I’ve been catching up on my blog reading recently, and was bemusedly struck by an article available via O’Reilly Radar. The article comments on the fact that Gates & Jobs (and others?) have been using the terms “magic” and “magical” to describe the new products coming out.

Jimmy Guterman, the author, guesses that it’s probably a marketing ploy to add some effervescent “wow” quality to software that is probably already useful. I think he’s probably right; it’s all marketing. However, from the user’s perspective, I think code-smiths are viewed as magicians. As the over-quoted Arthur C. Clarke saying goes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Users, for whom the inner workings of a computer are as black-boxed as the inner workings of the Hubble Telescope, view what we do as magical.

From a direct-end-user-support viewpoint, users perceive problems in such a way that minute, digital gremlins could be as likely a cause of the problem as, say, an incorrect password. If it doesn’t work, it’s a nasty hex upon them. If it gets fixed, we are like unto some voodoo priest exorcising the demons. For them, it might as well be magic!

Just don’t get burned at the stake for it. :)

-sean