Discuss: Magic, or science?

[Anonymouswizard]

A woman mixes strange ingredients over a fire and stirs. Strange colored smoke wafts up. Have I described a witch, or a chemist?

I'm not sure, but we're all waiting for dinner, so can she please finish the stew she said she'd make?

A man constructs a circle of metal to contain a powerful energy. Have I described an electrical engineer, or a demon summoner?

Certainly not an electrical engineer, the copper's very unlikely to be in a circle (now if you had said a loop I might agree with you, at least for an electrician). Definitely not an electronic engineer, silicon isn't actually a metal if I've remembered my periodic table correctly and is almost never circular by the time you can use it.

A thing exists that you cannot touch or you will surely die. Even being in the same room is risky. Cursed Idol, or radioactive waste?

Why choose? Cursed idol made from radioactive waste!

A man speaks long words in an unknown, long dead language. He writes with strange symbols. Wizard, or scientist?

My old vicar would have sworn blind this was a priest with the gift of tongues. Really it could be almost anybody who managed to teach themselves ancient Sumerian.

Hell, brain-computer interfaces are getting to the point where even the latter could be basically reality.

Isn't the main problem right now keeping the things clean? Not that connecting them up or using them is easy, but if they aren't kept clean then the connections will just degrade and you have to connect it up again. For most people with our current technology I see controlling devices with our faces to be more useful than our brains because I'm not convinced we could do sensory input with the things.

Still getting a DNI when they're viable though, because I'm a science fiction nerd transhumanist.