SIVACRACY.NET

danah boyd
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
March 28, 2007

[This is a rough crib of the actual talk.]

Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. "Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life." O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, CA. March 28.

INTRODUCTION

Good morning! Thank you for waking up at this ungodly hour to join me. As you know, the theme of Etech this year is 'magic' and i intend to take this up during my talk entitled "Incantations for Muggles." For those who are unfamiliar with Harry Potter, shame on you - Harry Potter is read by more people than BoingBoing and Digg combined.

The term "muggle" comes from the magical world of Harry Potter - it refers to those who are not wizards. While wizards have magic in their blood, muggles are unable to perform magic and, in most cases, are unaware of the magic being performed around them. While Harry Potter is written from the perspective of the wizards, only the most wretched characters are pureblood fanatics. For example, some of the followers of the Man Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned seek out muggles and kill them for pleasure. Meanwhile, in muggle land, only the fools and idiots detest the wizards and all that they represent; this is best represented by the Dursleys. The most beloved characters have much more empathy for one another, seeking to understand the differences and find common ground.

The title of my talk today is intentionally unclear. Who are the wizards and who are the muggles? From a techno-elite perspective, it's easy to strut our feathers, celebrate our wizardry, and mock those who don't understand what it is that we do. We can descend into the darkest spaces of the elite, but do we really want to be that hedonistic and eeeee-vil? In the Harry Potter series, our beloved hero is just a child, trying to understand the powers that he has been given without asking so that he may do well by the world, not just the land of wizards. What powers do we have? What is our responsibility in acquiring this much magic?

This title can also be turned on its head. Perhaps we are not the wizards, but the muggles. As we Twitter our way to friendship, scoring ourselves based on the numbers of 'friends' we can convince to subscribe to our existence, perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean. We are so enamored by the technology that we think that is the magic upon which all life subsists. What if we build mirages instead of magic? The humanist in me believes that it is the invisible strands of love and compassion flowing through the ether that make up wizardry. Perhaps the magic is not in the technology, but in the practices that emerge from the seedlings we put out into the world? Perhaps our technologies are nothing more than pitiful efforts to replicate the magic that we do not fully understand.