Published June 07, 2000
Not so long ago, a MIT computer-science student noticed an unfamiliar switch glued to a nearly hidden recess of the computer console. It was obvious that someone had added it, perhaps another student.
All mainframe computer trainees are cautioned not to change the position of unfamiliar switches, to prevent the possibility of inadvertently crashing the computer. But being curious, he examined it more closely.
The foreign switch had two positions. Scrawled in pencil on its metal enclosure were these words: “magic” and “more magic.” The toggle was in the “more magic” position!
Amusing to be sure, this was obviously somebody’s concealed joke. Upon closer inspection, two computer hackers—not crackers—discovered that a single wire did indeed merge into a cable harness, blending with countless other wires within the console.
Basic electricity dictates that at least two wires must be used to complete a circuit, so this switch, they concluded, is inoperative. Expecting nothing to happen, the mutually reassured students flipped the switch. At that instant the mainframe computer crashed, all operations abruptly stopped.
OOPS. Stunned and astonished, they conjectured this shared phenomenon must have been a coincidence. Nevertheless, they superstitiously restored the switch to the “more magic” position before restarting the system.
About a year later, a colleague was told about this improbable fable. Together they located the same switch still in the “more magic” position. They traced the single wire through the labyrinth of circuits to an electrically neutral grounding post. There was no voltage on the wire, thus it had no affect upon anything. Assured of this, they flipped the switch to “magic,” and again the computer promptly crashed.
A forth MIT hacker, much more familiar with these things, inspected the concealed switch. He concluded also that it was inconsequential and efficiently removed it. The computer was revived and has operated without further incident. The magic switch would remain a mystery.
The MIT graduate still has that switch. It is kept in its own cigar box in his basement—left in the “more magic” position!
Magic, is defined by Eric Raymond’s The Jargon File, as “adj. The yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain.” Arthur C. Clarke states that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
To the lesser informed, those who are knowledgeable are regarded wizards and voodooist. As knowledge replaces superstition, mysteries become explainable; and the spector of awe is a little less. And yet perpetual new discoveries give birth to new amazements regarded as magical on the edge of the unexplained.
From the technical insider’s perspective, here are hacker definitions of terms on this subject:
Wizard is “n. Transitively, a person who possesses sufficient detailed knowledge of a complex piece of software or hardware sufficient to find and fix mistakes (bugs) quickly. An extremely high-level hacker.” A Unix Wizard is a well established job title used at some corporations and by headhunters.
Way back when a computer was the size of a grocery store, the computer guy, who was neither understood nor approachable, made it all work. A select few like him maintained the legacy machines that were awkward, complex and expensive. Big businesses still use them. The programming was endlessly patched over the years, a management decision more economical in the short term than replacing it. The result is a mutant dinosaur that no one person really knows. A recent event example is the Y2K bug.
Black magic is “adj. Characteristic of something that works but no one really understands why.” An example is electricity. If all things were explainable, all would be boring. Black art is “n. A collection of arcane, unpublished and mostly one-of-a-kind techniques used for a particular application or system.”
Deep Magic is “n. An awesomely arcane—there’s that word again—technique central to a program or system, neither generally published nor available, that could only have been composed by a wizard.” Historical examples included cryptography techniques, graphics, signal processing, operating systems design and compiler optimization techniques. Synthetic Intelligence (formerly AI) still is deep magic.
Heavy Wizardry is “n. Design or code that calls upon a particularly intimate knowledge or experience of a complex interface.” This is distinguished from deep magic which requires more mysterious theoretical knowledge eluding explanation or comprehension.
Voodoo Programming is “n. The use by guess of an obscure or hairy system that one does not truly understand. The implication is that the technique may not work, and if it doesn’t, no one will ever know why. A modern example for which millions of dollars were spent and no one can be blamed is George Bush’s voodoo economics.
As theory developed, black art gave way to deep magic. In turn, after standard textbooks were published, deep magic melted into mere heavy wizardry. The proliferation of computer related technologies via the Internet and other channels in the past two decades lessened the mystique to just voodoo programming.
Rain Dance is “n. Any essentially ceremonial action performed to demonstrate correcting a computer problem, with the expectation that nothing will be accomplished. This is usually restricted to rituals that include both incantations and physical motion.” A similar display is to Wave a Dead Chicken, “v. A ritual that is believed to be futile but necessary for the satisfaction of others that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended.”
Hackers, like ordinary people, tend to invent definitions that label the undefinable, a way of making sense of seeming nonsense that may or may not have purpose.
Oh! In the years since the magic switch removal, a repair technician measured a slight difference in electrical potential between the point where the wire had been attached and to the console where the switch had been affixed. Others have conjectured that the metal switch did connect the two near-zero voltages causing the computer’s sensitive circuits to be disrupted. But for those who prefer it was magic, this supposition has not been validated.