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TechGnosis

The work of Erik Davis

Erik Davis is an American writer, scholar, journalist, and public speaker whose writings range from rock criticism to cultural analysis to esoteric explorations of California’s history.

I’ve been publishing stuff for over three decades, and most of it—with the exception of my books—resides on this site, which I have maintained through various iterations since the late 1990s. With Burning Shore now disseminating my fresher communiqués, Techgnosis.com acts more than ever as an archive of my work, including lectures, interviews, personal reflections, and almost a decade of the Expanding Mind podcast. Like Techgnosis itself, still in print and more relevant than ever, my stuff combines deep research with vivid writing and oracular aims that resonate through the years. For this revamped trans-temporal site, I and my team have introduced more robust searching and cross-linking of materials, as well as a roll-the-dice feature, which will hopefully allow for richer, more entertaining, and more synchronistic wanders through this wunderkammer.  — Erik

  • Books

    Blotter

    The Untold Story of an Acid Medium

    The Untold Story of an Acid Medium

    Blotter by Erik Davis is the first comprehensive written account of the history, art, and design of LSD blotter paper, the iconic drug delivery device that will perhaps forever be linked to underground psychedelic culture and contemporary street art. Created in collaboration with Mark McCloud’s Institute of Illegal Images, the world’s largest archive of blotter art, Davis’s boldly illustrated exhibition treats his outsider subject with the serious, art-historical respect it deserves...

A Random Selection

Phantasy Island
Articles and Essays, Esoterica
Phantasy Island
Stanzas by Giorgio Agamben

The Counterculture and the Occult
Esoterica
The Counterculture and the Occult
Counter(o)cculture

Profane Illuminations
Esoterica, Scholarship
29 min
Profane Illuminations
Robert Anton Wilson's Hedonic Ascesis

Monsters of Techno
Burning Shore
13 min
Monsters of Techno

From the Archives

An Interview with Richard Linklater
Moving Pictures
25 min
An Interview with Richard Linklater
Waking Dreams

Slow Down
Mind and Philosophy
Slow Down
Unfasttracking the future

It’s a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World
Technoculture
14 min
It’s a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World
Exploring Online Reality

Analog Listening
Expanding Mind Podcast
Analog Listening
Expanding Mind