"Any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from Magic"

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Basically, any advanced technology presented without the proper context would seem more "magical".

That's what Clarke said.

 

[Egg]

When it comes to culture, it's possible that there are remote peoples on Earth who would be amazed by our current technology and consider it magic. There might be a tribe of people who have never been exposed to a simple piece of modern technology such as a cigarette lighter or a cell phone, and may consider it magic. Some cultures incorporate magical thinking as part of their cultural identity far more than others, and such cultures would be more likely to jump to the conclusion "Magic!" more quickly than more technologically oriented cultures.

When someone does come to the "Magic!" conclusion, would you think that it's a kind of thinking dead end, as if that's enough of an explanation or are they just ascribing the phenomena to the best explanation they're aware of and that perhaps they'd think the tribe's witch-doctor/shaman would be able to figure out how it works and how to reproduce it? Kind of in the same way that if we saw some amazing gadget (like your egg) we might assume it had a chip in it.

In other words, to certain cultures, is magic considered as some kind of technology, as in being part of the universe with its own laws?

...I might think "Whoah! Magic egg!" ...

Yeah, I get that a lot!

 

[SOdhner]

I might think "Whoah! Magic egg!"

And the reason the saying seems valid to me is that if Person A said "whoa, magic egg!" and person B said "whoa, egg-shaped gadget!" there's a level of advancement imaginable where they wouldn't be able to determine who was right.

I would agree with the 'gadget' person since I feel confident that magic doesn't exist, and I could make a good argument for technology being the more PLAUSIBLE answer, but I can't really tell you a good way to distinguish between hypothetical super-advanced technology and hypothetical magic and even though I would find technology to be more plausible than magic I wouldn't find either of them particularly plausible compared to things I normally encounter, leading me to also weigh the option that I had lost my mind and was just holding an ordinary chicken egg and blathering on about magical aliens while my family phoned the doctor.