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It's actually one of Arthur C Clarke's "laws."
Sorry but I've got to "well actually" this one though. Happipy, it's a simple misunderstanding. _The quote is from the perspective of the uneducated observer. _ To the one who understands the technology, sure there's absolutely a difference. But if I were to go back to ancient Rome and somehow facetime someone from what appeared to be a polished stone, it'd absolutely be considered magic. Even if I fully understood the difference. (Most limitations would be explained away as most magic in stories has limitations or rules, a wizard using a staff or needing ingredients etc.)
Understood - what I'm saying though is that it's a bad quote. It doesn't convey that it's indistinguishable only to people who don't know any better, it just says that it's indistinguishable, which again is objectively not correct. The cell phone in ancient Rome would absolutely be considered magic... in error, by people who don't understand what they're seeing; and limitations on magic doesn't make it suddenly not magic - just cuz some fiction establishes that you need a newt eye, 2 raccoon penises, and a 1/2 cup of sugar to summon a magma demon doesn't mean it wouldn't be creating a ton of energy and matter.
I could say a spruce and a pine are indistinguishable just because my dumb ass doesn't know the difference - but I'd be wrong.
Indistinguishable doesn't mean identical. It just means that the observer cannot tell the difference.
The observer being the one who doesn't know it is technology is implied by the quote.
Sometimes brevity is much better than a lot of explanation. To add in a fairly obvious point about this being for the uneducated observer would make it twice as long.
Edit: To reinforce that it's the observer, imagine how silly the quote would have been were it to reference all parties. Like, the person who understands that it is tech is going "oooooh, magic!"
I always interpreted Clarke's Law as first fixing an observer.
Then there exist technologies that are sufficiently advanced that the observer can only understand as magic.
Obviously someone had to understand it to make it in the first place, but there are (or will be) even more advanced technologies that that someone couldn't understand either.
There's two parts to it.
First of all, a lot of technology is doing straight up wizard shit. Fire in the palm of your hand? Carriages that travel without horse or driver? A house that obeys your commands by itself? A mirror you can speak into and another being can hear your words? This shit WAS magic.
Secondly, what counts as indistinguishable is based on our ability to distinguish things. To an omniscient 3rd party, they can see everything and notice what obeys physics and what does not. But for a long time, we couldn't tell between bacteria and curses, or between head pressure and demons.
So a 15th century bumpkin could not hope to distinguish between our technology and straight up magic. And there will be future tech to which we are not unlike that bumpkin ourselves.
What if the demon is actually an interdimensional traveller and the newt eye is the biometric lock to operate the portal device?
You're coming at it from the perspective of somebody who does understand the technology, which is not what the quote is about.
Then it would be technology, and not magic. We can what-if new criteria all day long and assign the results to whatever category it would belong to under those criteria, but the two will always be definitively distinct.
...which is why I dislike the quote - it doesn't actually convey any kind of limited scope, it just -incorrectly- says the two are indistinguishable. And anecdotally, every time I see that quote dropped in a discussion about tech or fiction, it's never done with any nod to a limited observer; it's used as a justification to conclude that the two are the same thing.
And idk why it rubs me the wrong way so hard, but it's become a pet peeve.