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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

Looking at Mars
Technoculture
7 min
Looking at Mars
Envisioning the Red Planet

Creativity, Data, and Limits
Mind and Philosophy
Creativity, Data, and Limits
To infinity — or maybe not quite

Boom Festival 2008
Subcultures
Boom Festival 2008
Dancing on liminal ground

Lance Daybreak’s Digital Dharma
Religions and Spirits, Technoculture
16 min
Lance Daybreak’s Digital Dharma
Surfing the Indranet

Reclaiming Art
Expanding Mind Podcast
Reclaiming Art
Expanding Mind

Marsupial
Articles and Essays
Marsupial
Our Mother for the Time Being

Coyote Poetics
Expanding Mind Podcast
Coyote Poetics
Expanding Mind

TechnoPagans
Esoterica
TechnoPagans
May the Astral Plane be Reborn in Cyberspace