The Phenomenon of Emergent Magic
How the increase technological complexity gives rise to systems that appear more & more like magic…

The term Emergent Magic used here by the author Phil Bowermaster to describe how our ideas are becoming more and more valuable.
He argues against the popular claim that “ideas are a dime a dozen - it’s only execution that counts” by pointing to emerging technology.
Technology is getting much better at the execution of complex tasks and therefore our human ideas are actually getting more valuable.
The capacity to which technology can physically create whats in our imagination is constantly accelerating.
There has never before been such a capacity to realize your ideas.
The chances that your random idea will end up turning into reality are higher than ever before in history.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthor C. Clark
So the concept of Emergent Magic plays upon this idea. What magic and technology have in common is the ability to simply speak our ideas into reality.

Take a modern day example that happens all the time: speaking a command to a smart-home system.
If I say, “Hi Alexa. Could you turn on the air-conditioning?” then the technology responds with an immediate answer to the request. If instead I waved a wand and uttered a spell to make the room colder, the effective action would be considered magical to any onlookers unfamiliar with smart-home software or AC units.
On a more complex note, today we can quite easily create modern eCommerce stores within minuets using programs such as Shopify.
Though, at the moment creating a store in this way is not as easy as simply speaking the idea into reality, but with a few clicks here and there I can create something from my imagination that has real world results and consequences.
Extrapolating on this, the day will soon come where I can simply ask a program such as Shopify to sell say, shoes made in Taiwan.
The conversation could go something like this,
“Hey Shopify. Could you create a store for me that sells shoes from a creditable factory in Taiwan with a 35% markup? Please include your typical return policy and add free shipping for all customers in North America?”
“Hey Shopify. Could you also adjust the product inventory to account for current internet trends in Female Athletic Wear and as the trends shift could you automatically keep the factory updated on the most popular designs?”
“Hey Shopify. While your at it, could you ship bulk inventory to the most efficient warehouse locations and optimize for low shipping costs in the areas of New York and San Francisco?”
This idea may seem like a stretch, but just by using whats available today we can create something real with relative ease.
Today, creating things requires more work than simply speaking an idea out loud, instead you have to apply yourself and solve the problem using your own work ethic…
But on a high-level, the work required for this type of Shopify project is much lower than it has been historically… We can't simply voice all our biggest ideas and see them materialize instantly, but we seem to be moving in that direction…

Emergent Magic is a cute phrase for the way that our increasing technological ability gives us a stronger and stronger influence over our physical reality.
…Cute phrases are often there to help us adopt fresh perspectives.
A small phrase can represent a larger idea, and in this case, it can help us consider how technology is becoming less reliant on human effort and more reliant on human input…
The input of ideas: Creative input.
Note: I don’t mean to suggest that coming up with creative ideas is effortless, rather, that technology today does a lot of the stuff we used to do manually.
Technology is becoming less and less distinguishable from what we once would consider Magic.
Our individual powers are constantly increasing and as this trend emerges, we will be able to speak more and more of our ideas forward.
Imagining new realities and not laboring away building them…
Perhaps this will never happen…
Maybe us humans should put in the work required to build the world we imagine…
But, even if we don’t arrive at this possibility, it’s worth considering the ‘Magic Powers’ that we already have at our disposal.
Consider all the infrastructure and the mind-boggling amount of innovation that must exist in order for you to read this sentence on the internet.
Everyday we remotely store information upon the flow of electrons within very small computer chips.
What we’re doing right now is telepathy, built upon this strange online foundation…

… What if my words today influenced you to do something in the future?
Virtually no effort on my part (besides the whole aforementioned creative process) and a well worded sentence could actually take form in reality.
…Isn’t that some form of magic?

Thanks for reading!
This article was about an alternative perspective to some growing trends in technology.
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