Book: Techgnosis by Erik Davis

[badstar]

Anyone heard of it?

From the author's website:
"Ranging from the printing press to the telegraph, from radio to the Internet, TechGnosis peels away the utilitarian shell of technology to reveal the mystical and millennialist expectations that permeate the history of technology, and especially information technology. The book shows how the religious imagination, far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today's "technological unconscious." In turn, TechGnosis also shows how the language and ideas of the information society have shaped and even transformed many aspects of contemporary spirituality. In the end, the book gestures towards a vision of "the network path": a global, pluralistic perspective capable of grappling with some of the forces that are currently tearing us apart: spirit and science, modernity and nihilism, technology and the human."

I'm on page 21, anf it's already spun my brain off into the stratoshphere...and all he's done is talk about mythologies of Hephaestus, Hermes and Thoth and culture in ancient Greece and Alexandria. I can't wait to get further into it. The writing is amazingly poetic.


Techgnosis

Comments

[tecie.livejournal.com]

Most of those books are written by people who don't understand the nature of a computer-- is this one actually good?

[fuego.livejournal.com]

i'm on page 21 out of 354. so far, it's amazing. but like i said...so far we're way back in ancient Alexandria.

the book isn't about computers specifically, it's about how religious and spiritual visions have shaped technology.

Not the first

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

TechGnosis is one of many, such as the "Lexus and the Olive Tree" that has created commentary loosely based on technology, globalization and human development. But 150 years ago, thinkers like Nietzche and Kirkregaard thought about industrial society and the effect on an and religion and such. Nietsche is most famous for Nihlism - the belief in nothing - but there's alot more to hi sthoughts than just that, and he abandoned Nihlism later in life. I'd have to red more to see if he's echoing philosophers or bogarting from them...

Re: Not the first

[fuego.livejournal.com]

No doubt, and no clue.

But so far, I'm realy liking this book.