Notes

Muggle (Britain) and No-Maj (United States, pl. No-Majs or No-Majes) are Wizarding cultural terms describing a person who is born to two non-magical parents and is incapable of performing magic. Although most muggles are the offspring of two muggles, the offspring of two squibs or of a squib and a muggle would be, by definition, a muggle. Muggles are not to be confused with Squibs, who also lack magic but are born to at least one magical parent.

Most Muggles are not aware that magic exists at all and that those with it have organised their own society largely separate from the Muggle world. The few Muggles that do know of the existence of the wizarding world are usually parents, or close relatives, of witches and wizards (for example, Hermione Granger's parents, Mr. and Mrs Granger, knew of the wizarding world because of their daughter, as did Harry Potter's aunt and uncle). The term "Muggle" is widely used in the wizarding world, and, while it could be considered derogatory, generally is not intended to be offensive; in fact, it is often used affectionately, often by Arthur Weasley, who has a great fondness for Muggles and learning about them and their way of life. Some of the more prejudiced members of the community, however, use the word in the same context as the epithet "Mudblood," though the term is generally associated with Muggle-borns (witches or wizards that come from non-magic families/Muggles). These wizards or witches believe that Muggle-borns have "stolen" magic and thus are actually Muggles, rather than legitimate wizards or witches. Although Muggles have no magical abilities, they have technology to make up for it. But many sophisticated muggle technology, such as electricity naturally does not work well inside the wizarding world. The technology in question has to be magically powered, in this case Arthur Weasley's Ford Anglia. Muggles never understand magic, even going to extreme lengths (and sometimes making themselves seem rather foolish to wizards) to ignore obvious occurrences of magic, and wizards never understand technology.

Even though the Muggles lack magic, they still pose a threat to the wizarding world. An advantage they have is that they outnumber the population of pure-bloods and wizards by a significant proportion. Furthermore Muggles often use and own firearms, which has the advantage over a wand in terms of speed and multiple-direction attacks. Muggles flourished in territories way larger than the magical world. Finally, Muggle possesses WMD like nuclear weapon or chemical weapons in which wizard world never seem to possess such things. As such the Minister for Magic and the Prime Minister maintain a good relationship for the safety of both worlds.
Wizards don’t use electricity for a very good reason—they don’t need it, in fact they don’t need our technology at all (except maybe for sherbet lemons). Modern Muggle technology, according to wizards, is a poor substitute for magic. And modern Muggle technology is largely based on the availability of cheap, efficient energy sources, especially electricity.

But wizards can create their own energy. This is one of the most significant differences between Muggles and wizards. Why mine coal, build power plants and power lines and thousands of devices, create vast amounts of pollution, and endanger the future of the planet through global warming, if you can light hundreds of candles with a flick of the wrist?

Wizards have their own sort of technologies. They are constantly improving and refining magical objects. The history of the broomstick, as explained in QA, makes this clear. And several people have noticed the similarities between the kind of logic that goes into creating a magical item such as the Marauder’s Map and the kind of logic that goes into writing a computer program. They are simply different types of technologies, and one is not necessarily superior to the other.

I have studied the history and development of technology and many of the devices we use have as much to do with cultural preferences and historical accidents as anything else. Different technologies develop for different reasons at different times. Many cultures independently invented the wheel, for example, and many of them rejected it because their geographic conditions made it unsuitable for use in a transportation device.

I think wizards do plenty of research. That’s why they need publications like Transfiguration Today. They just research different stuff than Muggles do because they have different needs, just like the Mayans stopped researching the wheel because they lived in a mountainous region at the same time Europeans were developing wheeled vehicles.

So, if wizards need to know about some field that we would think of as science—genetics for example—they are likely to be researching it. What they discover and what they create from that research will be as non-Muggle as can be, of course. They’ll be looking for different things and interpreting what they find in totally different ways.