> that is Greg Benford in _Foundations Fear_ I believe.  Or did he say that
it
> was not original with him?

I've seen it associated with Arthur C Clark

Re: [9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

[Lucio De Re]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 04:02:29PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote:
>
> that is Greg Benford in _Foundations Fear_ I believe.  Or did he say that it
> was not original with him?
>
I can't quote him, but Robert Heinlein in "Time Enough for Love"
phrased it along the lines of: "Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic", which I'm sure is likely to give
rise to the parody quoted.

++L

[9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

[Laura Creighton]

that is Greg Benford in _Foundations Fear_ I believe.  Or did he say that it
was not original with him?

Laura