THE MAGIC OF THE INTERNET VS THE OUTERNET

HOW MAGIC AND MAGICIANS HAVE CHANGED SINCE THE INTERNET BEGAN TO RULE OUR LIVES.

But as the internet seems to encroach further into our lives, I wonder if the traditional methods of interaction, networking and advertising are being neglected.

When I was a child, I lived out in the sticks. There were three channels on the TV and one of those was BBC2 which aired limited programmes. We had no DVD’s, Videos, Games consoles or even mobile phones. The internet didn’t exist and Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen were just getting together to found Microsoft. You can understand therefore, that if you wanted to learn something, or chat with friends, you had to get off your backside to do it.

Magic has consumed me since I was eight years old when my grandfather bought me a copy of "The Amateur Magicians Handbook"by Henry Hay, but after devouring the contents of that book, the only way I could obtain more of the knowledge I craved, was by visiting a part of what has become known as the Outernet, a cog in the machine called the library. The nearest library to me was six miles away and the only form of transport I had was my bike. So every Saturday morning I rode to the library and back to return and pick up the books I needed to pursue my fascination with all things magic.

Nowadays of course by using the internet, I can access thousands of books at the click of a button, I can read the opinions of experts and self-proclaimed guru’s from all over the world without having to move from my armchair.
But that’s not all, when I was a kid my best friends lived miles away in other villages and on farms in the middle of nowhere and believe it or not some of them didn’t have telephones. So again to interact with each other we’d get on our bikes and meet at the park or cycle to each other houses.

Today our kids chat on the internet via Facebook and Twitter, their thumbs have evolved for speed texting and they freely share and expose the work of others. Rather than the physical threats that used to be all too common in the school playground, more and more teenagers (and adults) find themselves bullied and psychologically abused via mobile phones instead, and on some of the magic forums I have been known to frequent, I have noticed many once prolific writers and producers  of miracles, after being verbally and commercially abused online, are pulling away from the mass magic fraternity and are no longer releasing new ideas and routines except to small underground groups of likeminded professionals.

THE MAGIC OF THE OUTERNET.

As the use of the internet expands and populations rely on it for their social and commercial interactions, I believe as magicians we need to be wary of losing our identities as performance artists, because magic should be performed live, it  shouldn’t be relegated to various YouTube channels where, would be Spielberg’s demonstrate (and often expose) the latest move or trick they learned that morning, tricks which to be honest will never see a live audience because they simply could not be performed anywhere but in front of the single fixed eye of the camera.

When I used to visit the library all those years ago, I got to know the staff; they’d help me out and point me in the right direction. I saw the same faces in the newspaper section or pouring over reference books week in week out, I’d see the same young kids enjoying the pop up books in the kids section and new faces would come and go. Years later when my interests expanded to researching the pubs in the area, I’d often see those same people from years before, having a drink, eating a meal, playing darts or just reading at a table window. Many of them would recognise me and we’d chat like friends who had known each other for years. Many of them became clients, some of them long term repeat clients who also referred me to other clients, and this interaction is the nature of the Outernet.

Today when I log on to the internet and upload a book from Amazon to my kindle, I am nothing more than a username and password read by a computer generated algorithm. I have hundreds of friends on Facebook but haven’t met more than a handful of them. And if I leave my house without my smartphone, I try to avoid having a panic attack by reminding myself, that I didn’t need GPS, Google maps, email or even a bog standard phone, when I first started in this business.

Please don’t get me wrong, the internet is a fantastic tool and I think we all need to move with the times if we want to succeed, I use it in all aspects of my business (and in a lot of my social interaction), I mean without it you wouldn’t be reading these words, however I do believe the internet and the outernet need to be utilised in conjunction, especially in the world of magic where face to face meetings are the only way to pull in the bigger clients.

SO I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS SCENARIO.

Two magicians of equal ability both send an email shot to a prospective corporate client. The First attaches a link to a YouTube video of him performing some amazing spoon bending. He follows up a few days later with a text message asking if the client liked the video and would like to book him for a show.

The second magician doesn’t attach a video but states in the email he’ll call the client later. He calls and organises a meeting. During the meeting he takes the clients spoon from his coffee cup and causes it to twist, bend and finally snap in the clients own hands.
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WHO DO YOU THINK WINS THE CONTRACT?

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