“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
My understanding
When a piece of technology is far beyond our understanding, it feels like magic.
Think about smartphones, space travel, or artificial intelligence. To someone from the past (or even someone unfamiliar with these advancements), they would seem miraculous.
Today’s science fiction can become tomorrow’s reality.
This is the third one of the Clarke’s three laws. All of the Clarke’s three laws are:
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Clarke’s First Law.
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
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Clarke’s Second Law.
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
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Clarke’s Third Law.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”