They could be though, at current tech level. It's the infrastructure that doesn't support it. Smartphones are as close as we got, but they reveal couple unfortunate things about the real world, such as:
- In a competitive market economy, everything ends up sucking as much as it can get away with;
- Magic wands would offer individuals more autonomy than the market, and possibly civilization, can sustain without self-destructing.
> wizards don't exist
Within constraints of the above, sure they do.
> Magic still doesn't exist.
_joel already provided the obligatory quote, but to expand on it, most of the magic in fantasy literature could be made possible with current technology, but would require supporting infrastructure to avoid breaking rules of thermodynamics. If you want to go less conspicuous, we'll have to wait for molecular nanotech ;).
They could be though, at current tech level. It's the infrastructure that doesn't support it. Smartphones are as close as we got, but they reveal couple unfortunate things about the real world, such as:
- In a competitive market economy, everything ends up sucking as much as it can get away with;
- Magic wands would offer individuals more autonomy than the market, and possibly civilization, can sustain without self-destructing.
> wizards don't exist
Within constraints of the above, sure they do.
> Magic still doesn't exist.
_joel already provided the obligatory quote, but to expand on it, most of the magic in fantasy literature could be made possible with current technology, but would require supporting infrastructure to avoid breaking rules of thermodynamics. If you want to go less conspicuous, we'll have to wait for molecular nanotech ;).