it's not just a question of beholdenness or privilege - the real distinction between technology-as-magic and social-engineering-as-magic is how the bill for you

it's not just a question of beholdenness or privilege - the real distinction between technology-as-magic and social-engineering-as-magic is how the bill for your force multiplication is paid. if you manipulate/organise people into doing things for you you have definitely achieved some sort of leverage, but there's no real feeling of magic because you know that at the bottom of the pyramid, other human beings have had to put the work in. what makes magic magic is that the forces you manipulate and control come for "free" - not in the sense that you don't have to do any work to access them, but in the sense that any output over and above your input is drawn from some more fundamental reservoir of universal energy.