I recently posted these in another thread, but I think they’re worth putting here to stand on their own:
“Magic is just a way of saying ‘I don’t know.’”
Terry Pratchett, “Nation”
The essence of magic is to do away with underlying mechanisms. … What makes the elephant disappear is the movement of the wand and the intent of the magician, directly. If there were any intervening processes, it would not be magic but just engineering. As soon as you know how the magician made the elephant disappear, the magic disappears and—if you started by believing in magic—the disappointment sets in.
William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)
Actually, what I had in mind was Microsoft—though their products don’t pass the “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” test. Opacity and incomprehensibility (the spell checker did what?) is within their grasp...
I recently posted these in another thread, but I think they’re worth putting here to stand on their own:
Terry Pratchett, “Nation”
William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)
Does that mean one can answer “Do you believe in magic?” with “No, but I believe in the existence of opaque proprietary APIs”?
API’s made by the superintelligent creators of this universe? Personally, no.
Worse: APIs grown by evolution. Evolution makes the worst BASIC spaghetti coder you ever heard of look like Don Knuth by comparison.
Actually, what I had in mind was Microsoft—though their products don’t pass the “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” test. Opacity and incomprehensibility (the spell checker did what?) is within their grasp...