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>Doesn’t the feeling of “magic” directly proceed from abstraction and non-tractability

Yes, but also I think it can also have a kind of liminal impression of an internal logic.





Would you mind elaborating?

I agree that the "magic" feeling involves abstraction from nuts and bolts, but a kind of notable responsiveness to, say, preferred trains of thought that are optimal for a workflow or project management or for rich functional interaction. I use the word "liminal" in the sense of the aesthetic term "liminal spaces" to indicate a presence of a kind of lightweight logic not necessarily fully articulated.



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