Robinson is on a roll.

‘The old magic was a cottage industry. The new magic is an empire. Every screen in your house is a scrying glass. Every algorithm is a spell. Every pharmaceutical is a potion. Every gene edit is a transmutation. The wizard is no longer an old man in a tower. He is a corporation, a university, a state apparatus. He has more power than any wizard in any story ever had. He can change the weather. He can read your mind. He can put a thought in your head from across the ocean. The magicians of the old stories would weep with envy.

And the naturalist looks at all of this and calls it progress, because he cannot see what he is part of. He thinks he has escaped magic. He has only joined the largest magical operation in the history of the world. He is not standing outside his mind, outside the cauldron.’