I’ve just watched several videos about this router, and it still seems like magic.

Basically it’s a handheld router that gives CNC accuracy (even if you wobble).

The only downside is that you have to stick some proprietary sticky tape to your wood.

The magic glass I had on new years eve, I have no idea how it kept filling up with beer.

Argh-how the hell do you embed video ?

That router is easy.

Magnets. Now there be magic.

Smartphones, obvs.

Argh-how the hell do you embed video ?

Just paste the link if it’s a full YouTube URL.

The router may be clever but the design team are useless at dominoes.

In my pocket I have a device that can pinpoint and track my location using satellites, can send live video anywhere in the world, and can beat me at chess.

Mr musks returning rockets. Beyond magic!

Technology is only indistinguishable from magic for people indistinguishable from cave men.

Hydrogen power..

Very confusing.

Technology is only indistinguishable from magic for people indistinguishable from cave men.

There are everyday devices that, four hundred years ago would have had you burned at the stake for witchcraft, that’s hardly the Stone Age!
Even a hundred years ago there are things we take for granted that would have been almost indistinguishable from magic.
Christ, there are things I use every day that were little more tha science fiction, like watches that can be used as a phone, play music, can keep track of your health, locate your position anywhere in the world to an accuracy of around twenty feet, although I use my phone, my watch is an old-skool mechanical one.

I’m intelligent, and I still can’t fathom how you get words and pictures and music coming through the air to my telly or radio and being collected (in the olden days at least) to a thin metal pole or when that snapped off, a wire coathanger.

That is witchcraft

Mr musks returning rockets. Beyond magic!

Good shout.

Big wheels on a mountain bike. It’s like riding a magic carpet.

This…

^^^ That toilet paper is on the wrong way.

I present to you, the Theramin. Mental.

The integrated circuit/computer chip.

Another thing is AI. The programmer sets it up initially, but once it has done a few rounds of training, it is near impossible to understand how it works.

Also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WX58CZwyiU

Basically most things involving electricity & electronics.

Computers.

Nintendo Wii

What amazes me is how quickly we become used to new technology & de-sensitised to just how amazing it all is….

I present to you, the Theramin. Mental.

Like all psychoactive drugs, when on the street they are a public nuisance and can lead to dangerous alterations in brain function. Hope this man has checked himself in somewhere.

Another vote for smartphones, especially when coupled with Fitbit/heart-rate tech; I t’s like the futuristic scanners from a childhood episode of Star Trek – except with added STW. 🤔

The Intel Drone display at the olympics would have probably felt like magic in person. On-screen it was indistinguishable from all the augmented reality stuff (which actually looked better.

Drones:

Augmented reality:

What about technologies which, on the face of it, should be indistinguishable from magic but, when you try to use them, turn out to be a bit shite? *

Like any form of video conferencing involving more than two people at the same time.

* I will reserve a lifetime of contempt for the first person to suggest the updated forum. We’ve done that to death. Get over it.

There’s that William Gibson quote:

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”

It’s not what it is that matters, it’s how far away from your baseline normal it is that makes something magic.

A lot of things that are mundane for us would be magic for a lot of the world. See: clean water available on demand in every household, literally at the turn of a tap.

Like any form of video conferencing involving more than two people at the same time.

I’m of the mind that if something hasn’t been perfected yet, it means there isn’t enough demand for it. Video conferencing is one of those things that we think we want, until we get it and realise we only wanted it because of films/tv, not because it is useful.

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Video conferencing is one of those things that we think we want, until we get it and realise we only wanted it because of films/tv, not because it is useful.

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Is it not useful? I work for a company who’s HQ is in Germany. Probably 50% of our meetings are via video conference with colleagues in Germany.

It would be much harder to work together without video conferencing.

Don’t get me wrong, it never works very well & there are often problems where certain aspects of the technology lets us down. But, it would be pretty difficult to work together without it.

AC electricity. It goes, then it comes back 1/50 second later. How does it get anywhere? Magic.

Video conferencing was going to put me out of my job just as I was starting it. That was 22 years ago and it hasn’t happened yet.

While many of the things listed above are extraordinary it’s a technology from the 19th century that I still feel is the closest to magic and that  is watching an image form in front of my eyes in a developing tray.

Technology isn’t magic. Technolgy all obeys a consistent set of rules. Most of which have been around along time.

Magic doesn’t obey a consistent reproducable set of rules. If it did it would be science

There is no evidence of magic

Do people really not know how analogue tv and radio work?

I agree with The Brick….Magnets….. magic!

For those saying magnets – this still blows my mind

More astonishing than any technologies is the sheer lack of imagination of the like of ampthill. 🙂

Best. Development. Ever. And it must be magic, as it even comes with two wands!

How did they get pixels to invade our brains?  Stealth tech.

“More astonishing than any technologies is the sheer lack of imagination of the like of ampthill. 🙂”

I spend a fair amount of every day enthusing about how amazing the universe is. But I find it more amazing because it does obey the rules. Even the easy bits are beyond my mind

Can you imagine how many atoms are in 12g of carbon? That is a bit of charcoal for the barbecue

It’s alot of atoms isn’t it. Lets swap every atom for a table tennis ball. How does that look?

Well we can’t keep them in Britain as there isn’t space. So lets keep them in the USA

They cover the USA. But how deep. Are we talking a 1 ball thick layer.

Are we driving for thousands of miles through ankle deep balls or are they waist deep. Taller than a car? Taller than a house. Did we get to fill the grand Canyon?

The answer is that they are sticking out of the atmosphere. I think its about 70km deep

Video conferencing’s entire purpose is to make conference calls even worse for the people who are only in the call for one part- they can’t do something else til the bit they’re interested in so they have to pretend to be paying attention.

Also it totally ruins that thing where everyone badmouths a colleague not realising they’re on the line.

I spend a fair amount of every day enthusing about how amazing the universe is. But I find it more amazing because it does obey the rules. Even the easy bits are beyond my mind

Can you imagine how many atoms are in 12g of carbon? That is a bit of charcoal for the barbecue……………………………

I didn’t know Brian Cox posted on here. 😛

Did anyone else just catch Radio 4 Inside Science?
Nano robot that’s 3mm X 1mm x 0.1mm and magnetic.
They put it in your body, then use computer magnetic control to make ir walk like catapillar or swim like eel to specific bit of you.
They then can administer drugs, friction or even heat it up to 45*c to kill cancer cells.
Currently in lab, coming to hospital trail next year.

Amazeballs.

Idlejon

The day job is teaching Alevel physics

Ampthill, I guessed that. 🙂

Not that magic when you come from a technology background, but still, makes you wonder how long we’ve got left.