After repeating the much bandied about quote from Arthur C. Clark about technology for the third time in less than a week, I decided to actually verify the citation. You probably have heard that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” at some time in recent weeks in relation to AI. So here’s the frfr.
English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as Clarke’s three laws, of which the third law – that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – is the best known and most widely cited. They are part of his ideas in his extensive writings about the future.[1]
The laws
The laws are:
- 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.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
