An argument occasionally used against the claim that the advent of the Internet has been the biggest thing since electricity (or the steam engine, or the printing press), is that a man from a pre-electricity culture would view light bulbs and other simple electronic gadgets as "magic", whereas a 1990s person would simply view the Internet as somewhat cool - a fun toy, but nothing inconceivable. This isn't just hypothetical: there are numerous recorded instances of cultures unfamiliar with the steam engine viewing it as unquestionably magic, whereas most people alive in 1990 had little trouble getting acclimated to the Internet.
It's a convincing and a disheartening point. Impressive as we think the Internet (along with all those other things we've created recently) is, it simply doesn't rise to the "magic" mark. We haven't come as far as we think we have - our prize creation isn't good enough.
But then, what is?
If you asked someone from c. 1500 A.D. what they might view as magic (depending on the region, "evidence of godliness" might be a safer way to ask), they could give a nice long list. Levitation. Locomotion without beasts of burden (although they wouldn't use those words). And, of course, light without fire. Some of the more imaginative folks might describe something similar to what was in Jewish folklore known as a Golem - a relatively unintelligent beast made from lifeless matter. You and I know them as robots.
So what is our list? What feats, to modern man, would be considered magic? Surely we're not so much less creative than our ancestors as to be unable to create myths of magical beings with magical powers analagous to those earlier ones.
Three-dimensional displays? Already have them (sort of). Interstellar travel? Boring. Faster-than-light travel? Impressive, but not magic. Telepathy? So you finally figured out how the human mind works, eh?
I contend that there is nothing - nothing - which could be accomplished, which would make the majority of humans invariably think "magic" (or, equivalently, "god"). Nor have the words "science" and "technology" simply become drop-in replacements. If you ask an average man on the street how a rocket works, they'll try to tell you. They'll likely be wrong, in whole or in part, but they'll know, at least, that there is an explanation, and that the feat could be duplicated by any man with sufficient knowledge. All very well - a stone-age man could do the same with their own technology. But if you then ask that same man how faster-than-light would work, he'll still try to tell you. Of course he'll be wrong, but he'll try. He'll know that there is an answer, and he'll understand the importance of finding it.
Sometime over the past few centuries, a great change came over the mind of the average human. We can't pin it down to any one time, but we do know that around the middle of this millenium, the average human not only was content with lacking any understanding of how their world worked, but also was largely unfamiliar with the idea that there was anything there to be understood. In modern times, everybody knows that there is something there to be understood, and although relatively few people do have what one might consider a sufficient understanding, each person nurses their own mental model of the universe, however faulty.
