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 Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147641 . Accessed: 24/05/2013 20:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Society for the History of Technology and The Johns Hopkins University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Technology and Culture. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:55:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 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 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:55:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 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 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:55:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 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 This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:55:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology, Kenya - BSC Computer Security & Forensics MSC IT Security & Audit, PHD IT Security & Audit