A wizard doesn't need to know the full physical, chemical and biological properties of a rabbit in order to create one with magic. He just needs to know about the magical process of transfiguration.

With that in mind, I'm not convinced that a wizard would need to know the inner workings of computer science and electrical engineering in order to cast a spell on the information inside a computer. The human mind is somewhat more complex than even our best current computers, and magic can be done with the information inside peoples' minds (obliviation, confundus, legilimency, Goblet of Fire). I don't see why computers should be somehow immune to magic when the mind is not.

In addition to this, we know that spells whose normal application is acting upon the human mind can be applied beyond that area. Consider fake Moody's confundus charm on the Goblet. The Goblet is an inanimate object, but the confundus charm worked on it.

Finally, we also know that magic can be used upon information held within inanimate objects such as books. Hermione cast a summoning charm that was capable of selecting just books with information about Horcruxes in, for example.

 

I prefer to think of electricity-run muggle objects as something of a danger to wizards and muggles both when magic gets involved. It adds for a far more interesting muggles versus wizards debate in the hands of a creative author.

Simplifying it, it's basically that magic cannot control electrical objects. It either short fuses them, or makes them go haywire, but in either case it never has the desired effect. We know from canon that electricity is incompatible with magic - it's one of the first things we learn about the wizarding world, and even things like the Ford Anglia can be explained into it (namely that an old Anglia's engine is mechanical, not electrical, and the Weasleys' likely doesn't run on petrol, so technically the magic involved is just moving metal bits instead of something running on an electrical current).

It just makes it more interesting if it's not a straightforward thing. A Deluminator would need to be used in a well-lit, CCTV-covered hallway to bypass the cameras, or conjuring something solid in front of it, because any other spell on the camera itself is impossible to predict the effects of. A missile with on-board navigation can't simply be Leviosa'd, because it's as likely to change the location, or keep on coming, as it is to manage to bypass that navigation.

So yeah. Basically I think it's a more interesting story if electricity and magic disrupt each other, rather than electricity being a few spells away from being just another thing. It isn't in canon, after all. Perhaps it's the very fact that magic applies in certain ways to physiological and/or inanimate objects - whereas electrical objects can be similar even while being completely different - that does it. You can search a book for information because it's physically represented somewhere within it. You can search a mind for it because it's mentally represented somewhere within it. You can't search a hard-drive because it's not represented in any way that magic can manipulate. You're as like to wipe the information you seek as anything.

I think they are simply, wholly incompatible.

 

Right. But that's shifting the debate somewhat into how we would write it if we were writing a fanfic in which magic upon electrical items played a significant role. The debate up 'til now was an argument over what we can infer from canon - what we think is the case in the canon universe (from an in-universe perspective). In the latter debate, what is more interesting (which is a subjective thing, anyway) doesn't really play much of a role.

 

Mmhmm, but electricity was brought up, and I was noting that what I find to be a more interesting spin on it doesn't actually conflict with canon. And that there's a difference that can fairly be brought into play between information in books, on hard-drives and in the mind - the lack of difference being what you latched onto in suspending the 'magic is incompatible with electricity in canon' point.

I'd also argue that no-matter how subjective, what we find to be more interesting is the entire driving force behind what we infer.

 

Canonically speaking, as far as we know, it's only Hogwarts that is incompatible with electricity, not magic in general. In GoF, for example, Mr. Weasley repairs the Dursleys' electric fireplace with magic.

 

The exact quote is;

The fireplace repair is a 'pulls all the parts back together' spell, from what we see, whereas what I'm implying with the above is that - while this is possible - a further spell couldn't turn it on. Whether magic works on electrical components which are turned off is separate - a Reparo! would work on an unpowered hard-drive, I'm sure. An Obliviate! would not.

 

Right, and Hogwarts is the only place we know of where this is true. It's certainly the case that the electrical items in the Dursley household didn't break when magic was used around them. Individual spells seem to have no anti-electrical affects. Hell, even Diagon Alley doesn't appear to affect Muggle London.

 

No effects on electricals in the Dursley household that we saw.

Pedantry aside, the keyword there is 'around'. Not 'on'. You're reasoning in the opposite direction to me - that Hogwarts is the only place we see (/ are told) magic effects electricity, therefore elsewhere it does not. I'm doing the opposite - there's so much magic in Hogwarts, it overspills into electrical objects without needing to be used on them. Elsewhere, magic used on electrics is as likely to disrupt it. Our individual conclusions are rendered obvious, thinking in the directions we are - 'there's too much magic in the air' makes it blatant to me that, as a fundamental rule, magic effects electricity in that way.

What's your opinion, inferring as you are, of magic being used in a place that has an abundance of electrical currents? An enormous server room or something? Would the same apply in reverse? I'm fairly sure I know the answer, but in addition, would the atmosphere in other entirely-magical areas - the Ministry, for example, for the amount of people using it, or St. Mungo's - effect electricity in the same way that Hogwarts does? Would an MP3 player work in Diagon Alley?

I'm just wondering how you're using Hogwarts as 'exception that proves the rule', because it makes no sense to me at all. Even to support a point x-amount of posts ago, which is that there's no difference between a hard-drive and a brain, to magic.

 

I'm not sure what was ambiguous at all, but okay. What I am saying is that magic only messes with electronics when it is a highly magical area. Hogwarts is one such highly magical area, and may be the only such place in the UK.

Maybe the Ministry and Diagon Alley also count as such areas, maybe not. The fact that Diagon Alley doesn't affect electronics that are less than 100 metres away, whereas Hogwarts affects electronics for miles around, seems to point towards not. But even if they did, that's somewhat off the point. The point is that it's highly magical areas that disrupt electronics, not spells.

Unless you want to say that the casting of a single spell turns a place into an area which has "too much magic in the air".

 

That's essentially it, yes. Reached because I treat it as something that can be concentrated in such a way - it's the spells that create and that are performed in such places that make them 'magical areas', after all.

I'm not sure how else a 'magical area' can effect electronics, if not by the magic itself.

 

Maybe, maybe not. It's not clear what "too much magic in the air" means.

It could be that it's a simple function of how much magic has been cast in that area over time. Like:

Magicalness = quantity of magic/time

That strikes me as somewhat too straightforward/Muggleish, though.

For a start, I think a great part of Hogwarts' magicalness is how old it is. I think if you were to transfer all of Hogwarts activities (and wards) to another site, even though the "magic per hour" was the same at that site, it would be a much less magical place.

But even that is too rational, I think. I'm reminded of Dumbledore's "Ah, music, a magic greater than any we teach here" comment in Philosopher's Stone. I think of the way in which Hogwarts is magical beyond simply the number of spells cast there. I don't think Hogwarts has "too much magic in the air" because of all the spells that have been cast there. I think it's a highly magical area because of the kind of place it is.

It seems to me that if a group of wizards were to apparate to a meaningless location every day for thousands of years and cast random purposeless spells there, that place would still be less of a magical place than, say, a wizarding family's home, even if the amount of magic used and the length of time it has been used for is less in the family home. Though the magic used in the family home is less, it is still a more magical place. It is a home for magical people.

Back to Hogwarts, I feel the same applies. When Hermione says that there's too much magic in the air at Hogwarts, she's saying it in an analogous way to how I might describe a visit to an amazing place as "magical". It's not a scientific function. It's the nature of the place. The history and romanticism of the castle. The fact that magical education goes on there. The traditions, all the people who have passed through with their emotions and plans and hopes and failures. The fact that colonies of magical creatures reside nearby. The fact that many wizards have lived there for a long time. The status the castle holds within magical society. All these things and more contribute towards Hogwarts being magical.

The Ministry? Nowhere near as magical. It's an administrative centre. Admin isn't very magical at all. I feel that the Weasley household is probably more of a magical place than the Ministry. With the exception perhaps of parts of the Department of Mysteries.

And as for the Dusleys house: I think you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere less magical. So long as the Dursleys lived there, I'd be willing to say that it would remain a place devoid of magicalness, regardless of what spells you cast there.

Tl;DR It's not at all obvious that "too much magic in the air" refers to spells being cast. And even if it did, where you draw the line is not at all clear. It's an enormous leap from "thousands of people casting spells for one thousand of years in one area" to "a single spell in a random location" having the same effect.

 

tl;dr coming up!

A more interesting question to me is: Can a wizard conjure a computer out of thin air? Let's assume that the wizard isn't simply making a duplicate of a computer that's already in front of him.

There is nothing in canon that disproves the idea that wizards can manipulate microprocessor technology. But to me the concept of doing that is inextricably linked to the ability to create said technology out of nothing. There will almost certainly be no laws of magic that forbid it (unless one of the exceptions to Gamp's law involves gold, but meh).

So what sort of computer would a wizard make, if you asked him to try? Would it be filled with real, brand name parts that are identical to those made by Muggles? Or would its hardware be totally unique? How would a computer conjured by a tech-savvy Muggle-born compare to a computer conjured by a Pure-blood who knows almost nothing about them? Would it run on electricity or magic? Most importantly, what sort of operating system and software would it run? The software is the part that is most divorced from the typical wizard's way of thinking, IMO.

***

Regarding the Summoning charm: I prefer thinking of it solely as a way to draw physical objects to the wizard. Without a software interface, gathering information from the internet is a more onerous concept than summoning information from a library of books. Have we ever seen a wizard "Accio" an answer to their research inquiry in a library, without knowing what book it's in? No, no we have not. They've summoned books, yes, but answers to queries, no. And it's too large a leap in capability for me to assume it's simply happening off in the background somewhere. Hermione would have been all over that shit.

And If I allow them to Summon information from computers, I have to think about all the other implications of wizard technology manipulation, like the above paragraphs. It gives me a headache. :facepalm Believe it or not, this is a question that I'd rather ask Rowling, because she'd just skip all of this nonsense that I'm thinking of right now, and the end result would still be workable.

If I had to write about such a scenario in fanfic, I would impose harsher limitations (as is my wont when thinking about HP magic). I would be happiest if you had to develop specialized spells for technology, which in turn required a basic understanding of how the devices work.

I prefer the idea of having some working knowledge and specialized spells as a prerequisite, because in some ways, a computer is more 'alien' than a rabbit or a human mind. Rabbits and humans are linked by the "magical" concept of being living things, and wizards who try creating one should have a rough culturally imprinted idea of what a rabbit is and does, IMO. Human minds are fantastically complex, but any wizard has at least a basic intrinsic understanding of them, since they have their own.

 

A wizard's computer wouldn't be anything like a muggle computer, except maybe in form. More likely than that is that some wizard eventually invents something that is very similar to a muggle computer, but doesn't require any of the parts that one relying on science requires. It's within the realms of plausibility for a wizard's computer to just be two flat panels for keyboard/monitor with lots of charms layered on them to simulate the effects of a muggle one.

It's possible that such specific casting would only be within the abilities of wizards like Voldemort or Dumbledore. Still, the method of casting the summoning charm is to visualise the object you want to summon then cast the spell, which suggests that finding unknown information is beyond the distinction of the spell. More likely though is that divination would be a much more useful branch of magic for this kind of spell, or something similar to legilimency.

You not understanding something doesn't make him wrong.

Magic doesn't work that way, otherwise you have a bunch of 16 year olds who know enough about the anatomy of some animals to qualify as vets.

I go the opposite route. Powerful wizards don't have a massive list of spells for every occasion, they just have the basic concepts in their mind of what they want the spell to do, then use the nearest they know and bend it to fit. Like how the spell Dumbledore used in his office during OotP could easily just have been a stunning charm cast by one of the most talented wizards ever.

tl;dr - Magic != Science. Go figure.

 

Who is the "him" in this case? I've never seen a full set of thoughts on the interactions between magic and technology written out by someone whose intellect I respect. For good reason: the end result would necessarily be nitpicky and full of hand-waving, and almost pointless except for use in fics that generally suck.

If you mean Taure, he's not wrong - his position is completely supportable with what's there in canon, if you want to go that route. I just don't like thinking about the implications of him being right. And to my knowledge he hasn't written them out either, for the aforementioned reason of such an exercise being pointless and silly. So I choose to use the vast leeway offered by canon to go down a somewhat different path.

I'd prefer a basic understanding, not a detailed anatomical (or machine code/circuit design) level of expertise.

For gathering data from the internet, I would make up a specialized spell designed by someone who knows the basics of what CPUs, RAM, and display hardware do, and how connected nodes query information from central servers, etc. The "effect" of the spell would be a computer gathering the desired information as if it was alive, but otherwise conforming to the basic rules of how a computer operates. Again, that's how I'd do it - it's just one of a multitude of ways that one could do it.

I prefer a mix. I want my powerful wizards to be far more versatile than ordinary wizards, when using completely ordinary spells. And I also like them to have some 'curveballs' in their repertoire.

 

I'm following these discussions and I'm not sure where people stand, so I thought I'd ask for clarification.

Hogwarts interferes with electronics because....

A. So many spells are cast over such an amount of time that reality is locally quite warped. [This would apply to the Ministry, St. Mungo's and any long-held magical estates, if so]

B. So many BAD spells are cast over such an amount of time, that the spillover waste of magic has settled into the area like radiation. Variant a: it's not just the bad spells but the hormonally-charged releases of accidental magic being held back that suffuse the area with electrokryptonite. [This would fit for any large magical school, if so]

C. Hogwarts was placed on a natural node- a place where magic collects in the world, making it ideal for more magical creatures to live and students to discover their powers, and that's why they went there. [Authorial fiat powers, activate!]

D. Hermione was only spouting what she read- it's really the obfuscation spells that mess up radio waves, and anything that operates without broadcasting and receiving would be just fine, thank you very much. [Favorite of Indy!Harry technomancer writers that want to confound Dumbledore with monster-busting beats, yo]

E. Most magic treats stray electrons as their bitch, so anything not running on high-voltage vacuum tubes is copper and silicon goulash. [I haven't read enough Dresden to say if this fits that model]

 

F. None of the above.

 

So, the idea is that we often are contemplating magic with a very modernist ideology. Magic isn't something that seemingly 'exists' in the real world as some sort of force, like heat or light or sound. We can't measure magic, if assuming Taure's theory that many of us have accepted as both interesting and potentially quite valid.

Magic itself is something that is simply 'change.' Hogwarts represents in many ways that essence of change. Consider the way Hogwarts is filled with Ghosts which you hardly see elsewhere; the way the stairs and walls and rooms move without warning; the way magical creatures are attracted to it and become great when they may not have otherwise (Aragog, the basilisk, and maybe even the Weasley's car). It's a place that has, for some reason, localized the essence of change. Perhaps it was that way BECAUSE of the school being there. Perhaps it is just one of those places, and there are more.

Either way, Hogwarts is different than other places because it has more 'magic-ness' than anywhere else. So, Hermione's statement that magic doesn't work at Hogwarts could very easily be the exception, not the rule.

On the matter of other magical areas that don't seem to affect muggle electronics, Taure already mentioned Diagon Alley, but I believe King's Cross is another good example. There is a magical portal there all year long, even if it isn't used constantly. Would that not affect the MANY electronics in a train station?

EDIT: I wanted to discuss the idea of knowledge being somehow important to the use of magic.

Many example have been approached, but I'd like to take up the case of Apparation.

Consider that human beings move themselves through space, perhaps at light speed or faster, without any knowledge of the way anatomy works or how matter might be transformed into pure energy. As modern thinkers, attempting to force magic into our Physics, it is often assumed that the matter/energy transfer must somehow be occurring; if it is, it is happening without the knowledge of the caster, so that knowledge is not at all necessary to the casting of the spell.

This can be generalized to other forms of magic. The many forms of transfiguration are a good example. While it is sometimes fun to read a fic in which Harry must imagine the transformation of that which he is transfiguring, that is certainly not canon.

Healing is another good example. Do you believe Tonks knows the complicated bone structure of Harry's nose well enough to heal it if that were necessary for the spell to succeed? She does not; no healer must necessarily know anything about the human body.

tl;dr: Magic is not a physical force, nor is it a mental projection. Magic is change in its essential form, and the use of magic is not predicated by any knowledge of the physical material that one is 'magic-ing.'

 

I think the simplest explanation is that if you take something clearly electrical to Hogwarts, Peeves will have his wicked way with it in some fashion - hence why, as far as we know, it's only Hogwarts that has this affect

 

Okay... so who is going to write the MagicalHacker!Harry that I'm now dying to read?

 

I actually tried writing something like that once a year or two ago. I never published it anywhere because halfway through the first chapter I went "screw it" and made it completely insane. By the time I made Harry use the sentence "Simple, we hack the internet" and steal a satellite with nuclear rockets to take out the basilisk and the chamber of secrets I began to wonder how in the blue hell Michael Bay had managed to take over my body and force me to write that.

...So yeah there's a very good reason that was never published anywhere.

Oh and uh, as far as the technology topic goes, I personally think that JK didn't give it much thought beyond "let's not have technology interfere with the story I'm trying to tell" and fanfic writers are free to pick whatever reason Hogwarts works the way it does with technology suits their story best. I'd love to see a fic about a completely ridiculous reason about why technology doesn't work in Hogwarts, like "There's a demon that EATS TECHNLOGY" or "it's infested with gremlins!"