Jack Trembath, Davis Ch. III


In Chapter III of TechGnosis "the gnostic infonaut", Davis highlights the libertarian ideologies of the second century Gnostics and how their views are reflective of the age of information and everchanging technologies.  I think that this chapter really focuses on the mystical side of the crossroads between humanity and technology.  It begins to lay the foundations for the Gnosis portion of TechGnosis.  Davis begins by discussing the discovery of the Gnostic texts and defines gnosis as, “a mystical influx of self-knowledge with strong Platonic overtones” (77).  The discovery of the texts especially post World War II really ties in to the idea of old, buried (literally and metaphorically) technologies and information resurfacing or finding its way back in to the loop of modern day relevance.  This chapter points to the relevance surrounding the Gnostic ideals and the fluctuations of the modern age. 
Davis first establishes Claude Shannon’s definition of information systems as being a message sent via some form of communication line to a receiver.  That message must survive any interference titled noise.  He furthers this definition by specifying the entropy of the probability of the receiver receiving and constructing the information.  If a system has unpredictable information there is more room for noise but just as equally there is more potential information to be tapped.  Reformed by Norbert Wiener as information being organization and entropy being the degree of disorganization, a new question of good and evil arises: If technology and information’s (science) aim is towards order, is the evil a lack order or disorder?   Cybernetics, now more confidently titled “systems theory”, points towards the same questions as well.  This science essentially views everything as a series of systems in which there is a feedback loop where the output of that system eventually returns as a new form of input.  On a philosophical scale, Davis argues that humans are a continuity of a system and to truly understand all, they must achieve an understanding of the system that is themselves.  As previously stated, the order is God-like and good, while the lack of order appears to be the source of evil.   The Gnostics believe the evil is a lack of order and furthermore the inability of humans to find gnosis in the flawed structure (system) of the universe.  The Gnostics are looking for the pure signal that surpasses any noise that is destructive to the receiver side of information.  I think that this idea of everything existing as a system of feedback loops and interacting with each other ties into previous ideals of animism in which everything is a matter of psychic presence.  Gnosticism is just the attempt to mystically discover all the information amongst the systems or psychic presences and to truly grasp the flow of information especially about oneself.  The self-reflective nature of technologies of information is drawing out the incorporeal search that the Gnostics began years ago.
               The article I attached discusses the ideals of modern Gnosticism which appears to leave behind the more radical ways of incorporeal transcendence and looks more in to spiritual comfort.  Despite this difference, one idea remains true and is especially relevant to the technological world: the modern Gnostic is under the, “assumption that spiritual disaffection is something to be cured by discovering and decoding some forgotten, half-effaced text inscribed somewhere within the self.” David Bentley Hart’s essay on Carl Jung’s “Red Book.”  The human is the system of code and gnosis is decoding it.  The rest of the article goes in to detail regarding the influence of Gnosticism in the west and how that influence goes two ways.  One being an anti-materialistic search in to the self and the other being the desire for order leading to more materialistic ideologies.  The article also demonstrates as well that despite the religions lack of continuity, it still had a lasting effect on Western religions and ideologies.     
https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/the-divided-influence-of-gnosticism/

Link to Continuation of Mind Web
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/18g8ybIqP-TCARxyTpHY418ELmJ1XJvqu5ELXL03t2tc/edit

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Symone Williams- Davis Chapters 1 and 2

Image
*This is posted late, I am aware and will face the consequences* Chapter 1: I chose the rhetorical triangle as my artifact because it is how I learned to write persuasively in high school. I feel it symbolizes the evolution of writing and how it's come because there were many doors that writing opened. Written word cannot be fully explained through a triangle, but this shows the purpose of writing; which is a visual representation of phonetic combinations. Also writing was created to convey messages to others. It was created so many civilizations ago that we often take it for granted. We no longer appreciate writing in its simplest form because we have developed new technologies that we deem as more helpful.  Even by inventing the alphabet, societies were able to attach phonetic sounds to verbal representations. These verbal representations became essential to society and scripture. being able to convey thoughts visually was once a mysticism, and now it is a part of our daily...
Read more

Kenna - Chapter 6

In terms of Davis’s chapter 6, I wanted to look into the term ‘personal computer’ and analyze some of the (now iconic) brand identity that accompanied the release of the PC. My area of study is communication and brand management so names are incredibly important to me. Davis describes the instance in 1972, when Brand first coined the term for Esquire (172). Imagining a time where communications about innovative technology regarding computers, including the simplest of categorical names we know today, were solely on paper fascinated me. The fact that you never hear ‘personal computer’ as a whole anymore fascinated me even more. It brought me back to a time when my parents had a large desktop monitor and laptops were a true commodity. We would ask our parents if we could “get on the computer” instead of “can I borrow your laptop?”. But there really is magic in a name. Alliteration and assonance are a huge help when it comes to the consumer. The soft sound of a ‘p’ is far more alluring t...
Read more

Jack Trembath Davis Ch. I-II

Image
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 ...
Read more