Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

[ via Charlie Stross ] A wizard’s spell which randomly fails when cast might be a clever plot device in a fantasy novel, but random failures of online banking applications are not funny (after all, Willow hasn’t given up her iBook):

But I submit that if the best we can do is make technology as dangerous, non-robust, capricious, arcane, alienating, marginal, and costly as “magic” — then we have really crappy technology.

Read alongside In the Future, We’ll All Be Harry Potter:

In the Harry Potter books, the ethical wizards have agreed to leave the Muggles alone and not do magic tricks on them. It seems that computer wizards have something to learn from Harry Potter, because they often use their power in ways that are harmful to regular people.

Related posts:

  1. Clay Shirky’s Talk at Long Now Foundation
  2. The Street Finds its Own Use Cases
  3. Professor Agre on design and institutions
  4. No Vision
  5. The Kabul Office of the Rocky Mountain Institute

More like this: .

This entry was written by Bill Humphries and posted on December 15, 2002 at 12:00 am and filed under culture, technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the Atom feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.