• Separation is the key to figuring out postmodern, and especially post-eschaton, economics.

History has been a bit like a salad dressing, a lot of oil and vinegar all mixed up. As we reach the end of history, the oil and vinegar begin the process of reaggregation. To a first approximation there will be two quasi-independent social systems, based on natural and artificial forms of magic, respectively. As things ‘progress’ well beyond any linear time frame, this differentiation will become more complex and robust. But always remember that all of this differentiation is occurring within a highly integrated totality. It just depends on one’s perspective.

‘Science’ is what you call magic when you don’t realize that it is magic. Magic is reality engineering. All reality is virtual reality. If God sneezes, the Earth will take a tumble. The cosmos is a bootstrap operation, as we suspend ourselves above the primordial experiential chaos. The primary bootstrap mechanism is love, and we are the apprentices in the cosmic shop.

The Anthropic Principle demonstrates that our world was designed backward or teleologically with the eschaton being the primary locus of creation. The eschatological role of the Internet, for example, places strong restrictions on the physical laws that we are still ‘discovering.’ The ‘Theory of Everything’ actually has a logical and teleological precedence over Newtonian Mechanics. Science is then just magic working backwards.

The magic of artifice will the logical successor of science. This will be the magic of the new sky people who will colonizing ‘space stations’ in the heavens, and they will not even need rocket ships to get there.

The rest of us will be reinventing the more traditional forms of magic and doing it in more natural, Earth-like settings. This will be the low tech form of magic. This need not be deja vu all over again. This life need not be nasty and brutish, if it ever really was. Nastiness will be largely optional.

It is in the virtual realities of cyberspace that much of the logistics of these future worlds will be worked out. The actual computers will just get forgotten and then lost along the way.

Ma Bell is just how we trick ourselves into a very focused form of telepathy. All of us will become more adept in psychic communication to the point that telephones and computers will be rendered superfluous. The manner of superceding present technology will depend on whether it is high or low tech magic that is the successor. All those wires and telephone poles are necessary, not to carry our voices, but to focus our thoughts on a global scale.

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rev. 4/2/97