Like Magic

He saw the future before it happened..

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

-Arthur C. Clarke “Profiles of the Future” 1961

Arthur C. Clarke, who died last March was a science fiction author, but also a great futurist.

He is often credited with conceiving of the idea of communication satellites, long before they were invented.  He also wrote, among many many other things, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which became the basis for Kubrick’s stunning film.

We spent the past two days in the studio, shooting video clips for NYVS.com, and yesterday we did an interview with Lashan Browning.  Browning’s interview made me think of Arthur C. Clarke.

Lashan is a graduate of the VJ bootcamps that we ran with Oxygen Media in 2000-2001.  There she learned to shoot, edit and producer her own work by herself. That experience emboldened her to start her own production company, and now, 10 years later she is still cranking stuff out and very much in business.

But at the end of the taping, I asked Lashan if there was anything she wanted to add, anything we had missed.

You ask this all the time, but you often don’t get such a good response.

Lashan paused for a minute, then said, (in effect), ‘I want to talk for a minute to all those kids out there.. black kids, poor kids… who watch so much television and video, but think it all comes from magic.  It isn’t magic. And I want to tell them that they can do this too…’

Magic.

That’s what made me think of Clarke.

Any sufficiently advanced technology, Clarke said, is indistinguishable from magic… if you don’t understand how it works.

Take a digital camera to a stone-age tribe in Borneo and you are a God.  You can create a cargo cult.

We live in an extremely technological world today.  Things happen, apparently by magic.  When I was a kid, I was at my grandmother’s home when her 1950s DuMont television suddenly lost the sound. It still had the picture.

“Go check the plug” she said, “maybe it’s half-way out”.

To her, I am sure this must have seemed a reasonable possibility. Picture was getting through, just no sound.

“Grandma”, I replied, the wise 9-year old, “that’s not how it works”.

“Don’t get smart with me, young man. Just do what I tell you to do”.

Are we any different now when there is a problem with our internet connection or our laptops.  We just reboot, and hope for the best. God only knows what makes these things work.

Which brings me back to Lashan Browning.

Making television and video is not magic.  There is a way to do this, and anyone can do it. Or at least anyone can try and see what happens.  It isn’t magic. It’s accessible.

You just need someone to show you how it is done.

Now, if only someone would show me how this wifi thing actually works…