science and magic today

Interesting reading in the intro to Lapham's quarterly dealing this quarter with Magic shows.

" New philosophies call in doubt ; the more so as the accelerating rates of technological advance- celestial terrestrial and subliminal -overrun the frontiers between science magic and religion."
" The record also suggests that the advancement of our new and marvellous knowledge has been accompanied by a broad and popular retreat into the wilderness of smoke and mirrors.The fear of technological -nuclear biochemical and geneticx- gives rise to what John Donne presumably would have recognised as the uneasy reawakening of a medieval belief in magic. We see our new Atlantis inscribed on walls of silicon and glass ; the streaming data on an I-pad or a television screen lending itself more readily to a traffic in spells and incantations than to the distribution of reasoned argument "
"As in the 16 th century so again in the twentieth a gathering of forces both natural and supernatural in search of something new under the sun. The American Telephone and Telegraphic company undr-took to research and develop an evolving means of telecommunicationsand to that end established an" institute of. creative technologyx" on a 225-acre campus in Murray Hill New Jersey By 1942 recruiting nearly 9 thousand magi of various description ( engineers and chemists metalitgists and physicts) SET TO THE TASK OF TURNING SAND INTO LIGHT ; THE LIGHT INTO GOLD "

This the think-tank for the laser and transistor ; the Boolean algebra of the binary code that allows computers to speak to themselves....
My point is the new technology inspires unreason too and perhaps alien illusions as the magic unfolds in science. No news of alien observation before the technologigal age kicked in.