Harry Potter Makes No Sense: Why Do Wizards Use Cameras but Reject Pens?

If we take a step back from the plot of the Harry Potter books and movies and take in the whole picture of how the Muggle and Wizarding worlds coexist, there’s quite a revelation to be had there. Despite all their spells, artifacts, and potions, wizards have significantly lower standards of life compared to Muggles. Why is that?

For some reason, a vast majority of wizards oppose the usage of the Muggle technology as if it will somehow weaken the Wizarding World. In reality, they really should keep an eye on whatever Muggles are doing out there and improve upon their inventions… But the wizards already do that, don’t they?

Of course, they do — but they’re very hypocritical about it.

While Arthur Weasley was laughed at for meddling with a Muggle car and building magical features into it, a few years later we saw the Ministry of Magic having an entire fleet of magically enhanced cars. And Hogwarts Express — a literal train that hasn’t even been altered — has existed for decades prior to that, too.

Wizards oppose new Muggle gadgets out loud but they’ve been using radios and record players for quite some time — and the wizarding rock bands that Harry and his friends listened to on several occasions used modern electrical instruments.

Don’t even get us started on wizarding photography: the wand-wielders basically took a Muggle camera and made it produce moving pictures similar to what they did with the paintings centuries before that. Now, these cams are used by virtually all the media in the Wizarding World and we don’t remember any complaints.

All this magically enhanced Muggle tech’s been around for years and no one died because of that; we’d even take the liberty to say that it improved the quality of life for wizards significantly. Somehow, the conservative mages managed to integrate these particular inventions into their everyday lives and then kept opposing the rest.

There are trains, cars, cameras, radios, and a bunch of other Muggle inventions in the Wizarding World already, but Hogwarts students still use quills instead of pens and scrolls instead of workbooks and have to write letters to their parents instead of using phones to call home. Isn’t this just bizarre?

As proud members of both the Wizarding and Muggle societies, we can only express our hopes and wishes that the integration of Muggle-born mages into the wand-wielding community shall continue successfully… Otherwise, those poor fellows will keep using stairs instead of elevators for another two centuries, duh.