
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.”
Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 30 (p. 435)
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.”
“Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.”
This is derived from the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There are other variants which had inverted this including one known as Gehm's corollary http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/cyc/l/law.htm, published several years earlier : "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." The earliest variant seems to be "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." It has been called "Niven's Law" and attributed to Larry Niven by some, and to Terry Pratchett by others, but without any citation of an original source in either case — the earliest occurrence yet located is an anonymous one in Keystone Folklore (1984) by the Pennsylvania Folklore Society.
Foundation's Fear (1997)
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”
Anonymous saying, this is an inversion of the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It has been attributed to Niven, and even called "Niven's Law" by some, and to Terry Pratchett by others, but without any citation of an original source in either case, and the earliest occurrence yet located is in Keystone Folklore (1984) by the Pennsylvania Folklore Society.
Misattributed
Source: An Erotic Beyond: Sade
“Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)
On Clarke's Laws
Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible
Short Fiction, Catch that Zeppelin! (1975)
From Hawking's article A Brief History of Relativity http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993018-6,00.html, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)
2006, 2006 International Qods Conference address
Source: The Other America (1962), Appendix, sct. 1