Curse

draxynnic · Aug 16, 2007, 04:45 AM // 04:45

That depends on just how widespread magic is. If a significant majority of the population can use magic, then technology does start becoming redundant. If magic is restricted to a few gifted (genetics, requiring years of study, or whatever) then technology does start to become attractive due to its accessability - anyone can learn to use a piece of technology (although with some requiring more training than others) without really understanding how it actually works, while magic traditionally requires someone special to use.

Technology is certainly likely to be impeded in a world with magic (as there may be certain jobs that are already being performed with magic so there isn't the impetus to develop technology for those functions, and because the study of magic will divert resources that may otherwise be going into developing technology) but it isn't going to halt it entirely. Even if the entire population is composed of accomplished magic-users, there's going to be the odd crackpot that tinkers what can be done without magic every so often, and every so often there's going to be some invention that means something that used to be done with magic doesn't require the expenditure of magical effort any more.

And that doesn't even go into the possibility of combining both... which is essentially what the Stone Summit has done by powering some of their technology with bound Flame Djinn.