Blog Group 3

In this Chapter Davis discusses how technology is impacting us, with even more power than Christianity did. The question I have for Davis is, why do we give new technology the power to change our lives forever? One of my favorite quotes from Datapocalypse was from Philip K. Dick when he said, "Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups....Unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power." This quote encompasses all the power associated with technology and how if it is in the wrong hands it could spiral out of control. My meme is a picture of someone googling that they are sad and anxious and the "FBI" immediately texts them. These types of pictures have been circling the web because people are joking ...

The image used is a cropped version of the poster for the film "Metropolis", a German film from 1927 that was an early pioneer of the Science-Fiction genre in film. One of its most iconic characters was the "Maschinenmensch", literally "Machine Person". Chapter 9 brings up simulated ecosystems entirely composed of code, and that got me to question whether or not these evolving ones and zeroes could be considered true "life". Then I began to wonder what "life" actually was. Hence, "Define 'Life'".

Why is it so compulsive? However demanding the strategic challenges of such games are the down to the lizard brain, catalyzing an intense fixation physiologically comparable to a trance state. Comparable to a trance state. The Texans behind the phenomenally successful and exuberantly bloody machines purchased, they would most likely say, for far more sensible purposes. For far more sensible purposes. PlayStation and Sega/Nintendo/3Ds decks suck armies of children into computer codespace for of id, ego, and superego. Of id, ego, and superego. The id is the monstrous unconscious tyke that the good doctor believed our egos must constantly wrestle with in they named their company Id—the most primitive character in the Freudian triumvirate order for civilization to stand. Order for civilization to stand. the reality, especially for younger people, is that phone use, especially heavy use, isn’t so lighthearted.  The problem is that teens are spending more and more time, not talking on...

Recently developed technologies are changing all aspects of life. Technology in general has altered human nature. The human race was essentially destined to be the superior to the rest of nature, however technology has gone against nature in many ways. Davis mentions how reproductive technologies and genetic engineering might end up influencing the future much more than just computers. Machines of information and communication persistently present many of todays exhilarating fantasies. I thought it was interesting how Davis says that society fundamentally keeps a firm belief that the digital age is an evolutionary step forward for humanity that will “help empower the individual, restore community, aid the infirm, overcome prejudice, turbocharge democracy, make us smarter and richer, and maybe even spark world peace”. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, because we really don’t know what we are really doing but we are so far deep in it we have to think positively. Also, I liked how Davis ...

What really stood out for me in these chapters was the idea of virtual reality and a sort of misconception that technology induces. Davis states that virtual reality is characters, objects, and images taking on a dreamlike force. Virtual reality is essentially a spiritualized state of matter; it’s not actually real, but it seems very realistic. I like how Davis said how powerful art and theater are continuously trying to blend and that techgnostic drive aims to create a tighter “world of magical iconography, mythic masks, and otherworldly journeys”. It is truly incredible what we have done and acquired with technology. Technology adds a third dimension to the world. A prevalent topic that Davis mentioned was video games. Though they give off a dreamlike force, much like virtual reality, video games are not dreams rather a “similitude of a dream” (214). In fact, I would consider video games as a sort of virtual reality. They have become persistently more realistic and have begun to ind...

I thought it was quite interesting how certain theories arise with logos and names. For example, Silicon Valley, which is situated in California, is where many global technology companies started. A connection that can be made here is a saying that became popular for going on the internet known as “surfing” the web. This gives it a California connotation. Apple is one of the institutions that started there, and there are many theories about the apple logo that the company uses. Steve Jobs followed a fruition diet which may have inspired the name of the company and logo. The name has a connection to Eden’s “forbidden fruit” of knowledge. Not to mention an initial selling price of $666. Many things can be said about this. First off, Davis states that it brought a sort of “godly power” to the consumers hands (173). The “forbidden fruit” is ultimately something that is desired more because it is not allowed. I can see how this relates to the fact that technology is something that is so po...

In Chapter 8 & 9 Davis talks about the world wide web (www), and how it connects everyone together. That got me thinking. If the world is held together by a web, the web is held together by the myriad knots that secure each of its strands. Knots are highly charged energy centers, nodes, where the tentacles intersect, connect and diverge, like station depots on a railway map.  Knots are featured all but universally in the religious practices of most cultures. Jewish prayer shawls are fringed with knotted threads. Rosaries were knotted cords before they were made of beads. The knot is one of the eight sacred symbols of Buddhism.  The shrines and altars at Shinto holy places are guarded by large swags of woven straw rope hung with knotted cloth and paper, each representing a prayer or blessing. It is common for travelers to tie a knot on their own wrists and then one on the wrists of all their near and dear. In our technological era, these knots represent all the areas that w...

I was interested when Davis was speaking about the "controlled sips of California’s creative anarchy, its 'go with the flow' Beat Taoism", the computer industry discovered new philosophies of management and productivity that were appropriate to the increasingly chaotic global market their products were helping to produce. Such philosophies are by no means limited to the computer industry, of course. Faced with information overload, a spin-cycle marketplace, and the broiling seas of deregulation, businesspeople across the globe are now a most enchanting machine learning to “surf”—a supremely Californian image based on loosening top-down control and resiliently responding to the unpredictable flux of capital, data, and shifting demand. Management gurus speak an increasingly New Age lingo of “thriving on chaos,” generating “dynamic synergy,” and cultivating the Tao of the Dow, In Out of Control, his manifesto of cybernetic technocapitalist evolution. Wired even quotes La...

In chapter 7 Davis goes attempts to explain how to visualize the world wide web. Stating that we can map the web with exactly what we put into it. The complex networks in place can be visualized with the help of VRML. What stuck out most to me in this chapter were Davis's parallels of Pesce's work and religion. Using words like 'pagan' 'ritual' and 'ceremony'. Using these terms reminded me of praying to a cyber-god which is something I believe in, not an AI or physical being but similar to going to church to pray. When going to pray at church as a child I remember asking for help, asking questions, looking to get away and mainly putting my mind in the hands of someone/something I couldn't make sense of. These aspects from my younger days of praying not translate to using technology. These days whenever I use the internet those same things I prayed for in church are the same things I find myself using the internet for. So in a sense whenever I go onli...

In these two chapters, Davis discusses the development of information systems and also talks about human nature, spirituality and nature itself. He talks about the idea that man will become machine in the future and how machines give us more power. I made this collage that has smaller and bigger pictures based on their importance in the chapters. I mostly focused on the idea of man becoming machine and the morphing of information systems and human nature. 

These photos arranged chronologically represented the ideas Davis's discussed in chapter 4 and 5.  Begining at the bottom with candles, representing religion and a time before technology, besides an image of the Freemasons. Followed by a psychedelic image of the mind in correlation with of the discovery of atoms in relation to the technological atom (the pixel). Then combining Davis's mention of extropy and entropy with a comic only to be seen above with his mention of space and cowboys.  While at the top is man's evolution through the homo sapiens stage to what we wee today as man/woman with the computer as one.  -Matt Stallone  

These two chapters are very interconnected. They answered so many hanging questions in my head, about how the gnostic religion connected with our world today. Below is a Wordle that I created, and shows the important technologies that were represented in these chapters.

This visual shows a sort of timeline documenting certain “artifacts” that Davis mentions throughout these chapters. Starting at the bottom with the beginning of chapter four where he discusses gnostic religion and ending at the top with a computer demonstrating Davis’s belief that computers are essentially psychedelics.  Below is a list of my notes about topics that stood out throughout these chapters in Davis’s book, which helped me create the visual:  Religion- Gnostic “Hermetic America” - dollar bill eye at top o pyramid  Freemasonry - masonic lodges Cosmology NASA The cowboy (hybrid o the arthurian knight) and the wild west Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Cyberspace Extropians Plato Star Trek Space tech (UFO) Stars Evolution (ape…human) Controlling our animal souls (instinct) become machines ourselves, withdrew from animistic imagination Relationship between man and machines   Clocks E-meter MEST (matter, energy, ...

Throughout the third chapter, there were plenty of technologies that brought electricity and information together. In the beginning, there were the gnostics codices that basically "threatens to change everything"(74). Erik Davis constantly spoke about the war over information. Even at the beginning of civilization, there was a scare of change. After the technologies that the Gnostic codices Davis brought up the atomic bomb, and how it was a bomb for mass destruction, but it was a bomb of information. This definitely did not come without nightmares, especially when it comes from "electronic media's increasing ability to mesmerize hearts and minds"(76) of people. When Claude Shannon, introduced the birth of information theory, many embraced this idea. "The integrity of messages can be maintained by translating them into digital codes of varying degrees of complexity, redundancy, and bandwidth"(80). One must use this "ideal code" to achiev...

These artifacts all connected so strongly for me because they are tied together in a way I haven’t thought about before. DNA is basically the instruction manual for each individual human being. Some scientists even believe that DNA determines everything . These specific artifacts cannot be put in sequential order necessarily, obviously the computer and coding would be the most recent and DNA would be the last, but they are interconnected in the way of communication and information. The DNA section of Chapter 3 in Techgnosis really got me thinking beyond any of the other sections. I wonder how deep we can dive into DNA to see the instructions that it gives us. It determines our phenotype, but does it determine our fate? Who we love, who we worship, what we want? Erik Davis stated that, "More specifically, DNA was described as a kind of alphabetic writing, a culturally specific media metaphor that nonetheless seems tough to avoid" (87). He also said that in the book The DNA My...

                                                     

The first interesting point that Davis' made was about Hermes. "Hermes embodies the mythos of the information age not just because he is the lord of communication"(9). The Greek word, techne, implies the specialty of art. Darker brings up that in Homer's tongue, the word for "trickiness" is indistinguishable to the one for "specialized aptitude, for example, the ability that Hephaestus shows when he produces Achilles' enchantment shield. Hermes along these lines uncovers a picture of innovation, as valuable handmaiden, as well as a cheat. For all its regular viability, innovation remains on moving ground, giving us on the double more what's more, not as much as its marvelous powers initially propose? Dark colored demands that Hermes' slyness isn't just a levelheaded gadget, however a statement of mystical control. The god's enchantment is questionable, in light of the fact that we can't obviously recognize the sharp ploy from t...

Davis mentions many different interesting concepts, in particular The Great Divide and electricity. The Great Divide is a phenomenon that Latour, a French philosopher, claims is identified by the split between nature and culture. This divide has been imposed upon through modernity. The idea of nature versus culture is very interesting, because these two ideas are frequently viewed upon as opposing concepts. What is classified as “nature” can not come about with the influence and interference of humans, and the establishment of culture is attained in opposition to nature. Davis suggests that hybrids (aka technological innovations) push us deeper into a “no man’s land” which lies between nature and culture where “science, language, and social imagination overlap and interpenetrate” (3). This diagram that I found is a good visual representation of this “no man’s land” that Davis is making reference to. Humans are not part of the “nature” side, rather they make up the “culture” si...