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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology Is Indistinguishable From Magic

7/28/2004

By Terry Calhoun

Arthur C. Clarke, still alive and kicking at the age of 87, wrote those words many years ago and we're seeing it happen ever more frequently in digital information technologies. Who among us would have thought, even 20 years ago, that we'd be as close as we are now to the "magic purse" of the Arabian Nights and other fairy tales and mythology.

It's not really magic, of course, but it is as though it were magic, and those of us who deal in info tech daily sometimes conceal the wonder of it all from our consciousness. I don't know why that should be. How can we take it for granted and not feel a sense of wonder that we can carry in our pockets a magic tool that lets us call talk to anyone in the world, anywhere, anytime; that has within it space that lets us enhance the powers of our minds by storing contact and communications information that would swamp us if we tried to stick it all in our brains; that has in it the power to bring us the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress on demand?

This week, my "opinion" is that we all need to awaken to more of the magic in technology, and I'll be stepping outside information technology a bit to share some of what I have recently found to be exciting and magical scientific and technical discoveries.

Here are the science and technology-related items that have given me the best magical thrills so far in 2004.

Moths are not attracted to light

I especially like new discoveries that shake everything up and set things on their heads. This is a good one. It's true, moths (and other insects) are not attracted to light sources, they just behave in ways that lead us to that conclusion.

Moths don't find lights especially attractive, they just can't help themselves and end up near lights because lights screw up their navigation systems. Moths (and other insects) are hardwired with very likely no ability to individually learn behaviors. Their hardwiring has been developed over millions of years, and for 99.99999 percent of those millions of years the only strong light sources in the natural world moths were adapting to were the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Especially if you are flying around at night, like moths - which by the way are the primary pollinators of most trees, which is why there is often a pollen release in the middle of the night that gets to those of us with certain allergies if we sleep with the windows open - it can be difficult to find visual navigation aids. So, like sailors at sea with sextants before satellites and radar, moths take "fixes" on the moon or other celestial objects.

Such navigation by "fixed" objects works very well when the light source you are fixing on is sufficiently far enough away (such as the North Star) that for short term purposes it acts as though it is absolute and unmoving. If you try to navigate on your neighbor's porch light, your navigation will be off enough that in a very brief period of time you will find yourself haplessly spiraling in toward the light source although you have no intent of going there at all.

Pity the poor moth. Its excellent navigation system depends on an environment with only a few, apparently fixed points of light and it now lives in a world full of human - and close by - light sources. Pity the poor humans, who think that moths are "attracted to light" when in actuality, our artificial lights are just screwing up the moths' navigation. Read more

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