Ewan writes about magic and how it's better to leave people guessing how you do it. Completely agree - half the wonderment of the tricks I saw on Saturday night was just being completely clueless as to how they were done. Misdirection featured heavily.

I also wonder if this can be related to tech - magic being indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology and all that. Is it better to leave people guessing as to how you did something? I remember in the web industry, when new browsers were arriving every 6 months much of what we did was identifying new "tricks" and getting them deployed before anyone else could.

For instance, the Godzilla web site using a bit of Javascript trickery to make the whole browser window shudder as the monster stomped nearer. Old hat and cliched now, but at the time it hadn't been seen before and got some interest. Purely for novelty value of course, but it still stood out.