[jszymborski]

I find it at the very least a little ironic that the author used consumer technology to simulate magic abilities (to such an immersive state that he had to put a low-horror mode) and uses his success in this department as an argument that consumer technology doesn't very closely convey the feeling of magic.

I appreciate the argument being made, but I can't say that I accept the premise that (sufficiently advanced) consumer technology is often unlike magic.

Hell, just sending out an invisible beam of light towards a magic black box so that it can remotely open up a window to a lands that may or may not exist is an awfully cool reality to hide behind the rather normal sounding acronym "TV", and that's hardly cutting edge technology.

[derefr]

He was talking specifically about the feeling of doing magic, not the feeling of experiencing magic being done. He's interpreting "X feels like magic" as "X feels like being a wizard." Playing a VR game doesn't feel like being a wizard; it just feels like having a spell cast on you.

[kybernetikos]

There is something in the fact that consumer products often try to 'get out of the way'. So yes, the way it actually works is extremely magical, but it manages to hide it so well that people don't really think about it. The fact that the remote controls the TV is just a fact of life and the way the world works, while how to stop the radio from bleeping every night at midnight, that is magical.