Jack Trembath Davis Ch. I-II
Davis begins his
book, TechGnosis by looking at the beginning of technologies of information
and their crossroads with the mystical and human nature’s curiosity with the unknown. He writes about the great divide created in
the west between nature and culture, characteristic of modernity, that freed the
west to take technology and innovation to a new level. He argues that because the two were not tied
together for western culture, they could view them outside of each other and create
technology without fully worrying about the consequences it had on culture. Despite this supposed divide, Davis demonstrates
how even early technology wired its way into the world around us and influenced
the path of history and ways of thoughts in unavoidable manners. He points out how technologies from the beginning
created newer views of animism and formed liminal zones at the crossroads of innovation. Essentially, technology allowed for more
creative spaces at the price of natural ones.
As exemplified through the works of Hermes, Thoth, and Trismegistus,
Davis arrays to the idea that technology is, “a device that crafts the real by
exploiting the hidden laws of nature and human perception alike” (17). One of the best examples of technology
shaping human thought Davis highlights is the invention of writing especially
phonetic alphabets in which, “the writing machine began to simulate human talk”
(25). Writing allowed for introspection as
well as viewing and comparing oneself to the surrounding abstract world.
The link below
touches more so on the meaning we give words and how the word itself doesn’t contain
the contents of the actual concept. It
is about the signified and the signifier and how we as humans give and find
meaning through the technology of the written word. In a similar way, the picture of the pipe
reflects this idea. This is one example
of how writing reconceptualizes human understanding of the world around them.
Davis second
chapter follows the movement of electricity through time and the evolution of
philosophical thought surrounding it, and its effect on culture. Electricity’s first impact was in how many
people viewed the body and soul or mind as separate forces and even how they viewed
a greater being beyond themselves.
Vitalism, defined as the idea “that bodies possess an independent life
force,” was characteristic of the early views of electricity and its
intersection between creation and science.
Mesmer and the scientists following him attempted to discover electromagnetic
fields that they believed influenced everything in our world. Through the discoveries of Faraday and Maxwell,
The Theosophical Society arose believing in a balance of mysticism as well as the
new discoveries of science. This led to the
popular belief that electricity could be a healing source especially in the U.S. Electricity was re-contextualized with the
invention of Morse which truly passed electricity in to the realm of technologies
of information and sparked hope for an electric utopia. Instead of perfection, spiritualism arose as
a means of using technology to contact the electric vitalism that lied within
the dead. Next, the invention of the
telephone brought up the uncomfortableness of the doppelganger and the uncanny. Davis ends the chapter writing about Tesla
who took electricity to the next level by experimenting and creating new spaces
and new connections that would otherwise not exist. Regardless of his discoveries, the main point
is, “new technologies of perception and communication open up new spaces, and
these spaces are always mapped, on one level or another, through the
imagination” (74).
The link below is to an article discussing the politics and philosophy of recreating actors and musicians who have passed away for film and performance. (Star Wars and Tupac) I think this article aligns with the doppelganger and uncanny questions that arose with the invention of the telephone. Everything about them appears to be the original, but it is not. “Does it talk, do we talk through it, or are those vibrations only the ghosts of ourselves?” (66)
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