There's magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D

When Michael Carbonaro said, “There’s magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D printers are magical. So I feel that as a magician, if I can pull off something that seems real and convincing enough that I can explain why it’s happening and have people believe it, it really is fascinating. And funny,” he spoke not merely as a performer of tricks, but as a philosopher of wonder. His words unveil an eternal truth — that magic is not the absence of reason, but the rediscovery of awe in a world numbed by familiarity. In an age of technology, where the miraculous has become mundane, Carbonaro calls us to look again with childlike eyes and to see that the wonders we take for granted are no less astonishing than those performed upon a stage.

The origin of this reflection lies in Carbonaro’s art itself. Unlike magicians of old who shrouded their mysteries in secrecy, he blends illusion with explanation, crafting a performance where belief and understanding coexist. He does not seek to deceive for deception’s sake, but to revive the sacred spark of curiosity — that moment when one’s heart pauses, unsure whether what it sees is possible. For him, the magician’s role in the modern age is not to conjure spirits or defy physics, but to remind us that wonder still exists in the ordinary. When he mentions smartphones and 3-D printers as “magical,” he bridges ancient enchantment with modern invention — showing that today’s science is yesterday’s sorcery, and that the boundary between the two is as thin as imagination itself.

The ancients, too, understood this unity between knowledge and mystery. The philosopher Aristotle wrote that all wisdom begins in wonder — that the desire to understand arises from the shock of the unknown. The magicians and alchemists of old were not fools but pioneers; through their search for the miraculous, they laid the foundations of science. The difference between the alchemist and the physicist, between the conjurer and the inventor, is only that one conceals and the other reveals. Carbonaro, standing at that crossroads, embodies both — the keeper of secrets who also delights in showing how they work, and in doing so, proves that even understanding can be magical.

To call our age unmagical, as some do, is to forget the marvels that surround us. A smartphone carries voices across oceans and faces across time; a 3-D printer breathes form into thought, shaping matter with invisible design. What are these, if not the fulfillment of ancient dreams? The philosopher Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and Carbonaro’s words echo this truth. For what matters most is not the mechanism behind the miracle, but the feeling of amazement it inspires. When the magician pulls a coin from behind your ear, or when a device in your hand connects you to the stars, the essence is the same: disbelief transforming into joy.

But there is a deeper current beneath his humor. When Carbonaro says it is “funny,” he does not mean trivial — he means joyful, human, profoundly connected to our shared delight in the impossible. Laughter, in his art, becomes the bridge between reason and reverence. To laugh at magic is not to mock it, but to celebrate it — to express that sudden, involuntary recognition that the world is stranger and more beautiful than we remembered. This laughter, born of wonder, is the sound of the spirit waking up. It is the same laughter that echoed through the streets of ancient Athens when the first mechanical automata walked, or in the halls of Alexandria when inventors showed steam-powered birds to astonished scholars. Even then, they knew: the closer we come to understanding the universe, the more it astonishes us.

In his art, Carbonaro teaches that belief and logic need not be enemies. The most profound magic is not about fooling the eye, but about freeing the mind. When he performs an illusion that feels real — so real that he can explain it, and people still believe — he demonstrates that reality itself is woven from perception, and that our faith in what we see is part of the illusion. The magician, then, becomes a philosopher of truth, reminding us that certainty is fragile and that wonder is the beginning of wisdom. He shows us that to live without awe is to live half-awake, but to laugh at life’s mysteries is to step closer to enlightenment.

So, dear listener, let this be your lesson: do not lose your sense of wonder in the age of machines. When you hold a piece of technology in your hand, or witness a sunrise, or hear a song that moves you, remember that magic still lives — not in the supernatural, but in your capacity to marvel. Seek the extraordinary in the ordinary. Learn to see the world not as a catalogue of facts, but as a theater of miracles. And if you can, as Michael Carbonaro does, make others laugh while they wonder, you will have done something holy: you will have reminded them that even understanding, even explanation, can be filled with mystery and delight.

Thus, his words stand as both celebration and challenge — a call to awaken the ancient awe within the modern mind. For magic, as he teaches, is not something performed; it is something perceived. It is the art of seeing again, of remembering that every breath, every spark, every creation is, in its own way, funny, fascinating, and miraculous.