ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that if we acknowledge the dependency of modern technology on money and market exchange, we can recognise technology as a form of magic. Modern technologies rely on complex chains of conversions enabled by the social conventions of the market. Such market-dependent or globalised technologies are made possible by the ratios at which goods are exchanged. The chapter compares two examples – bronze metallurgy and the steam engine – to illustrate how what is locally perceived as the product of specialised knowledge is simultaneously contingent on long-distance exchange. It is only by conceptually eliminating the subjectivity of market exchange from the efficacy of technology that the latter can be distinguished from magic. For individual market actors, the social convention of money performs the kind of material conversions that were aimed at in the practice of alchemy. Although the capacity of technology to achieve or transform something is considered to derive exclusively from rational and scientific knowledge about objective nature, it crucially also relies on the play of subjectivities that is fundamental to the alchemy of money.
