Page 296: Clarke's Third Law

Science Fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke put forth, eventually, four laws about the future and technology. The most famous is the third:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke put forth the law in his 1961 essay Profiles of the Future. Since then, other authors have added things and even inverted it (Niven's law, for example, states that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.)

I preferred to look at it a different way in Old Blood: What happens when magic is exposed as being "only" technology?

In some cases, it is only natural. Take, for example, things like electric trains. When I was a child, electric trains were magic. They ran all on their own! Then, of course, Atari came along and suddenly trains just went around in a circle (no longer magic). The Space Invaders were magic! They moved on their own and shot at you. Now, of course, there are iPod Touches...

The old "magic" gets packed in a box, perhaps brought out at Christmas for nostalgic purposes.

But the electric trains are just a sad story. What about what I think of as the "Wizard of Oz" problem? What happens when you find out that the guy who proclaimed himself in charge based on his magic "just" has technology? I always wondered what happened after Dorothy went home. Did the people of the Emerald City say "Hey, wait a minute, you're not a real wizard... Get him!"

Think of all the generations of shamans and medicine men and illusionists who drew social power from their "magic". Think of all the ritual sacrifices they made, all the tribute they demanded... It might inspire some revenge from the populace!

For millenia, the ability to, say, predict an eclipse could make someone the queen. What happens to her when her subjects find out that it was "only" math and not magic? Broadly, there are only two options: Repression or revolution.

Repression happens if the queen tries to cling to power despite the loss of "magic". Without magic on the queen's side, she has to use force to keep the aggrieved population in check. If there is revolution, well, the queen typically loses her head...