Charlie Stross on consistency in magic UX, and the diminishing of hackability

From the inimitable Chuck Stross, a short post that’s ringing in my head about modern SF/F writing and our collective expections of magic, given our tool-using nature: Not a Manifesto - Charlie’s Diary . (includes a quote from Max Gladstone, below)

Old-school fantasy is a genre of the unknowable. Magic in Tolkien’s works is big and vast and ancient. His characters relate to that magic with awe, with fear, and occasionally with love. No one tries to hack the One Ring. Certainly no one tries to build a new one! People acquire the One Ring, or the Palantir, and use each within its limits.

But consider the smartphone I have in my pocket.

No single human being knows how to make this phone. I acquired the phone, and I use it. People who know more about the phone can tell it to do more things than I can, but they’re still bound by the limits of the hardware. A few communities are dedicated to modding and hacking phones like mine, yes, but for most people most of the time a smartphone is a portable magic mirror. We make mystic passes before the glass, address the indwelling spirit with suitably respectful tones, and LEARN THE FUTURE. (“Siri, what will the weather be like tomorrow?") The same thought experiment works for many modern technologies.