Arthur C Clarke famously wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic – but magician Tom Webb (also known as Tom London) sees it the other way around. “What people don’t realise is any sufficiently deceptive magic is indistinguishable from technology,” he says. “So with a little bit of magic, you can make people believe that technology is better than it really is.”
Webb, 26, puts technology at the centre of his stage shows. In one of his tricks, he asks an Amazon Echo to guess which playing card a volunteer has picked; another takes the classic “three-card Monte” – a sleight-of-hand trick in which three cards appear to switch places – and performs it using drones. “People aren’t thinking, ‘How did he put it up his sleeve?’” he says. “They’re thinking, ‘How the hell did that drone switch cards without fingers?’”
Technology and magic have long walked hand in hand. Webb is inspired by the likes of modern illusionist Marco Tempest, but also by some of the earliest magicians, who made spectacles out of then-new discoveries. French conjurer Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, considered the father of modern magic, stunned audiences in the 1800s by making a box light enough for a child to carry, but too heavy for a man to lift. Key to the trick was an electromagnet under the floor: the box contained a metal weight, and Robert-Houdin simply flipped the switch to hold it fast. “Back then, magicians pushed technology forward and the things they were doing inspired inventors,” Webb says.
Working with his team, Webb starts with an idea – for instance, what if Alexa could read your mind? – and together they build the hardware and software to make it happen. He’s worked with Microsoft, IBM and Samsung to design shows around their products, and in 2017 he impressed America’s Got Talent judges by controlling the audience’s phones. He calls this “hacker simulation” – the effect of a hack without breaching any systems.
Using technology live can be risky; Webb “debugs” his tricks before they are ready to perform, but he says that the key to pulling them off is more about employing the traditional magician’s tools of deception and charisma. “I’m not an AI expert,” he says, “but I am a people expert.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
