Issue 1  8th December 2024

Things that were magic once

Some time ago, on an episode of Game of Thrones, Sam and Gilly were walking back to the wall from the far North. To pass the time, Sam the nerd starts telling Gilly all that he knows about the wall and the history of the night's watch. He knows dates, names, and events of key importance. This amazes Gilly. To her, the fact that Sam can know all these things by simply looking at small squiggly lines on paper, is nothing short of magic. As someone who writes to convey ideas and is rather acutely aware that every word he writes will outlive him by centuries, I often find myself struck by this very same sense of amazement. Writing is a powerful kind of magic that transcends the limits of a human lifespan.

When people first started writing, it was not a commonplace talent. Priests wrote, kings wrote (or had people write things for them and about them). The common folk only heard the stories. This is perhaps why, to this day, something becomes more worthy of trust if it is in writing. Think of the phrase “likh ke deta hoon”.

Isaac Asimov once speculated about the origin of the phrase “Cyclopean Wall”. A cyclopean structure is, according to the dictionary, ancient masonry made with massive irregular blocks. Asimov deduced that even though a civilisation (a Greek city state for example), might have had the technological know-how to build great walls with large blocks of stone, to a less advanced people, it might appear to be magic. In this case, it is possible that they thought these walls had been built by Cyclops — the mythical one-eyed giants of Greek myth and folklore. Since a non-scientific people could not wrap their heads around the idea of man being able to lift and use enormous rocks, they assigned magical qualities to the architectural style itself.

There is a superstition in the Western world that involves horse shoes. If hung above the door, a horse shoe is supposed to ward off bad luck. Horse shoes are made of iron and the analogue of this superstition in India assigns magical properties to the metal. I remember once, when I was a child and tormented by nightmares, my mother gave me a piece of iron to place under my pillow at night. Iron, she said, has magical properties and can ward off evil.

Remember those stories where the hero had a magical sword. A weapon that was hard and sharp yes, but there was something additional to it. It was particularly effective against monsters and creatures of darkness. It could do more than just injure them — it can kill them. It can cause them to disintegrate and melt away into the darkness. Iron has always been considered to have magical properties. This may be because the first weapons and cutting tools were not made of iron. They were made of copper and bronze — metals which are pretty but not very effective when moulded into swords, especially when the opponent has an iron sword.

Now imagine a soldier convinced of the superiority of his bronze blade facing off against a strange invader from another land. His sword bends and then is cut clean in two by his enemy's iron sword. His surviving colleagues run back with stories of an invincible enemy and their magical swords. The mind is susceptible to irrationality in the heat of battle, but some strains of such thinking must have remained. These strains have been assigning magical qualities to iron ever since.

The human tendency to make sense of things can be an overpowering one. In the absence of reliable information, it tends to runs away in strange directions.

Vimoh  

The curse of effortlessness

A friend of mine mailed in to express her happiness that a recent photo she posted of herself got a gazillion likes. I think Facebook likes are somewhat like the page view counters of yore. They are fun and ego-boosting but entirely pointless in the long run.

One of Facebook’s goals is to be a reasonably accurate reflection of your real life social connections. This goal actually suffers because of the ease with which people can connect on Facebook. In real life, connecting with someone takes effort. You have to travel, you have to make small talk, at the very least you have to pick up your phone and dial a number. You know who is an important part of your life because they come through this filter – they make an effort to be in touch with you. On Facebook, because the amount of effort required to connect with someone is minimal, even people who don’t much care about you and the events in your life end up watching and reacting to your updates.

Think of it this way. You are getting married and you have sent out invitation cards to all your friends. Those who turn up made a conscious choice to do so. They took the time out, they booked tickets, they put other appointments on hold, and they undertook a journey to reach the place you are getting married at. It took some real effort on their part and that tells you that they attach importance to the relationship they have with you.

If anyone could attend your wedding with the click of their mouse, the element of effort goes out of the picture and there is no way to establish which relationships are important and which are not. Heck! Most people, if they could indeed attend your wedding that easily, would attend your wedding. Who would want to miss out on all the free food on the other side of the “like” button?

Of course, I am talking strictly data here. It is entirely possible that because of Facebook’s ease of use, you might end up connecting with people who might otherwise have remained distant and unfamiliar. But as far as Facebook being representative of your real world social graph is concerned, the current model just doesn’t work. Part of the reason behind Facebook’s early success was the element of exclusivity (with its user base being limited to members of particular institutions). Now it is heading in the exact opposite direction.

Vimoh