Sir Arthur Was Right

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- Arthur C. Clarke



Alright, I admit it. Contrary to information found elsewhere on this blog, I'm not a 1,046 year old monk. I'm not writing from a scriptorium high in a mossy keep overlooking the dark, wind-strafed waters of the North Sea.

But it's an appealing scene, isn't it?

I think there's something compelling about trying to imagine living in those times, to experience the slowness of that long distant past. The scholarly, monastic life holds an allure in its sharply focused simplicity, a lifestyle so different from our fractured modern ways. No doubt this fascination partly explains the success of recent popular fiction set in the Middle Ages, and continued interest in the history of the time. More than most perhaps, we librarians today tend to be information-saturated, splintered, and thoroughly "e"-ified. Clarke knew, and his fellow futurists know, that keeping up with the accelerating rate of change is a constant struggle. Slipping into the known but still romantically mysterious past for a few hours can make an engaging techno-stress palliative.

A few days ago I bought a record album on my iPhone for the first time. I had downloaded songs with it over the last six months, and I have roughly 1,500 songs in my iTunes library, both on laptop and phone, but this was the first time I had downloaded an album wirelessly. I purchased Roman Candle's Oh Tall Tree in the Ear via the 3G network while talking on my office phone and answering work e mail.

And these thoughts occurred to me: My closet is filled with the musty records and tapes of my youth. My first car had an eight track player that I was very pleased to have, and I just bought a record album via satellite. I paid for the record wirelessly. It was delivered in minutes, also wirelessly, invisibly, to my phone. The record is now on my phone. When I leave the library, I will plug my phone into my car and listen to my new record as I drive home.

And I did.

Magic, indeed.

Sitting in my office, the revelation startled me so that I knocked Beowulf off my desk.