Re: (TFT) unfinished Bendwyn (2nd try)

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

At 18:03 ... 3/26/10, Jay wrote:
> OUCH!
> You shouldn't poke my brain like that... it might wake up!

	Guess so! This whole digest is a really interesting treatise 
on where magic comes from and how medieval civilization works! Thank 
you!

At 0:29 -0400 5/5/10, Jay wrote:
> Clarke said that at a certain point, advanced technology is
> indistinguishable from magic.

	His Third Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

	But I'm not sure the converse is true - Magic is, I think, 
distinguishable from any sufficiently advanced technology. Clarke 
didn't say one way or the other, I don't think (and the Wikipedia 
article doesn't say he did). On the other hand, Niven, Pratchett, and 
Lackey *did* state the converse, according to the article. But I 
think that's a technologist's view of "magic". See below.

At 0:29 -0400 5/5/10, Jay wrote:
> Gandalf doesn't strike me as being an apple geek.

http://www2.nkfust.edu.tw/~smguo/hivi/Mac/Gandalf_1280x1024.jpg

	Clearly, not everyone feels that way. :-)

At 0:29 -0400 5/5/10, Jay wrote:
> Silicon or germanium doped with arsenic, antimony, bismuth or phosphorous is
> Yin; doped with aluminum, indium, gallium or boron is Yang.

	Actually, Gallium Arsenide devices don't (necessarily) have 
*any* silicon in them, except possibly as a dopant. Alternating 
Gallium and Arsenic atoms (ions?) form the crystalline structure. 
Maybe the extreme case of Yin/Yang balance?


	Regarding "magic", "industrial magic", technology, etc.: I 
think if magic is sufficiently advanced that it *always works*, or at 
least when it doesn't work there is a known cause for that, then it 
has become technology (and the converse of Clarke's law applies). I'm 
typing this on a machine which uses transistors to switch voltages 
something over 64,000,000,000 times each second - and *all* of them 
work. That's technology. In ITL, even a DX-18 wizard will miss his 
spell 5% of the time (when he rolls a 16, 17, or 18). That's magic. 
If a clever wizard figures out how to hit a spell 64,000,000,000 
times in a row - it will have become technology.
	I think this sort of captures the emotional impact of "magic" 
- it's the things you can't depend on, that give the world interest 
and suspense. It's the random ingredient in a story. As a 
technologist myself, "magic" in a story can make me uncomfortable for 
that reason, but I think that adds to tension needed to make a story 
riveting to me.
	This seems to fit reasonably well with the "random" nature of 
the energy source as quoted from J. Mnoren's paper...

--
						- Mark     210-379-4635
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:

				Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
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