Magic and Technology

The following article is adapted from Dr. Cygnus Quinn's lecture notes at the Underdown South Campus on Earth Stable.

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke

  This famous quotation comes from Earth Zero. In the Citadel Worlds where the Laws of Form enforce stricter standards of behaviour than we find elsewhere, it makes sense. But not everywhere.   The Stability Council and its Agents require a more comprehensive theory of the nature of technology and magic and one that allows us to make sophisticated comparisons, because we have access to realms where “true” magic is permitted. It is only in these testing conditions that we can properly study the difference between magic and technology and hope to derive a nuanced understanding of the relationship between them.   As first year students here, you will already be familiar with the standard ranking scale that assigns a degree of stability to different realms according to the frequency and strength of their links into the wider Discontinuum and you are surely aware that observationally we can see how this correlates with other trends within the Laws of Form. In this lecture it is the propensity for “true” magic I am interested in exploring and how as evolutions give way to archetypes that increases in power and scope.   First then we need some provisional definitions that align with our intuitions. These provide a starting point for further analysis, to be revised later if it turns out that they are not useful.   Let us define technologies as techniques and engineering implementations to manipulate the world based on an ever increasing understanding of the local Laws of Form. Technology is a tool which can potentially be used by anyone (or any group at least). It might depend on available materials and on collective knowledge and it might also demand training to use it, but it does not depend on any innate ability of the user. Magic, by contrast, whilst it too necessarily operates within the local Laws of Form, requires individual arcane abilities that have a direct link to the Laws of Form and the skill to wield them in their elemental state.   Technology is fundamentally a collective endeavour of evolutions over generations. Magic is an individual mental capability to impose change on nature by the force of will alone. Magic and technology might both require training, and magic can be collaborative but the essential difference lies in the motivating force of “mind over matter” within magic which contrasts with “mind working with matter” in technology.   Very well, what are the implications of increasingly powerful magic for society? I am going to suggest that magic is antithetical to the development of technology, even when there might be obvious benefits to having technology instead of magic.   I have a case study in mind which we’re going to explore. Let’s consider the endlessly fascinating realm known as Magicians' End.   To prepare for this lecture I asked you to read the high level historical overview of the realm. Now we're going to try to make sense of it all.   The first and most obvious impression I expect would strike you is just how much history there is from Magicians' End. Seventeen thousand years have elapsed since the break away moment where early writing allowed recorded history to emerge from pre-history and the present day. And OK, those years might only be two thirds standard length so maybe only somewhat more than ten thousand in units you are more familiar with, but a long, long time by any measure.   And how does all that history compare with Earth Zero, Earth Stable or even the reawakened history of The World Of The Long Sleep? Not very progressive I think you'd agree? Those who claim that history is "just one damn thing after another", might see Magicians' End as a prime example of that.   It's not true, of course that there have been no technological developments but there has been an awful lot of magic. Too much magic, I will argue. Magic has stunted the growth of evolutionary history, making Magicians' End a borderline evolution in danger of sliding into an archetype. Now I will grant you that the realm has suffered three significant setbacks which reset its history on two occasions and damaged it badly on the third. That is true.   The first was the Sundering when a late medieval equivalent culture was hurt so badly by the revenge of the Fey that it reverted to something little better than early metal age development and had to work its way through a protracted redevelopment, culminating in the rising success of the Old Pale Empire. But isn't 4000 (local) years still too much to regain what was lost and push on only a little further into some renaissance equivalent technology? And then to more or less stick at that level for a further 3000 years? Maybe if it had not been interupted again... But the Planar Conformation pushed the realm back once more and it was not until the Four Aerial Courts that it regained all the confidence and skills lost after the Fall of the Old Pale Empire.   Then we come to the Time of Terrors, a most instructive age about which there is so much that is worthy of study! But I hope you can see that just as it was an epoch of untramelled magic use, so it was a time when technology retreated. This was the third great setback for the realm. You could argue that the invasion of Prince Rygarde was a fourth disaster and might have been better resisted if it had not been for the backlash against magic which was the legacy of the Time of Terrors. Perhaps. I'll grant that whilst if often seems that Magicians' End suffers from too much magic, ironically on that occasion at least, it may have suffered from too little.   At any rate, two thousand years later we have again reached the point where the world finally teeters on the edge of an industrial revolution that never quite seems to happen. Seventeen thousand years (or ten thousand standard years) to stumble to an equivalent of Earth Zero Victorian culture. Slow isn't it, even when we allow for major and minor setbacks?   It's magic that is the problem. Why develop technology when magic is so easy? And yet the long term consequences of this attitude are dangerous! Magicians' End is always at risk of losing its status as an evolution. The relatively timeless nature of its very slowly developing history should not be seen as a charming characteristic of a fantasy world but as a kind of sickness, I contend. This should worry all of us who would not wish to see it lost from the ranks of the evolutions.

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Whilst the lecture notes continue with further supporting arguments, we will leave them here, the central position of the orthodox view of technology and magic having been set out clearly, even if it is hardly proven by this briefest of introductions...