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INTRODUCTION
by Chris Case
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TechGnosis
is a term I coined in 1990, initially as an update of the concept
of "Hipgnosis" which an old friend named Adrian Haggard came up with in
the early 60's (and which soon became the name of a graphics team who
produced many of the album covers for the Pink Floyd and others.)
In
the 90's there came with a new generation a resurgence of the 60's
concern with Gnosis, but this time around not crippled by the hippies'
disdain of technology and enterprise, though reaffirming of their
transpersonal orientation.
Around
1994 a book appeared, entitled "TechGnosis", by Erik Davis, a San
Francisco author. When I first thought of the word, It struck me as one that
was certain to occur to other minds, and it was with some relief that I
gathered from the reviews and excerpts I have found on the Net that Davis'
use of the term is consistent with mine. Indeed, the term seems to have
entered the language (Greek, really) in a number of places, as a web search
will reveal.
Davis
"argues that for many Net users there's a spiritual component to their
links with it, and that valid comparisons can be made with earlier
technological developments that also became metaphors for our view of the
world. He cites the example of the Extropians, a Californian sect which
believes it may one day be possible to download the essence of the human
mind into a computer and so achieve immortality, and suggests this has
elements in common with the Christian belief in the afterlife. He argues this
spiritual feeling is a high- tech update of gnosis, an early Christian belief,
hence his title and the word techgnosis for its modern equivalent. The topic
is techgnostics and someone who studies the subject is a techgnostic."
While
Davis uses the word as a portmanteau word for "technology" and
"gnosis", I had at the outset also in mind "techne" (art, skill) and "techno",
as
it was evident even then that the techno/trance dance rituals which were
taking place in a few underground venues were the emergence in a
universally accessible form of what one might call the trance- yoga of dance.
If
you are interested in contributing to this site, please post your
contributions to the TechGnosis List , which you can do without joining
the list, though that is certainly recommended...
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