More recently, in California of the 1960's and 1970's, the early seeds were planted that defined the explosion of personal computers and the Internet into mainstream pop culture. An anecdotal tale of one of the first computer games written establishes an early connection between the 60's and 70's cultures of romantic escapist fantasy and the then nascent computer culture. As the story goes, the early version of the famous computer game Adventure was first written for the PDP-10 computer in 1972 by William Crowther during his research stint at the US Department Of Defense's ARPANET project. It is perhaps here that the connection between Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and computer culture was first established. Crowther recounts his then recent encounter with D&D, as the inspiration for Adventure, and incidentally inaugurated the definitive genre of computer adventure games. Today, we stereotypically associate socially awkward "geeks" with fantasy games like the pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons and the popular card game Magic. These same "geeks" in their pop-cultural perception often share a passion for computers, science and engineering. Speculation here may suggest a psychological correlation between adolescence, social awkwardness, escapist fantasy, and a dubiously close bond with a non-human entity that forms this archtypical personality.
One could say that technology operates to realize what was previously in the hypothetical realm of magic. There is definitely some connection in the way both magic and technology create a sense of wonder as they seem to expand upon the notions of what is or has been feasible in the realm of the real. The assessment that they are part of one and the same wonder is quite pervasive; just remember Sir Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." However the positioning of magic and technology as opposites is even more common. The official web site for the new magical/technological MMORPG Arcanum explains the relationship: "Magic and technology are opposites. Magic bends physical law to the will of the mage. Technology depends on physical law. And, in the fantasy world of Arcanum the use of technology reinforces physical law, countering the effect of magic." What is clear is that the desire for magic and magic-related fantasies frequently surfaces in arenas of the contemporary world purportedly based on scientific and rational principles. In his book TechGnosis, Erik Davis has provided ample evidence of this as he explores the new-age culture of techno-mysticism tracking many of the cybercultual impulses to mesh the digital with the magical.
Eddo Stern, "A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games"
