Magic in the Machine Age

Author(s): George M. O'Har

Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 862-864
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the History of Technology
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COIVIfVf ?NT
Magic
in the Machine
Age
GEORGE M. O'HAR
Before there
was
technology,
there was
magic.
It was not so
long
ago,
indeed,
that the scientific and industrial revolutions
pushed magic
aside.
For all the benefits
undeniably
conferred
by
those
revolutions,
something
always gets
lost in the
move
from one
world to another.
Change
comes at a
price; progress,
it must be
understood,
always
takes
hostages.
We are
by
now
all familiar with the
Harry
Potter
phenomenon
and the
rags-to-riches story
of author
J.
K.
Rowling.
Such
perseverance
can
be
seen
as
many
things,
but when it succeeds it is
usually trumpeted
as a testament
to the human
spirit?in
this
particular
case to that
spirit
married to a
bit of
good
luck and
good timing.
Why
children like these books is
easy enough
to understand.
Young
Harry,
a
wizard
orphaned
in a
world of
Muggles
(us),
spends
his
nights
sleeping
in a
spider-filled cupboard
under the stairs at the home of Vernon
and Petunia
Dursley,
his uncle and
aunt,
and a
pair
of clods in
anyone's
book.
During
the
day Harry
is bullied
by
his
overweight
Tweedledum of a
cousin,
Dudley.
This
nightmare
carries over into
school,
where
Dudley
and
his chums further
persecute Harry.
All this
changes
on
Harry's
eleventh
birthday,
when he receives an invitation to attend the
Hogwarts
school for
young
wizards,
where he will
spend
the next seven
years
learning
the tricks
of his trade. All children at one time or another see themselves as
outsiders,
possibly
even as
persecuted
outsiders.
Harry
is someone children can
understand:
an
outsider's
outsider,
compelled
to live in a
world where he is
adrift and seen as a
burden. Such
a
character is a
staple
of children's and
young
adult
literature,
and for
good
reason.
It is not so
easy
to understand
why
adults like these books. The
writing
is
competent,
but fails to rise to the level of art. The
story
itself is
derivative,
as
are the characters that
people
it.
Despite
claims to the
contrary,
the Potter
books do not
belong
on
shelves
alongside
Robert Louis
Stevenson,
C. S.
Lewis,
Frances
Hodgson
Burnett, J.
R. R.
Tolkien,
Lewis
Carroll,
and
Madeleine
L'Engle.
The truth of the matter is that
they
stand to classic chil
Dr. O'Har teaches in the
Department
of
English
at Boston
College.
?2000
by
the
Society
for the
History
of
Technology.
All
rights
reserved.
0040-165X/00/4104-0009$8.00
862
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O'HAR I
Magic
in the Machine
Age
COMMENT
dren's literature
as
the Star Wars
trilogy
(soon
to be
sextet)
stands to the films
of
Hollywood's golden age.
And like the Star Wars
films,
the Potter
phenom
enon is
just
one more
example
of the invisible hand of the
marketplace pick
ing
our
pockets.
Yet adults seem to be as
transported by Harry
and his adven
tures as their children.
Why?
And
perhaps
more
important, why
now?
The Potter books indeed have their charms. To
give Rowling
credit,
she
has created
an
alternative world that
works,
that has its own internal
logic
and value
system. Harry
is
good;
Lord
Voldemort,
his nemesis and the
mur
derer of his
parents,
is not. The "war" between them
provides
the
pivot
around which events in the series revolve. But this is not the
only
conflict.
There is a
deliberate contrast between the world of
technology,
and the
consumerism for which it is
responsible,
and the world at
Hogwarts;
in
short,
a
conflict between
technology
and
magic.
Vernon
Dursley,
for
exam
ple,
is director of
Grunnings,
a firm that makes drills. His
son,
the insuffer
able
Dudley,
a materialistic and
greedy
lout,
is
given
to
counting
his
pres
ents and
howling
when there aren't
enough
of them. On his
birthday
he
receives a
computer,
a
second
television,
a
racing
bike,
video
camera,
remote control
airplane,
sixteen
new
computer games,
a
gold
wristwatch,
and a videocassette recorder
among
his
thirty-seven gifts?the
fruits of a
technological society,
so to
speak. Harry,
of
course,
gets nothing. Dudley
also
enjoys eating hamburgers,
and
going
to adventure
parks
and movies.
Harry
is
only
allowed to
tag along.
When the
giant
Rubeus
Hagrid brings
Harry
his invitation to
Hogwarts,
all this
changes. Suddenly
it is
Harry
who
becomes the child of
greatness,
whose name is on
everyone's lips. Leaving
the
Muggle
world transforms
Harry
into what he is meant to be: a
boy
wiz
ard,
and the center of the
story.
Underneath all this lies a
realization about
which world is better?and it is not the mundane
place
where a
boy
with a
good
heart cannot find
a
home.
Magic
saves
Harry
from a fate worse than
death:
turning
into a
Dursley.
Jacques
Ellul claimed that
"technique,"
the
complex
we call
technologi
cal
society,
evolved
along
"two distinct
paths."
One
path
he called the "tech
nique
of Homo
faber"
the other he referred to as
"the
technique,
of
a more
or less
spiritual
order,
which we call
magic."
Ellul maintained that in the
evolutionary
conflict between material
technique
and
magical technique,
magic always
loses. This is so
because material
technique
leads to a
"multi
plication
of
discoveries,
each based
on the other." Put another
way,
tech
nology
leads to
"progress."
In
magic,
on
the other
hand,
there are
only
"end
less
beginnings"?one
reason
why
the
magic
in the
Harry
Potter books is
no
different from the
magic
in "oldes
bokes,"
or even
old movies.
But,
as
Ellul also
pointed
out,
magic
had
a
spiritual
side. To those who
believed in
it,
magic represented
a
world view that for better
or worse
answered
every question.
This is not to
say magic
was
religion.
Ellul
clearly
saw
the two as
distinct,
and
separate.
But
magic
as a
system managed
to
address
aspects
of life that we
today
would define as
distinctly spiritual,
863
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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
OCTOBER
2000
VOL. 41
bordering
on the
religious. Technique
has no
spiritual
side.
Technique,
alas,
has
an
Achilles' heel. When science and
technology replaced magic,
what
was removed was that
physical-mechanical part
of the
magical system
that
simply
could not
compete
in a new world based
on
scientific method and
technological efficiency.
That
part
of
magic
which functioned for its adher
ents in the
spiritual
realm was never
replaced.
Machines cannot do the
work of
gods.
Machines cannot calm
fears,
or
provide
answers to our
deep
est
questions.
All the
technology
in the world cannot
repair
the human
spirit,
or
locate the soul.
Max Weber described the lives of workers in the rationalized modern
workplace
as
"disenchanted." The term
conveys
a sense
of
loss,
which
remains with
us.
We
can
send
our
Taylors
into the
factory;
we can
produce
the most wonderful machines. We
can,
in
effect,
satisfy
our
every
material
need. But there is
a
hubris to this
way
of
thinking.
Human needs
run
deep,
and
they
run
deeper
than the reach of
technology. Today,
in this American
Age,
with the
economy booming,
with millionaires
falling
like
apples
from
the tree of
life,
you
would think that
more
people,
when
questioned,
would
admit to
being happy. They
do not.
Everyone
has
everything?but
every
thing hardly
matters. The Potter books
provide
an alternative
reality
where
magic
retains its hold
on
the world.
Harry goes
to school to learn how to
use
his
powers,
and to use
them
wisely
and for the
common
good.
In our
technological
world,
we are
supposed
to do the
same.
Science is
supposed
to be harnessed to
good, technology
is
supposed
to make life better and
eas
ier for
Muggles
the world over. A look at the
record, however,
shows it to be
spotty.
Science and
technology, "technique,"
have
triumphed
in a
very
small
corner of the world. And even where
"progress"
has been
achieved,
terrible
events
linger
in the collective
memory.
Something
is
missing.
In this corner
of the
world, too,
adults
long
for
order,
and a
world that makes
more sense.
It seems that in the business of
building
a
better
place
to live we have
forgotten why
we are here. We live
only
a short
time,
and
given
this
brevity,
we
long
for
more
than machines
can
provide.
We want to believe in
magic,
and for
any
number of reasons. We
worry
about what is in store for our
children,
a
worry
that was more
manageable
when
magic
was in
charge
and
the world was an
integrated
whole.
Today's hyperworld
has us on
edge.
We
want to
hide,
go
where it is safe. We want to live in a world where
good
is
rewarded,
where
right
wins out over
might.
We crave
meaning
and
spirit
in
our
lives,
and we
find them in the oddest
places:
the
sophistries
of
a
Deepak
Chopra,
the emotivism of
an
Oprah Winfrey,
the
special
effects and
logic
of
Star Trek and The Matrix. Now it's
Harry
Potter's turn. And while this is not
an
altogether good development, certainly
it could be worse. One does hold
out
hope, though,
that this
disguised
search for
meaning?and
it is
pre
cisely
that?will
someday
result in an
exploration
that takes
us
beyond
what is
provided by
an alternative world found
only
in the
pages
of chil
dren's books.
864
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