“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - still true?

[LSLGuy]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

@LSLGuy

I am recalling a thread in the last year-ish on the topic of a 2022-era fully working mobile phone falling into the hands of 1960s scientists and engineers and what they could (or not) do with it. I searched unsuccessfully or I’d cite it here. Anyone else able to help?

Was it this one?

I was wondering what scientists and engineers in 1960 would make of my cell phone if I traveled back in time with it.

Would they be able to make head or tails of it? Would they be able to learn anything from it that would catapult the technology of the day?

That is close, but no cigar. Thank you though, you did solve the mystery albeit indirectly.

The thread I was thinking of is cited in post #21 of your cited thread:

Could the 1980s reverse engineer a modern iphone?

Whenever I time-travel to the past, I always leave my IPhone home, to prevent changing the timeline if the past scientists find my phone and use it to invent technologies sooner than they should have. But then I realized, even if a 1980s scientist with a state-of-the-art lab did get my iphone, he wouldn’t have access to the machines that make the phone, so he wouldn’t be able to replicate the iphone. Most recent computer advances weren’t actually in the iphone itself, but in the manufacturing …

I see it dates from 2016 which explains why I didn’t find it; I had used 2018 as my age cutoff when searching.

What’s even more impressive about this thread than I had recalled was our experts saying that 1970s/1980s experts would be utterly stymied by much of a 2016 iPhone. The tech moved that fast: 30/40 years of progress was enough to render significant parts of the iPhone “magic”, not 60 years.