Whether you view a new fangled technology as &quot;magic&quot; depends on if you understand how it works. Scientists in the 1800s knew much about electricity, combustion, etc well before a &quot;19th century rube&quot;:<p><i>Our 19th Century rube would fail to recognize cars&#x2F;trucks, airplanes, helicopters, and rockets; radio, and television (the telephone was 1875, so just missed this one); toasters, blenders, and electric ranges. Also unknown to the world of 1885 are inventions like radar, nuclear fission, and atomic bombs. The list could go on. Daily life would have undergone so many changes that the old timer would be pretty bewildered, I imagine. It would appear as if the world had blossomed with magic: voices from afar; miniature people dancing in a little picture box; zooming along wide, hard, flat roads at unimaginable speeds—much faster than when uncle Billy’s horse got into the cayenne pepper. The list of “magic” devices would seem to be innumerable.</i><p>Similarly the perspective of the average 21st century &quot;rube&quot; (though likely to be better educated than his 19th century counterpart) has little understanding of computing or networking, or genome sequencing etc.<p>Growing up in the 90s reading Bruce Coville&#x27;s &quot;my teacher is an alien&quot; series, I remember being awed by the description of a &quot;universal translator&quot; device gifted by aliens to the main character. Yet within 20 years, everyone I know has a much more capable version of that device in their pocket.<p>The author obviously has a right to his opinions, but it&#x27;s clear that this article is just that: an opinion piece. Since he&#x27;s a physicist, his perspective might be somewhat muddled by the place of science in technological progress:<p>Science &gt; Engineering &gt; Market Adoption<p>Today&#x27;s scientists are discovering things that tomorrow&#x27;s  engineers will turn into technologies that day after tomorrow&#x27;s entrepreneurs will consumerize. It&#x27;s worked this way throughout history, and yes, it&#x27;s faster now than ever before.