Muggle Technology Wizardized?

[James Jameson]

Hi! I'm currently writing my story, (The Son of the Grim - link in siggy ) and I was wondering about Wizard and Muggle technology.

I was wondering if things like, iPods, TV, electricity, computers, etc could be Wizardized? For example, the Wizarding Wireless (radio). Could there be a WizPod, or a WV (wizard-vision), or anything like that?

[TheBlackSister]

Well, they do have radio. As for the other, I'd be careful, unless it's a Humor story you are writing. If it is Humor, then there are many creative and fun things you could do.

[LunarEclipse]

I agree with TheBlackSister. It could be very tricky to make these things un-comical, but it can be done. I think they diffinately could have things like that, and I would think that they would have T.V.s of some sort.

[lilyalways]

I don't think they would have Wizardised Muggle technology. They wouldn't need it. They have their own methods. And I don't see why would they need a television. There are no wizarding programmes to watch. I think you should be careful about introducing any Muggle technology.

[MaiaMadness]

I'm just going to quote something I said in another thread here on the Reference Desk ("Electronic devices in wizarding households").

I had this plot point I was going to bring into one of my fanficions about computers. It was an OC-centred fic placed at Hogwarts a couple of years after the end of the war.

In the story there was a Ravenclaw by name of Daniel Myugle (Muggle-born, of course) who was something of a computer freak. When he was going to start his first year, he lugged his enormous computer with spare parts of various kinds with him to Hogwarts, only to find that he couldn't use them, because electrical things don't work at Hogwarts. He was, of course, devestated, but vowed to spend the next seven years inventing a way to make computers work in the wizarding world.

In the end he was meant to figure out how to convert static magical energy into a powersource that could power a computer and set up a shop in Diagon Alley called E*Owl (which was to specify in computer technology for the practical wizard, including a type of Internet), but the story is currently discontinued until further notice (meaning I might pick it up in a year or two; Daniel's story was very interesting, but it wasn't the main plot, and the rest was rather tedious writing).

I find the idea of using magical energy in this manner very interesting. According to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created but only transferred. Therefore, something must happen to residue magic, after a spell's been cast, for instance. Wizards have magic, and magical creatures have magic, and I'm betting there's magic just floating around in the air, too. So, in theory it should be possible to harness this magic and use it to power things, such as computers and mobile phones.

Feel free to borrow this theory, but it would be nice if you'd credit me, should I ever decide to continue with my own story-line surrounding this.

[Flobberworm93]

That's a really interesting idea. Makes sense, too. *smacks self on head for not thinking of that before. But for James Jameson's fic, it might not work very well to invent a whole new type of technology. It would probably just distract/confuse the reader. So unless technology is actually important to the plot, I wouldn't go into too much detail about it.
As for canon technology, I remember JK saying in an interview somewhere that wizards are pretty behind technologically; we can see this demonstrated in the books as well (fellytone, anybody?). So I would be careful with using technology, unless it's actually important to the plot. If you just need something for a character to do in his/her spare time, then I would try a game or something

[Stubbornly_appeared]

I'd think that, eventually, wizards could get Muggle technologies magic-ised, if they wished to. They've got the wireless, and the camera. I just don't really see the need. If you have MAGIC, for Merlin's sake, why do you need phones?

Just my two Knuts.

[witch6]

I think wizardizing muggle technology is not very difficult. I mean, look at Mr. Weasely's car. He could make it fly. Similarly, i think it won't be difficult for a competent wizard to wizardize something. I feel that the reason wizards haven't wizardized much of muggle technology is that they don't know much about it (how many of them took muggle studies? Even if they did i doubt it was very useful because they were taught stuff like diagrams of muggles lifting things. I mean, how weird is that? as if wizards don't lift things) and that most of them are genuinely not interested. Though they have used the little that they know about muggle technology (telephone booth at Ministry's Visitors' Entrance- yes, they haven't exactly wizardized it but then they used the info to hide the entrance). Yeah, so I'd say go ahead wizardize whatever you want but just make sure that your character knows about the things if he has wizardized them. A muggleborn would help. Maybe you could show some muggle born starting this business of wizardized muggle appliances.