Magic

I recently switched ISPs. This meant updating the wifi on every device I own. In this day and age that’s a non-trivial amount of work - hell, I’m surprised my fucking socks still work without having to enter an SSID and passphrase.

Perhaps the most painful part of this Great Reset: my Sonos speakers. We’re talking two, mebbe two-and-a-half hours of jiggery-fuckery in the Sonos app, and tapping out the Bible in Morse Code on the 3 buttons on top of every Sonos device in my house.

Lordy.

Arthur C. Clarke famously said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” What he didn’t talk about (to the best of my knowledge) is that category of thing that feels like magic, but only so long as it works…and when it doesn’t work, nearly no force on Earth can coax it back to life.

Linux used to be like this, in its early days. And then, Linux X11. (I couldn’t tell you how many years of my life I’ve spent tweaking XF86Config and xorg. conf files.)

Wifi also used to be a bit like this, but it’s improved enormously.

…and don’t even get me started on Bluetooth. The best I can say is that it seems to be improving…but who among you can honestly tell me you haven’t had some weird pairing issue in the past 6 months?

Examples abound. What tech have you used lately that feels like magic “until it doesn’t”?