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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...
  • Featured, Music
    9 min

    Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE!: The Beach Boys

    The Apollonian Shimmer of the Beach Boys

    The Apollonian Shimmer of the Beach Boys

    When I was boogie-boarding the Del Mar waves in the mid-'70s, I remember hearing this surf tune that name-dropped my hometown and thinking, cool, we're on the map, right along with "Hollywood" and "Disneyland" and "Chico." But the Beach Boys sounded pretty dinky to my Led ears, and the images that crusted the band like barnacles—Sunkist soda, bearded burnouts, state fairs, longboards—were too lame to hook me much. And the canons of AOR, new wave, and indie rock didn't teach...

A Random Selection

A Brief History of the Phantasm
Media
A Brief History of the Phantasm
Phantasia, spirits, and technology

Trance Planet
Subcultures
Trance Planet
The Analog Life, Arthur issue 31

The View from the Mast-head
Burning Shore
The View from the Mast-head

Pantheism and its Discontents

Acid Maker
Expanding Mind Podcast
Acid Maker
Expanding Mind

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

Welcome to Mars
Articles and Essays
Welcome to Mars
Ken Hollings' hallucinates the history of the late 40s and 50s

Vibes, Beats, and the Mystic Mix
Music
Vibes, Beats, and the Mystic Mix
A musical meditation

Maurice Nicoll’s Gurdjieffean Gospels
Articles and Essays
Maurice Nicoll’s Gurdjieffean Gospels
The New Man and the Mark