Modern History Project

"A little learning is a
dangerous thing"

"The 'MyMagic' program, which will roll out this spring [at Disney World], combines an interactive website and mobile app with an all-purpose electronic bracelet that acts as a guest's room key, theme-park ticket and payment account all rolled into one. The bracelets, dubbed 'MagicBands', will also track which rides visitors use, which 'characters' they interact with, where they go and what they buy within the park. The bracelets monitor behavior with radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, a wireless tracking system that transfers data from tiny tags attached to objects [sic]."

-- International Business Times

In this case, the objects being magically tracked are the park visitors themselves, like any other herd of cattle. But what does the "magic kingdom" truly represent and what do the magicians believe?

"There is a potent and real Magic, popular exaggerations of which are actually below the truth. There is a formidable secret which constitutes the fatal science of good and evil which confers on man powers apparently super-human. It is the traditional science of the secrets of Nature which has been transmitted to us from the Magi. Initiation therein gives empire over souls to the sage and full capacity for ruling human wills. Arising apparently from this science, there is one infallible. indefectible and truly [universal] religion which has always existed in the world, but it is unadapted for the multitude.... It is Magic alone which imparts true science."

-- Arthur E. Waite, preface to "The History of Magic", 1922