Comments | technopaganism: RFC: Ideas about a computer metaphor for magickal work

vaxjedi in technopaganism

RFC: Ideas about a computer metaphor for magickal work

Aug 20, 2005 08:35

I had some ideas that I thought were interesting and I thought I would run them by you.
( Long ramble underneath )

Comments 5

makuus August 20 2005, 17:03:30 UTC

Rick Cook touched upon the idea that spells could be programmed in his Wizardy... (...Cursed, Consulted, Quested, etc) books. I thought it a fascinating idea, given that I come from a programming background (systems design and implementation). Yet, I'd be hard-pressed to start describing a framework in which it could actually work in the 'real' world.

sneezythesquid August 21 2005, 01:34:21 UTC

In the series "Planetary," Warren Ellis had a character say a line I loved that seems appropriate here: "Magic is the cheat codes of the universe."

happyuncledave August 22 2005, 00:24:23 UTC

This is one of the reasons we coined the term 'Reality Hacking' a few years back. It's become popular in some circles because of the whole 'cheat codes' / Universal OS model.

tlttlotd February 15 2007, 03:01:37 UTC

There are also many loopholes that can be exploited: Access restrictions do not exclude every possible kind of change. Boundry checking is lax in many areas. There are undocumented APIs laying about all over the place....

*delurks* talec18415 October 3 2005, 01:35:38 UTC

That's fascinating.

I've thought about my mind and thought-processes being very similar to coding before.. I have quite a bit of control over my thinking and I usually manipulate it in a manner similar to programming, and since I've been learning MUSHcoding (a type of object-oriented programming) it's gotten a bit more pronounced.

Ideally, you would develop a symbol set that you use as a set of primitives and some sort of strategy for order and possibly flow control. These symbols should be symbols that have meaning for you that you and your subconscious can access and utilize during runtime.

This reminds me greatly of the runes from Barbara Hambly's "Darwath Trilogy". [/random note] (I have no experience with runes here, so I can't really reference them. ^^;) I'm going to have to try this out. :)

~Talec