One of the great drivers of technological innovation throughout history has been the need for power. Not military power, nor electrical, but motive power, mechanical power. Long before the Industrial Revolution transformed the way we think about power, machines were invented. Simple machines, complex machines, even some that we don’t quite understand. But every machine requires an input of force to get things started.
Power
Today, we have electricity, obtained from a vast array of methods: solar energy, fossil fuels, nuclear fission, all the way down to wind and water. Many of our modern forms of power generation, however, are, well, modern. They rely on technology developed relatively recently. Man-made nuclear reactors didn’t—couldn’t—exist 80 years ago. Although the mechanism that makes solar panels work was worked out by Einstein, we need present-day electronics to actually use it.
Go back not all that long ago, and you miss out on a lot of ways to generate power. Solar and nuclear are less than a century old. Coal and oil and natural gas have only been used in industrial capacities for two or three times that. For a large majority of our history, power was hard to come by, and there weren’t a lot of options. Yes, earlier generations didn’t use anywhere near as much power as we do, and they didn’t use electricity at all—except maybe in Baghdad—but you can argue cause and effect all day long. Did they not use power because they didn’t have as much of it, or did they not produce as much because they didn’t need it?
However you come down on that argument, the truth is plain to see: all the way through the Renaissance, at least, there weren’t a lot of ways to produce power. You could use human or animal power, as many cultures did. It works for travel, but also for machines that require an impetus, such as millstones, potters’ wheels, pulleys, and most other things that the people of a thousand years ago would need.
Wind and water provide a better path to power, and this was figured out some two thousand years ago. Since then, the technology has only been refined. A blowing breeze or flowing stream can spin a wheel with far less human intervention than muscle power, and they’re cheaper than beasts of burden in the long run. Even the first windmills and waterwheels, built backwards by the standards of our imagination (horizontal blades for wind and undershot wheels for water), nonetheless freed up the labor of both man and beast for other, better things.
Now with magic
This triumvirate of wind, water, and muscle was enough to get us through the ages. But what can our little bit of magic add to the mix? We’ve already seen that magical stores of energy are available to our fictional culture, and they can be used to propel a wheeled vehicle. Hook them up to any other type of wheel, and they’ll do the same thing. For a relatively small price, the people of this land have a magical alternative to wind and water. That’s not to say those won’t be used; it’s more likely that the magical means will complement them.
Even this is a huge development, but let’s see if we can do anything else before we look at how it would transform society. Most magic involves manipulating natural forces, especially fire and water and air. So why not lightning? Now, that’s not to say that mages can summon thunderbolts from the sky, no more than they can call a tidal wave or shoot fireballs from their fingertips. This is more subtle.
Static electricity is pretty easy to discover. We encounter it all the time. In the winter, it’s even worse, because the air’s drier and we tend to wear thicker clothing. I know that I cringe whenever I go to open a door this time of year, and I’m sure I’m not alone. The small shocks we get don’t have a lot of energy (on the order of millijoules), but you can ask anyone who’s ever been struck by lightning or hit with the discharge from an old CRT about the potential power of static electricity.
Electric current is a bit harder to get, but that’s where the magic comes in. As of now, it’s in its early stages, but mages have begun to store an electric charge in much the same fashion that they store mechanical power. Charging is easier, for those who know the proper lightning-element spells, and some truly massive containers can be built, resembling globe-sized versions of those plasma balls that used to be all the rage. Using the current requires some way of interfacing with the containing sphere, typically by wrapping a lightly infused bit of metal around it. This, for all intents and purposes, creates an electrode.
The first uses of this magical technology were purely medical. “Shock therapy” was briefly considered a cure-all, until it was found that it didn’t really cure much of anything. A few practical uses came out of the earliest generations: an easy spark generator, handy for starting fires (if far more expensive than sticks and rocks); a way of creating better magnets than any lodestone; electroplating metals. For a decade, the fashion among mages was to find a new and exciting way of using this captured lightning.
Then somebody figured out how to make an electric motor. This was very recently in our magical society’s history—not just within living memory, but within a generation—and it’s mostly a curiosity right now. Small electric spheres can’t provide enough current to produce a significant amount of power, and the larger versions are too costly for practical use. However, that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Some very rich individuals have contracted higher mages to develop a mill powered by this new source of energy, but no one else thinks it’s a viable replacement for the motive spheres…yet.
A few mages are traveling down a different path. Instead of trying to harness the lightning they have imprisoned for mechanical power, they are investigating the possibilities of using the electrical energy directly. They’ve made some interesting discoveries in doing this, like the fact that some materials conduct electricity, while others stop it. Small mundane devices can store tiny amounts of energy and dissipate it slowly—capacitors. And, of course, our mages are learning about the intimate connection between electricity and magnetism.
In the end, our magical society can be said to have the beginnings of electrical technology, although they came about it by a different route. As of yet, they haven’t been able to do too much with it, apart from toys, scientific experiments, and a new form of lighting that aims to be better than the old oil lamp in every way. They have, in our terms, early batteries, motors, and light filaments. Once these get out of the mage’s laboratory, they will have the same effect as their Earthly equivalents had on us.
The development of magic-powered propulsion, however, is much more of a culture shock. With the storage of mechanical energy, most repetitive labor can be automated. Looms, mills, mints, forges, nearly every aspect of medieval-style living benefits from this. The need for workers (or slaves, for that matter) has decreased severely in our fictional society’s recent times. People still need to be able to feed their families, but the unskilled masses are finding new jobs.
And they won’t remain unskilled for too long. The machines have already taken over the roles once relegated to child labor, but the children have to go somewhere. Why not school? Trade schools, whether operated by guilds or skilled craftsmen, are beginning to appear in the cities, a supply coming into existence to meet the demand. And many of these trades must teach the basics of education, as well.
Power to the people
Just by giving the populace a way to move things can we transform a people. Muscle power is very limited, and it’s tiring, even with the endurance spells we’ve already said this society has. Waterwheels need specific conditions to be productive. Not everywhere is lucky enough to have the sustained winds to make that form of power practical. But magical power levels the playing field.
Historically, the increase of power with technology has had the immediate effect of giving the affected segment of the population more time to spend not working. They naturally find ways to fill those gaps. Art, hobbies, education—the same things we do in our free time. Some of those spare-time activities end up becoming full-time jobs of their own, and so the cycle continues.
But it’s a positive feedback cycle. Each time the power available to a society increases, that’s that much less work that has to be done by its people. As we know, the less time you spend doing what you have to do, the more time you get to do the things you want to do. Greater power, then, leads to a higher standard of living, even if it’s hard to see the tangible benefits.