Are Computers Magic?

[d^_^b 27]

Ok, now I feel stupid. I just can't think of everything that is to be considered. I won't ask such stupid questions, anymore.

 

I never understood why ignorance can make people cringe or even HATE ME. I'd like to think that "ignorance is bliss", but I thought about it and finally realized that in reality, "ignorance is dangerous".

 

I'm going to kill myself, now.

[GenderIsAnIllusion 2,177]

In a way it is magic..... Basically a pile of plastic, metal, and silicon letting us do amazing things like communicate worldwide, play games, and store information..... Seems pretty magical to me as well XD

[powerpuff-tsubasa 448]

i wouldve believe computers were magical concotions. but no. theyre done by expensive scientific experimentalists

Computers are not magic, but the internet is a passable magical conduit.

haha. id agree on the internet portion

[Grepper 3,192]

I'm 95% sure you're trolling, OP.

[RDDash 19,195]

I am computer science student and too me computers are magical sometimes. Like code is equivalent to spells. Could you actually believe it that we using air as a medium to send information.

Edited October 20, 2017 by Rabit2017

[PinkieShadow 4,056]

Magic ? I do not know, but you can count on them.

Soo bad.

 

[Luminance 2,186]

My programming teacher once said this in a lecture but he concluded it wasn't magical. It's a box of ones and zeros, he insisted. 

[Midnight Solace 5,132]

On 6/9/2016 at 8:09 AM, LaserPewPew said:

Magic is simply a word used to describe things we do not understand so yes, computers are magic.

Maybe if you understood it, computers would not be magic. Instead, it would be just programming and stuff.

[碇 シンジン 27,432]

Magic by definition describes a concept of something in which the one describing it cannot grasp how the concept itself actually operates or works precisely and what the said operation requires to operate in that fashion.

So if you dont understand computers you could say subjectively that they are magic, but since there are people who understand them you cannot state it as an objective fact. Magic as a concept is basically only subjective as if something exists there is always someone who knows or was someone who knew how it worked in order to create it in the first place. As you cannot create something with some purpose in mind without knowing how it operates to achieve that purpose

[Celtore 2,770]

As a programmer, they're not magic. They're just stupid machines that can run blocks of logic, and that logic is created and deployed by using a huge toolchain of abstraction layers built on top of other abstraction layers. They will never do anything they're not told to do. They may do something stupid or unexpected because of bad software, but it was still told to respond in the way it did. 

The closest thing to magic might be machine learning. You build a neural network which models your problem, train it on a large set of data and suddenly your software understands what a dog looks like. It's all math behind the scenes, but holy. crap.

[Tropical Melody 6,417]

On 6/4/2016 at 8:16 PM, d^_^b said:

You'd say no; computers are technology, which is true. But I'd like to think that they're magic!

. . .

I think that some sorcery is used to make all those boards, chips, cords, and capacitors work together to produce the tools that we use to go on the Internet, check our e-mails, do art work, type word documents, watch videos, play video games, make phone calls, etc. Maybe there's a demon inside...

. . .

A hundred years ago, and later, wireless seemed like magic. That is, radio. How does the sound travel through space without using wires? (Hence "wireless" - by this time people had had a few decades to get their heads around the idea of the telegraph and telephone, which use wires.)

So yeah computers can seem magical, or at least the things that they can do.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2018 by Tropical Melody

[Tropical Melody 6,417]

Forgot to mention - if the computer was in a Discworld novel, then yeah there'd be a little demon inside.

 

[Lucky Bolt 35,082]

Nah. Just complicated technology in my mind. 

[Here No Longer 5,276]

At one time everything we've come to develop technologically and now take for granted was considered magic. But there's nothing magical about it.

[Stardust 641]

Computers are like magic ye

As tech gets better it will seem more like magic :3 

though in the end they only do what they are programmed to do

[The Historian 516]

In a way, sort of. A friend at work put it best: a computer is a rock we shoot lightning through to trick it into thinking. And, honestly, that's not even all that out of scope.

[EpicEnergy 23,223]

Computers are just hard to understand, that's all.

[Fluttershyfan94 5,742]

I studied some computer science and programming so to me a computer is best described as a calculator. Think of a calculator you put in your equation then it gives you the answer to your equation. What this is, is basically what your computer is doing it is calculating you give it input it gives you output. 

You have a couple of main components but essentially the processor is most of the magic of a computer as it is what takes your input and sends the needed currents to activate it to give you the output. Such as when you boot up a computer and it goes through your hardware. 

Say for an example you were to turn on the computer you send an electric current to innitate bootup. It therefore boots up your calculator is on and you get the user interface which is given to you to simplify your use of your computer. In a sense there is not much need for this interface for the actual computer to do its thing but it helps you that is. This is all signals and calculations information turned into data and stored in the forms of 1 and 0 pretty much. Yet of course it takes your computer seconds to process while it would take you some time to do so.

[Splashee 28,566]

Only magic if you install Microsoft Bob:

[Pentium100 2,175]

Richard Feynman has a really nice explanation of how a computer works with the analogy of a (really fast, but stupid) filing clerk.

It starts at about 5 minutes into the video.

 

[Twilight-Sparkle17 230]

No. Computers aren't magic. If you sent a computer back to the 17th century, it may seem like magic to those people. However, computers are just complex pieces of technology, a result of our own scientific advancements.