Magic From Technology

Okay, so some dude named Clark once said that magic was just cleverly hidden batteries. Or something like that. Point is, this thread is for ideas about Magic from Technology, of a time far in the future that might come across as something from a work of fantasy, but much closer inspection reveal the technological origin of these magical capabilities or fantastical object.

Example: A flying, glowing, fairy companion is actually a small drone Robot Buddy.

Post your own ideas or queries, question and discuss with others, go nuts!

Edited by Parable on Sep 25th 2018 at 6:51:34 AM

I assume that this is soft-science, since we are projecting into the far future? IMHO, the clearest "development path" toward magic starts with self-propelled nano-tech (ie, "Smart Dust"). It has the potential to transmut elements in real time, assemble itself into various forms and devices out of "thin air", and penetrate an enemy's body or other defenses much like an sudden flesh-eating illness (or a much slower, more subtle attempt at assassination). Combine with an "eye-only" view of a graphic user interface, and you even have "practioners" making obscure gestures and cryptic voice commands to direct their nano swarms.

Long-range wireless transmission of energy. Does everything from powering ancient technological artifacts with no clear energy source to making fireballs appear in your hands.

I've always liked the idea programmatic magic. If you take the above mentioned long range wireless energy transfer. Mages are those who have learned enough of the ancient arcane language to activate spells. That ancient arcane language? It is actually C or python, or some other thing, but people have lost the context of its beginning.

Sticking with this concept, the magic words to activate wands and such are passwords in long dead languages.

Gravity manipulation. If it's possible at all, then it would look very much like magic to anyone without that capability.

Or, depending on the exact cultural milieu, telekinesis.

And now I have a mental image of a group of genre-savvy peasants observing a high tech user from the future:

"Look at that Aered! He can make an ox float in the middle of the air!"

"Psha, an obvious case of gravity manipulation."

It's NANOMACHINES. It's ALL NANOMACHIN Es. AHAHAHAHAHA.

But seriously, having an environment saturated with nanomachines and controlling them with programming on the fly makes a certain kind of sense.

And it actually enforces Medieval Stasis because the nanomachines are eating up all the heavy metal deposits in order to propagate and self-repair, meaning the people have no resources for more advanced metallurgy or electronic devices.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 1st 2018 at 9:36:02 AM

If everything is a Nanomachine, summoned demons become much more interesting. It means there are Hive Mind collections of them that are malicious. Calling together too big a group of demon Nanomachines would yield catastrophic results.

Uh, no. metal eating nanomachines would imply never being able to progress past the Stone Age.

Besides, I hate Medieval Stasis. It's usually a sign of lazy worldbuilding. Life and history are transitory and that's what makes it interesting.

oooo, interesting. Are they pure nanomachines or merely use nanomachines to animate local material? Are they intelligent and malicious or merely insane? Could you create one? On purpose?

So many fascinating questions, WHERE DO I BEGIN?

Edited by Belisaurius on Oct 3rd 2018 at 7:55:12 AM

I mean, depending on what your nanomachines are made of you can easily excuse them being able to progress to the Bronze or Iron Age.

Personally, I don't like hive-mind nanoswarm type things because it slips a bit too close into actual magic thinly disguised as science. Too soft, in other words.

You can have your standard undead actually be old androids that are running off degraded programming and just attacking people, or perhaps even some sort of augmented humans whose implants have gone wrong, leaving them not-quite-dead and quite insane because of it.

Excuse how? If we're talking need then keep in mind that technology is progressing faster now than any time before.

On the matter of Undead, medical nanos gone crazy makes sense for zombies but not skeletons. Skeletons make sense as stripped down robots if you don't look to carefully. Ghosts are completely off the table. Unless it's a Ghost in the Machine but that's an exception that proves the rule.

As for Demons? Think of how Python doesn't let you select individual cores to process tasks or select memory addresses. All that is done automatically by the OS. In the case of nanomachine's they'll create a processor in order to organize and direct every nanomachine.

After the scale of the task exceeds a certain point the complexity of the problem will be more than just a processor can effectively handle and the nanomachines will upgrade to an AI in order to keep up. However, between centuries of neglect and the fact that nanotech is Lost Technology the AI tends to go insane and act out randomly. Because the mages don't understand what's going on, they call the resulting AI and associated nanomachines a demon.

Excuse by the nanomachines only requiring certain metals to propagate and repair, thus leaving other metals untouched and a possible resource for humanity to find and work with.

And while I can see pre-existing human-developed AIs sticking around and possibly cloning off more of themselves which then develop along different paths, I'm iffy on a nanoswarm spontaneously developing sapience.

Well, if you did want to use them to enforce Medieval Stasis you could have the Nanomachines rely on materials that are not as useful in lower technology levels. Silicon and carbon which are more plentiful and gold which is not particularly required until you are making electronics would work. You would not have gold coins but most real world currencies used silver as the most common metal for coins anyway. The only thing you would need to avoid with this set up is the paperclip AI problem. But gold will probably run out long before either of the other resources.

Heck if you wanna go with nanomachine swarms creating demons or monsters or the like, it can even justify killing monsters to drop loot, aka gold and precious metals, if you want a tongue-in-cheek approach.

Why wouldn’t a swarm of nanobots be able to develop an AI? That seems like a totally arbitrary limit.

If they’re able to do everything else they’re already being described as doing there’s no reason they wouldn’t be able to form an AI too.

I dunno, I'm not a big fan of Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!. Like, there's gotta be some level of higher-level programming already involved to make the jump from automaton to sapient being. A paperclip maker, no matter how complex, isn't going to suddenly question why it's making paperclips.

Anyway, that's my personal preference. Moving on.

John Ringo wrote a series called Council Wars, which I think explores the concept of magic from highly advanced technology in interesting ways.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 3rd 2018 at 12:08:33 PM

Comparing an autonomous swarm of nanobots capable of constructing high technology to a paperclip maker is a terrible analogy.

If we accept that the nanobots can construct computer systems, is it really surprising to think they could construct a computer system capable of running an AI? Instant AI from systems not equipped for it is one thing, but this is a totally different scenario. Especially when considering the networking capabilities a nanobot swarm would necessarily have, saying it couldn’t create an AI makes no sense.

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 3rd 2018 at 1:14:22 AM

That's actually the point. The nanoswarm can't make that leap from advanced computer to good A.I on it's own. It needs specialized care or components that No Longer Exist. Maybe it was supposed to link with an AI mainframe or perhaps integrate with a human being.

...Actually, I'm gonna use the latter. It would explain why demons are trying to eat people.

But nobody knows how to do this anymore or even that they're supposed to. As a result, instead of an AI the computer turns into a terrible mess that can vaguely be described as "psychotic Animal"

Interesting. Computerized swarm bots are already definately a thing, the US Air Force is well along in developing several models. These aren't nanoswarms (the bots range in size from insects to small aircraft) but the same principles apply regardless of the scale. Swarms are characterized by their independence from a centralized computer hosting an operating system—there is nothing there but a swarm of independently acting robots, each following a very simple set of pre-programmed commands. From research conducted using what are called "agent-based simulations" it is known that a multitude of simple independent agents, when acting together, can produce extremely sophisticated outcomes (just like an ant colony). Due to the simplicity of the operating system on each individual bot, it is hypothesized that they could be built down to nano-sized (although this is currently untested), and because they are nano-sized this raises the possibility of programming them to utilize easily available natural resources to replicate themselves. Thus—a self-replicating smart swarm.

"Wizards" (ie, swarm controllers) can manipulate a swarm by designing or altering the pre-programmed commands. I imagine that altering a pre-existing swarm to do something it wasn't orginally designed to do wouldn't be cost-effective, instead the wizard would have a small general purpose "factory swarm" that is used to build the seed population from which a more specialized, useful swarm would grow. Once usefully large, the specialized swarm could be de-activated and stored. If the wizard wants a particular swarm to be ready in case of need, it can be programmed to follow the wizard wherever he goes, perhaps at a certain distance. If the wizard wants to conceal the swarm from casual eyes, it need mererly disperse itself until the individual nano-sized bots are effectively invisible. This means that deploying swarms would be like preparing spells—you have to decide which swarms you want to be instantly available, and activate them ahead of time (unless you want to carry all your storage containers wherever you go). For any other swarm, still in their containers, it will take some time to activate the seed population, and wait until they replicate themselves to a useful size. For any type of swarm whose seed population is not already manufactured, it will require even more time to design and build them.

These bots need energy to operate. If battery technology hasn't miniturized small enough, then some outside source, like sunlight or an electro-magnetic field will be needed to power them (these sources could obviously be interferred with). Communication between the bots is also critical—their cooperative programming will only work if they can scan and identify the position and condition of other bots in their immediate surroundings (this can also be jammed).

There isn't much that a smart swarm couldn't be programmed to do, given enough time and resources. They can build manufacturing facilities, tear down structures, scan and analyze a geographic area. Killing a human is trivial, but across short ranges within line of sight a firearm is more efficient.

Note that the whole point of a smart swarm is that they dont require a lot of compuational capacity to produce highly complex outcomes. I suppose one could design a swarm that configured itself into a platform for a more sophisticated AI, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose (making the development and control of sapient AI's an entirely different branch of "magic").

Edited by DeMarquis on Oct 3rd 2018 at 10:01:44 AM

If a wizard always needs a seed swarm then that can be his familiar. It gives the familiar a bit of a different dynamic sort of a combination of spell book and companion. Small portions of it split off into whatever is summoned or cast, and it is the presence of these familiar bot units that lets the wizard control something.

Tecnically its a "factory swarm", the seed population belongs to the more specialized swarm being manufactured.

But, yeah, I like that idea. Make it respond to voice commands: "Familiar, configure!"

"Ready"

I’m getting a bit of a Horizon Zero Dawn vibe from all this for some reason.

It's very much the same topic. A primitive people who are surrounded by advanced technology that they can't even comprehend, and thus classify it as magic, the gods, the way of the world, etc.