Customer Reviews

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

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Erik Davis' fine writing has graced the pages of The Nation, Village Voice, Lingua Franca, and 21.C for many years. 'Techgnosis' grew out of an essay that he wrote for the seminal cyber-crit anthology 'Flame Wars', edited by Mark Dery.

Unlike other authors, Davis has an incredibly open mind and lets the disenfranchised speak for themselves. There are some stunning sections on Scientology, the Gurdjieff Work, John Dee, the Extropians, and the interface between early 1980s role-playing games like Gary Gygax's 'Advanced Dungeons and Dragons' and contemporary VR technology. Davis examines many of the integral examples of spirituality featured across many cyber-crit books, but his elegant writing and common sense inject a powerful dynamic into this work not often found elsewhere. He doesn't have the same hysterical tone often found in anti-cult literature for example, but is also balanced and can be subtly critical (confused yet?).

There are some strange omissions, notably an excellent piece Davis wrote for 21.C on the Mormons that appears to have been dropped by the publishers at last minute. Despite this, 'Techgnosis' is a strong debut that clearly conveys how the spiritual has transmutated into the technological at the end of the millennium. Fully referenced, Davis' book is a clear indication of the maturation of a defining authorial voice.

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.

Techgnosis creatively runs the gamut of the language and human expression game - unfurled in such divergent media as computers, literature, and science.

Davis paints a vivid picture of worlds that have opened up as a result of cutting edge human thinking and natural extensions of the human nervous system which have made our lives - if not entirely more useful - at least a lot more interesting and enjoyable.

Davis is a modern shaman who ties together the mystical with the technological in ways that make sense.

Very nicely done.

Davis sets his sights high - to explain the philosophical and mystical history of the West against the development of our technologies. While the argument is often made that technologies are value-neutral, Davies proves - conclusively - that our technological fancies rise from our intrinsic spiritual natures (explicit or implicit), even as every new scientific discovery equally spawns a new era of spiritual "research". From the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistos to the noospheric prognostications of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - who may have predicted the Internet a half century before it became a physical reality - Davies shows that being and doing, in the guise of spirituality and techology, are the twinned halves of the cultural DNA within which we operate.

Delightfully, this book is not just a dry retelling of history; Davis has a point of view, which is neither fancifully utopian or pessimistically Orwellian, but instead focuses on the reality of t! he isomorphism between what we believe about the world around us and what we believe about the life within us.

This book isn't just a good read, it's a necessary read, a clever antidote to all of the business-as-usual explanations of the age of information, and contextualizes our era against the last 3,000 years of history of the West. Anyone interested in the history of science, the history of religion, and the history and ethics of technology should read this book.

Call Erik Davis's piece a rant, a stretch, a sermon, a novelty or a misinformed text, you sorely miss the beauty, creativity and inspiration of this referential, imaginative book. It has solid value in its reflection on the voids prolific in our contemporary, secular metaphysics. It is a consolation.

Davis has done a delightful thing by surfing the reader through philosophical and technological sources from the Pre-Socratics to the Temple ov Psychic Youth to provide him with food for thought about humanity in the information age, something seemingly lacking in today's world. Along the way, Davis refers to multifarious theories, cites and works only to offer the reader possible paths of reflection along which Davis himself may have wandered, drawing connections about human nature and existence as we tumble along in space and time.

I, for one, marked the book up with innumerable postile, intending to keep it as a reference for my personal research and writing. I am happy there are finally others out there, like Erik Davis, who see connections like I do in such superficially diverse things as the danger of capitalism and Democritus, string theory and Cologne minimal techno music, Bill Gates and bull fighting, or whatever one chooses to use as sources and allegory for their thoughts and approach to life.

I applaud Davis for his subliminal theme, behind all the book's surface topics, of getting your hands dirty and grappling with the big questions like, given the development of information and technology, have we humans really improved humanity, compassion, and empathy to other beings beyond their gnostic roots, or are we to continually wallow in stock market mania, virus paranoia, conspiracy theory, alien signals, psychic faiths and unsatisfied cravings for cult leaders? I await Erik Davis's next book eagerly for his answers.

Erik Davis's often creative connections between magic and technology suffer from his style--a hip, let me explain it to you in terms you can understand narrative that casts every age as a pale anticipation of our own. The bloom is off the information age, and while the Internet is here to stay, Davis's way of talking about it isn't. I'd give this book an 'A' for enthusiasm from a talented undergrad. But as a serious analysis of the bridge between myth and machines, the story collapses under its own pretense of being 'now'. Search out the sources he footnotes and take the rest as an artefact of the dot-com boom.

What a fantastic read! Synthesis at last! At face value the world of IT is horribly devoid of any spiritual meaning. Davis slaughters that conception showing how, from prehistoric times, the story of technology has always been inextricably bound with man's spiritual quest.

The writing style is excellent, nuanced, quirky and the scope panoramic. Davis obviously has a very firm grip on such diverse subjects as history, religion, esoterica, IT, media and pop culture.

Working from prehistoric times through to a peek into the near future, speculations of the world of virtual embodiment and "plug-n-play" Nirvana, are rich food-for-thought. Can't wait for his next book due out in early 2006.

In TechGnosis, Erik Davis explores the relationship between the seemingly distinct worlds of technology and mysticism. Through a nearly overwhelming number of examples, Davis attempts to illustrate how technology has been influential in religious movements from Ancient Greece to the cyber-cults of recent years, and how mysticism has shaped technology, especially in modern IT. Throughout the book, he focuses on the similarities between the early Christian religion, Gnosticism, and the view of technology that our society holds today, citing the shared preoccupation with developing the knowledge to escape the troubles of the world. The connections are not always completely convincing, however, because Davis tends to present parallels between the two forms of thought rather than true relationships. Nonetheless, the book is a comprehensive overview of the progression of religion and technology, providing interesting accounts of alchemy, mesmerization, the early days of the Internet, and the power of science fiction and UFOs on culture and cults. The book has a very non-biased feeling, as Davis does not advocate a shift towards or away from a certain worldview, or attempt to prove the legitimacy of any religious views like so many other books on the topic. This makes the book feel a bit incomplete, as Davis simply presents a great deal of information and trivia that show similarities between religion and technology, without fully developing the implications of this similarity. However, the book remains powerful and interesting, and is written in an absorbing style. TechGnosis would entertain and educate anyone with an interest in the history and philosophy of technology, or mysticism and religion.

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 Wires

I. Imagining Technologies
the technological unconscious - Hermes - the writing machine - Plato - Torah - early Christianity - Hermes Trismegistus - the Corpus Hermeticum - alchemy - magic into science

II. The Alchemical Fire
the electromagnetic imaginary - lightning rods - Mesmer - animal magnetism - bioenergy - Reich - Morse - celestial telegraph - Bell and Watson - electric doppelgängers - Tesla - cosmic frequencies

III. The Gnostic Infonaut
Nag Hammadi - 1940s technology - Shannon - information theory - the cult of information - Maxwell's demon - entropy - Wiener - cybernetics - Gnosticism - the Hymn of the Pearl - heresy

IV. TechGnosis, American Style
the American religion - Freemasonry and engineering - American techno-utopianism - the frontier - John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace" - Extropians - cyborg dreams

V. The Spiritual Cyborg
man as machine - Gurdjieff - L. Ron Hubbard - Scientology - countercultural technophiles - psychedelics - New Age technology - Charles Tart - John Lilly - Timothy Leary

VI. A Most Enchanting Machine
hippie computing - Community Memory - the Well - Mondo 2000 - magic - social engineering - advertising - postmodern tribes - technopagans - technological animism

VII. Cyberspace: The Virtual Craft
Antonin Artaud - cyberspace - Mark Pesce - Vodou - art of memory - Tim Berners-Lee - Bruno - computer games - Dungeons & Dragons - Adventure - Dante - "True Names" - MUD metamorphosis

VIII. The Alien Call
Disinformation & paranoia - Roswell - "Saucers Speak" - New Age channeling - Starseed transmissions - Heaven's Gate - Baudrillard & apocalyptic simulation - holodeck - Internet multiverse

IX. Datapocalypse
the sense of an ending - Y2K - Joachim of Fiore - the religion of technology - the third wave - communication - Pentecost - SnowCrash - televangelism - Philip K. Dick - VALIS

X. Third Mind from the Sun
Tielhard de Chardin - the noosphere - artificial life - surveillance - the Mark of the Beast - globalization - social Darwinism

XI. The Path is a Network
the net of Indra - mindfulness - Leibniz and the monadology - cyberfeminism - Sadie Plant - postmodernism - the Glass Bead Game - "netaphysics"

Two factors come into play when I review a book. First and foremost is content, secondary is style. The content of Techgnosis is solid though the style has proven to be scattered.

The book begins by tracing the historical co-mingling of science, mystery and faith. Our predecessors can teach us a great deal with regards to how we integrate technology and faith. In our modern climate we take technological advance for granted even to the point of treating technology as an end in itself. We never look at what is lost or spend much energy integrating advances into our World View. The book stands a call for us to step back and take a larger view of who we are.

Don't dismiss this as a Luddite narrative. It is not. The author hits at the core of much of our modern day angst - How do we make sense of the explosive technological advancements of our times? Techgnosis excels in its documentation of several modern failures to integrate these changes. From current resurgence in the practice of witchcraft to UFO sightings, Erik Davis lays them all bare for us to see.

As an aside, I've noticed recently that none other than Scooby-Doo has gotten into synch with these off-balanced times. Current plots now ridicule the old "bad guy acting as a ghost to have all the gold to himself" and contain, now get this, wiccans whose aid is enlisted to save the gang by casting spells against "real" witches. Even modern-day comic books have lost their bearings.

While the content of Techgnosis may be worthwhile, the style is shotgun in nature. At times it appears that the author simply wants to impress us with his knowledge of Greek mythology and other trivia rather than building up to a coherent point. The book spends so much energy critiquing failed attempts to understand the human condition that when the author finally attempts to bring it all together at the end it is not clear he is going. A fine book nevertheless, it sheds light on challenges that face our society in the 21st century. Just don't look to it to provide any answers.