“But for heaven’s sake—you’re wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out—well—anything!”
–Half-Blood Prince
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“Dobby likes freedom, miss, but he isn’t wanting too much, miss, he likes work better.”
–Goblet of Fire
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With his limited knowledge of the magical world, the Muggle Prime Minister in Half-Blood Prince (book six of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series) expresses what would likely be anyone’s assumption if we were told that magic exists: that if it were possible and real, magic would solve all our problems. Cornelius Fudge, at this point ex-Minister of Magic, regrettably informs him that limitless magical potential does not help in the case of war, at least not when “the other side can do magic too,” but the Muggle’s assumption would otherwise be fair.

The magic described in the series would seem to confer limitless potential to, say, resolve the energy conundrum and escape the climate crisis or, at least, avoid everyday inconvenience and discomfort. This potential is why the Ministry of Magic’s most important function is, according to Rubeus Hagrid, to maintain the International Statute of Secrecy: because if the Muggles knew that magic was real, “everyone’d be wantin’ magical solutions to their problems.”

In sci-fi and fantasy, technology and magic often function in similar ways, fundamentally structuring how a society functions—particularly in relationship to work. Supersonic aircraft and enchanted broomsticks, remote controls and wands, both technology and magic ostensibly offer alternatives to physical exertion and enable otherwise impossible feats. Harry Potter “thoroughly, persistently, and consistently [blurs] the line between technology and magic.”  “Just as Muggles have created dishwashers, mass transit, and telephones or videophones through science, so the wizards have used magic to create the same conveniences,” saving themselves time, energy, and effort. Although our technology is described from the wizarding point of view as “substitutes for magic,” the inverse is truer. In Muggle Studies class they must “Explain Why Muggles Need Electricity,” but why do wizards and witches need magic? To wit, it is because they do not know how to harness electricity.

Harry Potter’s magic should be, by its own terms, no better able to deter its users from consumerism or overreliance than contemporary technologies can.

Unsurprisingly, there is a parallel between our contemporary ambivalence toward advanced, labor-saving technology and Rowling’s attitude toward magic in Harry Potter. While bringing convenience and comfort, our technology-saturated lives have fueled social anxieties about its hidden harms. Today, we fear that overreliance on technology leads us to ruin of body, mind, and spirit; most science fiction films portray hypertechnological dystopias that we are invited to compare with our own condition, and calls to “unplug” are a staple of health and wellness advice. Under threat is, apparently, our work ethic: if we do not need to do anything, so the fear goes, we would lose motivation to do anything at all.

We do not walk when we can take a car nor remember phone numbers or calculate tips when our phones do it better. Rowling echoes these same fears and asserts that her characters should not be, as Molly says, “[whipping their] wands out for every little thing.” Indeed, according to Harry Potter, you should not only “never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain” but also be wary of becoming “too fond of or dependent” on any magical technology.

Elizabeth Teare finds that “most critics who have weighed in on the Harry Potter phenomenon to date have placed the books firmly in the Luddite tradition of children’s fantasy.” For example, Nicholas Sheltrown conjectures that Harry Potter is “perhaps…, at its core, a morality tale about technology”—a warning that it is dangerous for humanity to overly rely on it, and this warning has resonated with many readers. While supportive of what they see as one of the morals of the series, however, none of these critics take a Luddite’s firm antitechnology stance. “To be categorically anti-technology is idiotic,” declares Joel Hunter, mincing no words.

Many seem to tacitly believe that, on one side of a clear line, there is legitimate usage and, on the other, there is overuse, overreliance, and the “frivolous,” and many applaud where Rowling draws the line. However, there is a tendency to read into Harry Potter a more antitechnology position than the texts warrant, which speaks to many readers’ projected desires—as well as the texts’ willingness to invite these projections.

However, Harry Potter is not a straightforward morality tale about technology. The chapter’s first section responds to a tendency in Harry Potter studies to interpret the series as if its version of magic portrays a profoundly different and salutary alternative to Muggle technology. While Rowling purposefully taps into readers’ anxieties about technology’s propensity to fuel consumerism and inspire dependency, Harry Potter’s magic should be, by its own terms, no better able to deter its users from consumerism or overreliance than contemporary technologies can.

That said, many of Rowling’s characters do appear to model restraint, apparently resisting the temptation to use magic to solve their problems. The second section discusses Rowling’s imposition of material lack on some of her characters, which some critics cite as an example of Rowling refusing to let her characters overuse magic. However, Rowling’s reasons for not allowing her characters to magic their way out of poverty or need likely have less to do with concerns for magical overuse and more to do with an attachment to problematic class stereotypes and a reliance on material suffering as a trope to propel character and plot development. The austerity she imposes on the characters is contradictory, even nonsensical, but allows her to lean on discourses of class and “hard work” to define her characters and advance the plot.

The third and fourth sections discuss where Rowling’s apparent concern for technological overuse does seem to overlap with some of her readers’ anxieties. In presenting a pastoralized ideal in which it appears that technology can be safely wielded without overuse, however, the texts effectively conceal who must still perform nonmagical work and why, producing a fantasy in which displaced costs are borne by nonmale and nonhuman Others. To a large extent, her magical world succeeds in using less magic by conscripting nonhumans as magical slaves. In addition to nonhuman labor, the series requires housewives to engage in hypervisible, hybrid labor as a gendered spectacle of love.

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We can readily see that Harry Potter overtly critiques the consumerist aspect of technological advancement. In his essay, Hunter addresses an audience that, in his opinion, was far too wont to chase after the newest technology: “The bewitching charm, the ‘gee-whiz’ attraction of gadgetry functions like an Imperius curse.” When Harry and the Weasley children visit Arthur at St. Mungo’s Hospital, they are nearly bowled over by “a gaggle of [Muggle] shoppers plainly intent on nothing but making it into a nearby shop full of electrical gadgets.”

In the opening of the third book, the Dursleys loudly call attention to their new company car so that the neighbors might hear. Dudley Dursley pitches a fit because he receives only thirty-seven birthday presents, two less than the previous year. A second bedroom houses his considerable collection of items—from a video camera to a birdcage to a working tank, “nearly everything…broken”—instead of providing a room for his cousin Harry, who sleeps in a cupboard. The Dursleys seem to buy for Dudley without purpose except to flaunt, and most of the items are unused or carelessly broken.

Alas, consumerism always appears to be someone else’s bad habit. As Teare points out, the series’ heroes also “love to buy”: “The virtuous Dumbledore apart, the wizard world is much like ours: highly commercialized and obsessed with its technologies.” Harry and his friends are gleeful consumers of toys and collectibles, eagerly partaking in all the commercial opportunities offered by Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade without textual reproach. As the magic of some charmed objects seems to wear off, requiring frequent repurchase, magic and consumerism go hand in hand.

At times, it seems as if the texts contrive to let Harry have high-tech magical things while protecting his portrayal as a superior boy. At the Quidditch World Cup, for example, Harry gravitates toward the most high-tech purchase possible, the one-time-use, ten-Galleons-each Omnioculars, but the moment makes him appear generous, rather than greedy for the cool technology, because he buys an additional pair for Ron and Hermione. In Prisoner of Azkaban, like the excited crowd gathered outside the shop, Harry longs to buy the cutting-edge, international-standard Firebolt, which is described as superior to his current broomstick, the Nimbus Two Thousand, which, in turn, puts the older and cheaper Comet 360 to shame. “He had never wanted anything as much in his whole life,” but he resists, which makes him appear both fiscally responsible and able to resist technology’s siren call.

Nevertheless, “he returned, almost every day after that, just to look at the Firebolt,” and soon receives his heart’s desire through the contrivance of an anonymous gift. His fancy Nimbus had also been a gift, and it is hard to understand why Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, or Hogwarts would have felt called upon to purchase his Nimbus for him given his inherited wealth except so that Harry could avoid the taint of being the purchaser of such a significant Quidditch advantage. Conveniently, his equipment is now upgraded at no cost to either him or his nonconsumerist persona. Owning the latest and best broomstick increases Harry’s popularity—an eager group of students gathers to ogle and touch the Firebolt—and enables further Quidditch victories, but he is never criticized for his obsession with brooms.

In addition to consumerism, some critics raise the concern that we might lose an avenue for self-identity as the feats we achieve through technology may not feel as if they can be claimed as truly our own. In Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, Bill McKibben argues that advanced technologies such as genetic engineering and nanorobotics would be profoundly detrimental to our sense of humanity. One of the prominent voices of this concern, McKibben says that “we stand on the edge of disappearing even as individuals,” perched on the precipice of living lives of total “meaninglessness.” Indeed, “no one needs to run in the twenty-first century,” but one might still take it up as “an outlet for spirit, for finding out who you are, no more mandatory than art or music,” but technology such as bioengineering would take away our ability to feel like our achievements in running, or any other exertion, are “ours”: “It’s not the personal challenge that will disappear. It’s the personal.” With the loss of the personal, McKibben argues, we would lose the ability to derive a sense of self-worth through competition—we will “lose racing: we’ll lose the possibility of the test, the challenge, the celebration that athletics represents.” “The point has to do with seeking out my limits, centering my attention: finding out who I am.”

McKibben does not seem to have strong qualms about this competitive I, I, I mindset, nor does he fundamentally challenge our current comfort with feeling individual, personal achievement with the support of our current technologies—be they fitness watches, ergonomic sneakers, gel packs, massage guns, supplements, or medical care—because these technologies have not denied us the narrative of “I did that.” While he recognizes that his preference for hyper-individuality and self-definition through competition is the product of the world that we have created, and even though these cultural drives are tied to the same world-destroying rapaciousness that he might have otherwise decried, McKibben seems to also cling to this worldview as “the very last weight holding us to the ground,” without which “we will float silently away into the vacuum of meaninglessness.”

There are neurochemical, psychobiological explanations that support the argument that ease leads to a loss of motivation, so his fears are not unfounded. But I question whether, in this world where we must “produce…context for ourselves,” this competitive “I-did-that” mindset is truly the last weight we want holding us to the ground. Ultimately, McKibben seems unable to imagine an alternative way for modern, secular life to have meaning that is not grounded in a self-concept of hyper-individuality and the false belief that technology does not already mediate every aspect of our existence.

In a similar vein, Hunter urges Harry Potter readers to learn from the series to “refuse the technological imperative, disestablish the technological society, and return technology to its role as servant to human flourishing.” Here, we see again the moralizing language of resisting temptation and the anthropocentric urge to reclaim power from technology, to reestablish the “right” relationship by placing humans back in control. Hunter identifies the series’ villain, Voldemort, as the “[embodiment of] the technological spirit in its purest and most explicit form” for wanting to use magical technology to conquer death itself. This is, in part, correct: Voldemort is extremely covetous of power. Yet the narrative of achieving power independently from magical technology is actually also quite Voldemortian. “I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed,” the Dark Lord boasts, with an emphasis on the “I.” Is it not Voldemort who first eschews the Sorcerer’s Stone because “he would have found the thought of being dependent” on its elixir “intolerable”?

Is it not Voldemort who, by Deathly Hallows, masters the ability to fly without the need of a broom?

In fact, Voldemort’s independence from much magical technology is rather unique; he appears to only ever use a wand and his Horcruxes. Wizarding society is otherwise extremely enmeshed with its magical technologies, the vast majority of which are much more powerful than our own and go without textual critique. While Dumbledore does pay a dear price for his youthful pursuit of the Deathly Hallows—arguably, the most powerful technology of the series—most of the wizarding community’s day-to-day depends on a large variety of magical or magic-powered technologies: not only wands but also broomsticks, the Sorting Hat, the Goblet of Fire, the Weasleys’ mangle, Xenophilius Lovegood’s printing press, the flying Ford Anglia, Sirius’s motorcycle, Omnioculars, Sneakoscopes, Pensieves, secrecy sensors, self-stirring cauldrons, and everything in their joke shops.

Moreover, magical people’s capacities and abilities depend in large part on the quality of their technology. This is most evident with brooms, as earlier discussed: in the very unlevel playing field that is Quidditch, the quality (and price) of the broom directly impacts ability. Harry’s Nimbus Two Thousand “was easily the best broom; Ron’s old Shooting Star was often outstripped by passing butterflies;” the Gryffindor team rightfully worries when they learn that the entire Slytherin team has been upgraded to Nimbus Two Thousand and Twos; Ron does not even dare to try out for the team until he gets a “decent broom;” and, as earlier mentioned, Harry’s Firebolt is universally recognized as giving him a unique edge, thanks to its “unsurpassable balance,” “pinpoint precision,” and “acceleration of 150 miles an hour in ten seconds.”

Noticeably, no one asserts that Harry’s achievements on the field are not his own nor qualifies his Snitch snatches with an asterisk. The series repeatedly hypes up his talent and nerve so that we can discount the technological inequalities and give him all the personal credit for being the best at flying. (Notably, though they can almost all use brooms to fly, only of Voldemort is it said that he can fly)

For many, self-empowerment on the level of “I” seems to be the point of eschewing technology. Noel Chevalier praises Harry Potter’s magic as an imagined alternative to how modern technology “has fragmented the natural body to the point that manipulation of nature, even communication between humans, cannot take place unmediated by it.” Compared to technology, magic allows the characters to exert control over “nature” through more “natural” means: “Rowling’s conception of magic reinscribes control over nature in language (use of charms and spells) and in combination of natural objects (substances used to make potions).”

In Rowling’s apparent utopia, “the body reclaims its own ability, unmediated by technology, to exert influence over nature, which technology has taken away from it.” To reach his interpretations, however, Chevalier has to dismiss the obvious parallels between modern technology and their wands and charmed objects. By declaring that “things work in the wizarding world without technology,” he concludes that “it makes no difference” that much of their magic operates with largely the same uses and effects as technology. Such a reading seems to be motivated by a desire to feel that one could directly manipulate nature without technology—to feel power, control, influence, and thereby meaning.

Apparently driven by the same sense of disempowerment in the face of technology, Oakes focuses on magical talent as a way to relocate the font of power in each and every user. “Where we have created devices external to our beings that accomplish tasks for us,” she contrasts, “witches and wizards learn to control certain forces with their own minds and talents.” Oakes celebrates the fact that, in Harry Potter, “any average witch or wizard has powers within his or her own knowledge and control that outstrip those of even the cleverest, most McGuyver-like Muggle, without relying on electricity, nuclear power, digital technology, or even a pocket lighter” (emphasis added). In this language, we can see that Oakes relishes the idea of magical people containing the magical talent that makes their technologies work. Rowling’s wizards and witches could, in Oakes’s opinion, claim personal, I-did-it-myself credit for what they achieve through magic instead of giving credit to the “external devices”—devices of which, it seems, some of us are profoundly jealous and resentful.

While not denying the parallels between Muggle and magical technologies, Oakes’s conclusions depend on ignoring magical people’s complete dependence on a wand—the indisputable sine qua non of reliable spellwork. As children, Tom Riddle and Harry Potter can make things happen without wands, but this pales in comparison to what they can do with a wand, as Harry rediscovers when his own wand is broken in Deathly Hallows: he feels “fatally weakened, vulnerable and naked, as though the best part of his magical power has been torn from him.” At least theoretically, any magical person with a seven-Galleon wand already owns every technology—it is a powerful technology that can be used to make infinitely more technology by the enchanting of virtually anything and anyone else. But without it, no matter how powerful their minds or talents, they are no more able to reliably manipulate their environment than any Muggle without their gadgets and devices. As the unfortunate Muggle-borns experience under Death Eater rule, without a wand, they can only be beggars.

There is nothing inherently better about Rowling’s magic that would lead its users to escape the loss of a personal sense of accomplishment.

Many who fear the advancement of technology also worry that with each advancement comes a loss of knowledge or skills: with calculators, learning math feels superfluous; with typing, good handwriting becomes a relic of the past; with transportation technology, bodies seem to atrophy. This effect is generally indisputable. Rowling’s magic would theoretically give rise to the same effects—and so does not inherently offer an advantage—yet some critics celebrate her fantasy alternative as if it does.

As with Muggle technology, magic-driven technology functions without the user necessarily knowing how the technology works to produce the desired result, just as when we tabulate sums with a calculator, we do not need to understand how to add nor how the calculator does the adding. When using a Spell-Check Quill, presumably one does not need to know spelling to wield it. Arthur’s “dearest ambition” is “to find out how airplanes stay up”—something that your average Muggle would also not know, and we can assume that, if asked, Arthur would not be able to explain how magic makes a broom stay up either.

Oakes notes that, in addition to talent, magic requires years of training, which to her redeems it as a form of knowledge, yet a Muggle child must also be taught to flip a switch, turn a knob, and push buttons in the right order, and certainly adults need to develop knowledge and skills to use software and, at more advanced levels, to code it. Arthur lacks the understanding and physical dexterity to successfully light a match, having never needed to do so before that moment. He would probably also fumble with a Muggle light switch. His dependence on magic means he has not developed a slew of swish-and-flick-like motor skills that we take for granted and do not consider “knowledge” gained by “training.” Oakes also does not account for the difference in educational systems: at Hogwarts, many of their classes cover what we might call basic or practical skills, such as turning on a light (Lumos) or activating a spout (Aguamenti) or dusting some dirt (Tergeo).

If our K-12 covered car maintenance, computing and coding, HVAC maintenance, electrical engineering, and plumbing, we would not feel, as Oakes bemoans, “inept, unprepared, or at worst, stupid” when our air conditioning breaks down or the alerts flash in our cars. As for spellcasting, while it is mostly true that “you cannot just know the spell…you have to study it, practice it, and perfect it” (Appelbaum 39), there are notable instances when this is proven false—at least, when convenient for Rowling’s plot. On first try, Harry pulls off the highly impactful Levicorpus and Sectumsempra spells he finds scribbled on the margins of the Half-Blood Prince’s Potions textbook despite not having any instructions on what specific motions to make with his wand and not knowing what they would do. In fact, when casting Sectumsempra, Harry simply “[waves] his wand wildly.” Even in the case of those spells that seem to take him a lot of practice—Accio, Expecto Patronum—the text emphasizes more his insufficient focus rather than what we would call skill, knowledge, or understanding.

Many also seem to fear and resent the possibility that technological usage renders users into automatons, compelled by the addictive appeal of technology to click, tap, and watch, and yet again, Harry does not seem immune to this. As noted, he is fairly obsessed with flying and his broom. Holding the Marauder’s Map for the first time, he reflects on how it is certainly a powerful item that he should distrust—as Arthur had counseled—because one cannot see its brain, but Harry finds himself responding to the Marauder’s Map as if compelled to “[follow] orders.” Yet the texts do not critique his relationship to these addictive technologies. When his Nimbus Two Thousand is rendered into splinters by the Whomping Willow, he “felt as though he’d lost one of his best friends.” In fact, a list of “all his most prized possessions” comprises three powerful magical technologies: the Invisibility Cloak, his Firebolt, and the Marauder’s Map. The album of his parents’ photos does not make the cut.

Chevalier also praises how “Rowling reinstates…tactility in the wizard’s magic,” thereby offering a more humanizing experience, but the texts also contest such a conclusion. Though most of the characters do not treat it as such, magic could vitiate most tactility: one’s wand could be a universal remote control for every other object in one’s environment. Daedalus Diggle remarks on the confounding number of “buttons and knobs” in a Muggle car because most magical technology is operated with a wand and a voice command (or nonverbally, for the adept). In the Ministry of Magic, employees in neat rows perform identical wand actions to produce neat stacks of pamphlets to “mesmerizing” effect. The film captures the automaton-like feeling of the scene, each person a cog that does not even touch the paper it processes. Shortly after this, we see Pius Thicknesse foregoing virtually all tactility to write a simple note: he “pointed his wand at the quill standing ready in the ink pot. It sprang out and began scribbling a note to Umbridge.” In fact, magical life has the potential to be even more radically incorporeal than our own.

Rowling’s magic seems to appeal to some critics as a way to have one’s proverbial cake and eat it—advanced technology without the harmful effects— but this interpretation might hinge more on readerly projections than what the texts bear out. There is nothing inherently better about Rowling’s magic that would lead its users to escape the loss of a personal sense of accomplishment—or knowledge, skills, or tactility—and as the novels show, the threat of overuse looms as greatly over their existence as our own.

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Excerpted from Potter Stinks: Gender and Species in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series by Keridiana Chez. Copyright © 2025 by University Press of Mississippi. All rights reserved.