A functional cloak of invisibility ? what?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 192394



John:
> Hi everyone.
> 
> As Clarkes Third Law states....
> 
> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
> 
> This statement is also probably reversible, but I have yet to witness any indisputably genuine advanced magic and so cannot be sure this is the case. :o)


Pippin:
::waves to all the new posters:: welcome!

Ah, but there is genuinely advanced magic in the Potterverse, and so for the purposes of testing Clark's law and your proposed corollary,  we may regard Rowling's work as a thought experiment. 

We see that Muggles, and even Wizards on occasion, have difficulty in distinguishing Muggle technology from magic, in fact the whole premise of Wizarding Secrecy is that magic must at all times be indistinguishable by Muggles. 

But we also see that technological advancement is not particularly relevant to Muggles in  making the distinction. Clark's Third Law neglects the far more important roles of context and social norms. 

Vernon does not see Dudley's Playstation as magical, though, for its day, it is frightfully advanced. (The more so as JKR is a bit confused with her timeline, LOL) It might as well be powered by mysterious forces for all that someone like Vernon could tell you how it actually works. But that doesn't bother him. Playstations are "normal". 

OTOH, Vernon locks up Harry's  robes along with his spellbooks, wand and other devices, though the robes are low tech and  display no magical properties whatever. They come from the wizarding world,  and therefore they must be dangerous, even though he knows that "normal" people do occasionally dress up in funny clothes. 

 In the seventh book, Vernon doesn't realize that the collapsed bridge and devastated towns he hears about on the news are *not* normal, although the magic required to do this was highly advanced, far beyond anything Harry could have managed at the age when he was dreaming of flying motorcycles and blowing up Aunt Marge. 

  Wizards do indeed have a technology of their own: the wands, spells, broomsticks and other  "means of exploiting resources in order to obtain a result" . And this technology can be considered advanced if  it produces more results with the same resources or the same results with fewer resources. Harry's Nimbus 2000 is an advance in technology, as  is the Prince's book. 

Wizards also have a resource which Muggles do not. This resource is  also, confusingly,  called "magic" in the books: the innate ability of wizards and others  to make "things happen" as Hagrid puts it.  

We have a case in which the result obtained by a technological advance in magic is attributed instead to the innate  ability of the wizard-- when Snape denies that Harry's success in potions could be the result of good training, Slughorn assumes that it's due to "natural ability".  Truth is, it's all down to Snape's improved techniques. In this case, then, Clark's Third Law is confirmed. 

It's interesting that Slughorn never even suspects that improved technique could be the cause. I think wizards have a bias against technical innovations except perhaps in their games and sports -- and the wizard who gets an improved result because he's magically powerful gets more respect than the one who develops a better method. This might be why Snape seems to have kept his potion-making improvements secret instead of taking credit for them at the time.

It's interesting also that Snape keeps trying to tell both Harry and  Neville, not very nicely, that  their potion failures are due to mistakes in technique, while they both miss the point and  think it's all because they're   not magical enough. On the other hand,
Harry's failure to learn Occlumency is, according to JKR, the result of a genuine lack of ability, while Snape insists that Harry fails because he is refusing to practice the technique (he is, but only because it doesn't work for him.)

So, to get back to your point, if we did make a functional invisibility cloak sooner than we think possible, but   by "normal" means (a big budget research lab, or a tinkerer in a garage), it's unlikely, on the evidence of Rowling's thought experiment,  that anyone would think it was magical. If it was presented to us by someone claiming to be a wizard, we'd probably think it was a fraud, unless social norms altered towards the acceptance of magic.

Pippin