"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Larry Niven

I thought that was Arthur C. Clarke (RIP).

I agree with the basic argument of the post: magic is exciting because it's unattainable. The moment it became real and in mass-use, the novelty would wear off. I'm happily smitten with current and upcoming technology. One example: I still get sufficiently blown away when I think about the ramifications of a camera that captures *millions* of frames per second. I read about it 4-5 years ago. Forget 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, think about counting the moments passing in 25 million, 50 million, 75 million...
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=RSINAK000074000012005026000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes