From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Any technology indistinguishable from magic is  insufficiently advanced
From: rog@vitanuova.com
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Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:43:42 +0100
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> "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.