Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1490418" data-attributes="member: 3649">It's 'somehow' gained cultural currency because it's literally true. After you pass a certain point of technological progress, it becomes very much like magic: you appear to break physical laws (and a very advanced form of technology would probably be able to bend and break even those laws), and it's performed without your personal knowledge of how said thing works.  Sure, the tribe can figure out the record player. Will they ever figure out the MP3 player? No. They'll figure out what can be done with it, eventually, but as far as what makes it work? They'll forever be in the dark about that unless someone tells them about electricity, and electrical theory, and engineering, etc etc.  Classically, magic produces results without you, the person, knowing or caring how that process came about. You do what you've been taught - mutter words, throw around some herbs, whatever - and zap! Some effect happens. Or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you have no real idea what went wrong; you did or said something wrong, your materials were not pure, the stars were not right, etc. You try it again, and sometimes it works, and other times not. Sometimes, someone invents a new spell, or gets such knowledge from a demon or angel. Only in modern sitcoms does magic work with total disregard to surroundings; classically, there were lots of rules to follow, and a lot of deep learning that went along with it. It was born out of the first fumblings of people to discover what their world was like without resorting to 'the spirits say it's like that', but all they knew is 'you do X and Y happens - sometimes it doesn't, and we're not sure why it doesn't happen. If Y doesn't happen, you did X incorrectly, or some outside force is preventing Y from happening.'   How many people, right now, do you know that approach their PC or some other complex device in that exact same manner? They know how to do their work, but only in a certain limited framework. They touch things in a certain order, hope nothing goes wrong, and zap! Work gets done. Pages are written. Information is collated and compiled, without them knowing one single thing about logic gates, electronics theory, microcircuitry design, etc. When something goes wrong, they call the local shaman, um, tech guy, who Does Things to it, and fixes it.  To them the computer is, in effect, magical. Tech Guy can take one of them aside, show them how to clear the registry and do some things... and poof, he's created an Apprentice Magic User. He has effectively taken a tribesman into his cave and taught him to be a shaman. Some people can't be taught this; they can be taught to do certain things, but they'll never really 'get it'; they just don't have a talent for it and no amount of training will ever pound it into them. Or, as we'd say in GURPS, they don't possess the Mage Advantage. Now we've also got Tech Guy. Tech Guy really has no idea how the computer works other than what he's found out on his own and been taught. If a chip on the motherboard goes bad, Tech Guy knows the only thing to do is order a new one: he can't repair it. Indeed, nothing human at all can repair it: the scale is too small for people to perceive anymore. A machine (demon/angel) or chemical process (alchemy!) has to do it. Tech Guy has no idea how the actual gut of the machine works. And Superior Tech Guy really doesn't know all the parts. He knows his part well, and hopes it interacts well with other parts that others do.  Already, there is no one person that knows the entirity of the Windows operating system. It's too huge and complex; it's managed by committees of specialists, along with software that keeps track (hopefully) of changes. And we're still just in our first fumbling steps of technological progress. And it keeps on going, until we finally reach a point where no human on Earth knows how their world operates. They know that if they do certain things, cash appears, or heat becomes cold. If something goes wrong, they hope the local shaman (tech) can fix it. Sometimes, he can't, for reasons he can't explain. He petitions a Daemon (calls into the local Expert System) for the information, who accesses the Akashic Memory (world data bank) for the info, gives it to the shaman for a dire price and a signed contract, and all is well once more.</blockquote>

Verification