Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Gehm’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced”.
Ponder Stibbons also stated that “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology”.
This is Dave Boyhan’s first real blog. Dave Boyhan is a first year student at ITP. Prior to this, he spent twenty years as a practicing corporate lawyer, primarily handling “techno-law” issues such as “e-discovery”, privacy law, information security, licensing, some intellectual property issues and the like. Any day at ITP is better than the very best day as “just” a lawyer. His wife is the most amazing tolerant woman in the world.