2012-03-07
Explanation
This comic plays with Arthur C. Clarke'''s famous Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The first panel illustrates the classic version -- a group of people in a pre-industrial setting see a jet plane fly overhead and exclaim "Impossible!" because the technology is so far beyond their understanding that it seems magical.
The second panel presents a corollary: "Any sufficiently unadvanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Here, a modern adult (who looks like a scientist or engineer type) is sitting on a plane next to a child who has a simple wind-up toy. The adult asks in bewilderment: "You just wind it up and it moves?! Where'''s the power source?" The joke is that someone so immersed in advanced technology -- electronics, batteries, digital systems -- has lost touch with the simplicity of basic mechanical devices like a wind-up spring mechanism. A wound spring storing and releasing energy seems like magic to someone who only understands complex modern technology.
The votey shows someone looking at the wind-up toy and saying "Needs more internet" -- reinforcing the idea that modern tech-savvy people are baffled by anything that works without connectivity or electricity, and that they instinctively want to add unnecessary complexity to simple, elegant solutions.