Table Of Content"Richard Stivers is among the world's sharpest analysts and critics
of the role of technology in society. In this book, he adds a fasci
nating exploration of how technologies—particularly those of
advertising and television—have been able to penetrate the human
psyche and to create an authority, believability, and power that
border on the spiritual or magical. No one has made such a brilliant
analysis of this tendency before, and Stivers is utterly convincing.
He demonstrates along the way the profound social and political
consequences of this psychic sleight of hand. For anyone interested
in systematic analyses of technology or in the hidden techniques
behind the powers of mass media and advertising, this book is
absolutely a must."
—Jerry Mander, author of In the Absence of the Sacred and
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
T e c h n o l o gy
as M a g ic
The Triumph of
the Irrational
Richard Stivers
CONTINUUM • NEW YORK
2001
The Continuum Publishing Company
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Copyright © 1999 by Richard Stivers
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the written permission of
The Continuum Publishing Company.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Stivers, Richard.
Technology as magic : the triumph of the irrational / Richard
Stivers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 213) and index.
ISBN 0-8264-1211-4 (hdb) ISBN 0-8264-1367-6 (pbk)
1. Technology—Social aspects. 2. Magic—Social aspects.
3. Civilization, Modern—1950- I. Title.
HM846.S75 1999
306.4—dc21 99-27444
CIP
To
My Wife Janet
Acknowledgments
Once again I am indebted to the Earhart Foundation for a fellow
ship research grant that enabled me to write this book. Special
thanks go to Moody Simms, friend and colleague, who read the
entire manuscript, and to friend and colleague Wib Leonard, who
read part of it. They made me rethink my arguments at times.
Frank Oveis, publishing director of Continuum, has been a plea
sure to work with. I have never had a better experience with a
publisher. Conversations with Kim Goudreau, Jim Van der Laan,
and Rachelle Stivers proved valuable. Others who helped include:
Anne Wortham, Andrew Kimbrell, Richard Payne, Clay Morgan,
Pat Walsh, Christine Gruber, Sharon Foiles, Jo Anne Geigner,
Nancy Russell, Matt Weber, Michael Stivers, Mark Stivers, and
Janet Stivers.
Introduction: The Paradox of
Technology and Magic
And since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself
with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and
sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a
rebel
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
The most widespread and pernicious form of modern superstition lies
not with a too ready acceptance of mysterious relationships, nor with
an appeal to quasi-science, but entirely within the sphere of purely
rational thinking and confidence in true science and technology.
Johan Huizinga
In the Shadow of Tomorrow
A
re there more seeming opposites than technology and magic?
Technology works objectively and is usually efficacious,
whereas magic, based on superstition, seems to be ineffective. The
former is perceived to be rational and is associated with a scien
tific outlook; the latter is seen to be irrational and is associated
with a religious sensibility. But, as I will argue, our expectations
for technology have become magical and our use of it is increas
ingly irrational. Magic in turn has acquired a rational facade and
is used like technology for purposes of efficiency. In short, tech
nology and magic, while separate and distinct categories in some
abstract sense, are now related to one another in such a way that
each has acquired important characteristics of the other.
2 TECHNOLOGY AS MAGIC
Magic begins historically in the attempt to influence nature,
which was experienced as sacred. How can we harness the power
of nature, to make it work for us? In prehistoric times humans
participated with the rest of nature in the re-creation or renewal
of nature. Magic represented an attempt to persuade nature to act
in the best interest of humans. Today, however, technology is per
ceived to be a force greater than that of nature, for it is successfully
used to exploit the resources of nature and to re-create nature. If
the sacred is ultimately that which is experienced as absolutely
powerful, then it was inevitable that technology would replace
nature as the object of tacit veneration. There is a world of differ
ence between nature and technology, however, for the latter is our
own creation. To harness the sacred power of technology means
to extend its reach over all of life; nothing can be excluded. But
not all of human existence is so readily subject to technology.
Law and morality still place some constraints, which are rapidly
weakening, however, on the technological manipulation of hu
mans. Witness the debates on medical experiments on human
subjects and the police use of electronic surveillance. The psycho
logical and administrative control of humans (advertising, man
agement, and self-help, for example) is not genuinely technical,
for it requires human belief and participation to be effective. It is
here that contemporary magic flourishes. Passing itself off as a
kind of technology (as an objective process), but not formally rec
ognized as such, psychological and administrative magic is al
lowed to cross the moral and legal boundaries that technology is
still not permitted to pass. In the past century magic has come to
imitate technology, acting to fill the gap that technology cannot—
the psychological manipulation of humans. Technology, then, ex
tends its control over human society by the magical control of
human beings.
Magic, as Marcel Mauss noted, is about wish fulfillment.1 Magic
arises in the hiatus between the wish and its fulfillment. Magic
represents the childish dimension of human existence that adult
hood does not fully suppress. We wish for things, but reality
intrudes upon our fantasies and frustrates their realization. Magic
offers a way of influencing the desired outcome. Magic establishes
a symbolic link between the magical practice and the desired
