Three Wishes for the Telehealth Genie
According to folklore, extraordinary beings resent being confined within ordinary spaces. In “The Fisherman and the Jinni,” one of the stories Sheherazade tells her misguided husband in “One Thousand and One Nights,” the being in question is so angry at being imprisoned for centuries in a bottle that he has to be tricked into granting wishes rather than killing his lowly liberator outright. In Disney’s “Aladdin,” the genie isn’t so vengeful but still describes his confinement as “phenomenal cosmic powers” uncomfortably crammed into an “itty bitty living space.”
The real world isn’t teeming with mystic flasks or misty sorcerers. But to the people who first told fairy tales around campfires, our modern abilities to tame the elements, construct labor-saving devices, cure diseases, and fly through air and space would look an awful lot like sorcery. And, truth be told, our real world is teeming with would-be heroes trying desperately to bottle up disruptive discoveries and technologies.
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