We’re getting our heads around what’s turning out to be a pretty complex story for next week’s show: the effect of the Internet on the world of professional magic.
Here’s what we’re looking at as we round up guests and figure out how we’ll approach this:
Here’s a good example of the conflict: a Wikipedia mediation case file about whether or not magicians’ secrets should be kept safe for the good of the practice.
And a couple of sites that are dedicated to giving away David Blaine’s secrets can be found here and here.
Meanwhile, Jacob Loshin at Yale Law School has published a paper arguing that the world of magic provides a great example of how creativity can thrive in “grey areas” unprotected by Intellectual Property legislation. Here’s an abstract.
And finally, here is the Law & Magic Blog, dedicated to, well…
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Comments
I'm not a magician.
Well, I'm a computer consultant and many people I help consider what I do to be a form of magic. They consider computers to be "magic boxes", and people who understand how they work inside to be magicians.
Quite a bit of what we today call science was called magic or sorcery in the past.
I don't believe in keeping secrets in order to protect an industry. Magicians can always come up with new methods to trick our minds, and it seems to me to be a form of human progress to eventually understand old tricks, and to share and improve upon this knowledge.
I don't like things remaining as magic for long, and believe it is very sad that an increasing number of youth are getting more and more dependent on 'digital magic boxes' without taking adequate time to demystify the world that they will be left. What they don't know can hurt them.
Posted by: Russell McOrmond | October 27, 2007 12:56 PM
Spot-on comment from Mr. McOrmond. Cessation of growth and expansion is the first sign of the death process. Progress is built on the discarded shells of yesterday, as surely as calcium goes from a sea creature through a human and on through the chain.
Magic is microcosmic of any institution or function of learning. How lazy can you get?
Posted by: Dell Nidor | November 3, 2007 01:26 PM
I think the Internet is killing real life experience. We should all try to go offline for days at a time, get outside, read novels, cook, etc.
Posted by: Uncle Drew | November 15, 2007 05:46 AM
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