I still hear phrases like “ruining the magic” when it comes to understanding how stuff like technology, natural processes or cosmic phenomena work. However, I’ve a different take on this.

When you understand how some bit of tech works (for example, a mobile phone screen), then sure that no longer feels like magic.

But there’s a new awe that comes, “now I know how to make one, or integrate one, or how that thing works, what else might I do with it”. Ideas may start to flood in, you may start to recognise the principles elsewhere, and the more you have learned, the more this happens. This continuous personal revelation can be pretty motivating and inspiring. The “Oh!” moments as stuff starts to slot in. The bit where that one tiny bit of maths that escaped you suddenly clicks, and a whole group of other conjectures come from it, which maybe lead you to understand concepts that never quite made sense before.

There’s a phrase that I used to describe programming, but it pretty much describes any realm of exploration and discovery, that there are always “Worlds undiscovered” - new ways to use what you now know, new things to build from the blocks you have, or from the parts in those blocks you can now see, or places to discover from the place you had. And it might be just that tiny incremental bit of understanding, on the edge of your grasp from where you are now - it need not be an arctic trek.

Keep exploring - be it worlds, places, technology, maths, philosophy, science - there are always Worlds Undiscovered!