TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information

A brilliant, heady tour through the sacred, the profane, and the downright kooky as Erik Davis illuminates the various mythological, occult, religious and scientific ideas that thoroughly saturate our apparently rational and scientific technologies. This book is reasonably accessible to the layman, and fun to read for anyone with an interested in the intersections of the magic, reality and mind.

Although Erik Davis's verbiage is densely packed with a surfeit of alteration, he nevertheless captures the spirit and history of the times. It was a book that was valuable enough to me that I purchased both the hardcover when it was first published and the Kindle version.

Erik Davis has proposed that forms of communication shape social and individual consciousness of reality. IMHO, Techgnosis is worth another look now that social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) has spread so rampantly across our culture. The tracks of what we have followed tends now to define what is presented to us.In a nutshell, "Different forms of communication -- oracular performance, writing, print, television, email - shape social and individual consciousness along specific lines, creating unique networks of perceptions, experiences, and interpersonal possibilities that help shape the social construction of reality. From this it follows that when a culture's technical structure of communication mutates quickly and significantly, both social and individual "reality" are in for a bit of a ride. ...The social imagination leaps into the breach, unleashing a torrent of speculation, at once cultural, metaphysical, technical, and financial. These speculations inevitably take on a utopian and feverish edge. ...However much we aspire to embody the rationalism of our machines, we cannot escape this feedback loop between techne [sic] and dream."Categorized under Technology, Techgnosis is rich with the name-dropping, "Spunk and Bite" style, and mystical leanings that may appeal to Grunge crowds, old New Agers, and intellectuals. Oh, and it is of interest to historians, communication and media technology students, information technologists, millenialists, conspiracy theorists, and religious seekers.Keep in mind this was originally written before the turn of 2000, even before the Wachowski brothers brought us The Matrix. I first read it in '98, when it helped me blaze a few new trails in my path. But there's plenty of thought here with staying power.It's a 3000-year history, tracing technology's influence on human thought and expression, especially regarding self, spirit, soul and society. "...a secret history of the mystical impulses that continue to spark and sustain the Western world's obsession with technology, and especially with its technologies of communication." The outline below shows the depth and breadth of this book.Questions worth discussing:Are we automatons? Why? How might we wake up? What would we gain?How has free communication and press advanced or hindered human evolution?Are UFO sightings and abductions our sublimated hopes for utopia, and our dread of the need to adapt?Does physical complexity breed more intelligent consciousness? Can the Net live?Does the Net breed collective intelligence as tribe did collective unconscious?Is biotechnology & AI doomed to go on the fritz eventually? How will we cope?------ Outline ------Introduction: Crossed WiresI. Imagining Technologiesthe technological unconscious - Hermes - the writing machine - Plato - Torah - early Christianity - Hermes Trismegistus - the Corpus Hermeticum - alchemy - magic into scienceII. The Alchemical Firethe electromagnetic imaginary - lightning rods - Mesmer - animal magnetism - bioenergy - Reich - Morse - celestial telegraph - Bell and Watson - electric doppelgängers - Tesla - cosmic frequenciesIII. The Gnostic InfonautNag Hammadi - 1940s technology - Shannon - information theory - the cult of information - Maxwell's demon - entropy - Wiener - cybernetics - Gnosticism - the Hymn of the Pearl - heresyIV. TechGnosis, American Stylethe American religion - Freemasonry and engineering - American techno-utopianism - the frontier - John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace" - Extropians - cyborg dreamsV. The Spiritual Cyborgman as machine - Gurdjieff - L. Ron Hubbard - Scientology - countercultural technophiles - psychedelics - New Age technology - Charles Tart - John Lilly - Timothy LearyVI. A Most Enchanting Machinehippie computing - Community Memory - the Well - Mondo 2000 - magic - social engineering - advertising - postmodern tribes - technopagans - technological animismVII. Cyberspace: The Virtual CraftAntonin Artaud - cyberspace - Mark Pesce - Vodou - art of memory - Tim Berners-Lee - Bruno - computer games - Dungeons & Dragons - Adventure - Dante - "True Names" - MUD metamorphosisVIII. The Alien CallDisinformation & paranoia - Roswell - "Saucers Speak" - New Age channeling - Starseed transmissions - Heaven's Gate - Baudrillard & apocalyptic simulation - holodeck - Internet multiverseIX. Datapocalypsethe sense of an ending - Y2K - Joachim of Fiore - the religion of technology - the third wave - communication - Pentecost - SnowCrash - televangelism - Philip K. Dick - VALISX. Third Mind from the SunTielhard de Chardin - the noosphere - artificial life - surveillance - the Mark of the Beast - globalization - social DarwinismXI. The Path is a Networkthe net of Indra - mindfulness - Leibniz and the monadology - cyberfeminism - Sadie Plant - postmodernism - the Glass Bead Game - "netaphysics"

A must-read!

I was not expecting a classical Gnostic text when I picked this book up, perhaps that's why I'm not as dissapointed as others who have read it. I was looking for a work in the Gnostic tradition (not Tradition). Davis makes some compelling connections between the old and new seekers after Truth. References cited in this book were also good, and steered me toward other interesting works.

Erik Davis channels the spirit gestalt of the counterculture cyberculture that manifested as Xerox zines in the 1990's and now permeates the digital noosphere as the very surface of the interwebs.Nobody does it better.

Great Read!! Loved it!!

Amazing analysis and insight into our past, present and possible future(s).

Dove va l'uomo tecnologico?

All good. Quick delivery and well packaged. Exactly as advertised