[In response to:
In 1992 you can have two wizards fight in the middle of the street, and reports of that dismissed as obviously bogus. In 2012, someone is going to streaming it live to Qik as five other people make phone calls and three other people tweet it. At that point, ignoring it requires pretending it's a very complicated hoax. ]
Magic and electronics don't mix. When wizards fight in the middle of the street everyone attempting to record it will be disappointed, the exception being if they're at a great distance with an impressive zoom. If they can be outside of the EM disruption field caused by the greater than normal release of magical energy but still have a line of sight, have a decent zoom and have a steady hand, then they can get it on tape. But when that happens you're unlikely to get more than a single recording, which means that it can still be dismissed as a hoax, especially if the way things look when wizards fight isn't too far from how we'd expect a hoaxer with access to computer effects software to fake them to look.
And that will be my explanation until I think of something better.
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That's how it works in the Dresden Files. People have difficulty even getting X-rays of Harry Dresden, and he can't drive a car made after WWII without the electronics in it constantly burning out. Plus there is actually a cabal (or two, or more) of supernatural entities interested in keeping people ignorant of the Horrible Truth, and they have _mind control_, so yeah, it's a pretty well protected masquerade.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the game Arcanum, whereby magic played havoc with various physical constants - in a magical field, a pendulum would swing erratically, magnetic fields would fluctuate wildly, and even frictional forces would be erratic, making it very hard to use any reasonably complicated technology in the presence of strong magic. This kind of make sense - imagine trying to create electronics when you couldn't rely on the charge of an electron remaining constant. On the other hand, it worked the other way, too - strong technology would "reinforce" physical laws, making magic more difficult. I'm not a fan of this particular bit, as it seems to make technology just another, different type of magic.