Note: Erik will be speaking with the author of the book, Mike Jay, live at 2pm EST today on his new weekly internet radio show Expanding Mind over at http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com — Ed.

The universe is made of thoughts
by Erik Davis (techgnosis.com)

The Atmosphere of Heaven, Mike Jay’s latest book of hard-as-nails history of consciousness, tells the curious story of the Pneumatic Institution, a somewhat heretical outpost of British medical exploration where chemistry, poetry, and Jacobin politics crossed. Researchers at the Institution, founded at the close of the eighteenth century by the clearly excellent Thomas Beddoes, had the good fortune and cleverness to discover, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the giddy metaphysical glee of sucking down bags of nitrous oxide. Jay enlivens his story with well-drawn characters—including Samuel Coleridge, the brilliant Humphry Davy, and the very fat and lovable Dr. Beddoes—while the economic, political, and philosophical turbulence of the time is almost too vividly invoked. Indeed, though Jay’s exacting assessment of the era’s struggles with tyranny, recession, war, and the deflation of liberty curtail some of the book’s escapist potential, these contemporary shudders are somewhat compensated by the modestly comforting realization that, at least as far as modernity goes, it was ever thus.

Read the rest of this entry »

THE ANALOG LIFE
a column by ERIK DAVIS

“Archive Fever”

(originally published in Arthur No. 30

Last month Paul Miller—the avant-garde DJ, musician and theorist who always appends his name with “aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid”—finally released a collection of essays he has been editing for ages on digital and sampling culture, called Sound Unbound. It’s a cool book, and I’m not surprised. I first met Paul at the Village Voice in the early 90s, when I recognized the voodoo vévé for Legba that appeared on one of his stickers. Over the years, his DJ mixes, thoughts, and restless career represent a lot of what I continue to love about digital culture. Paul is relentlessly interconnected and multi-disciplinary, refuses to be locked into one career identity or scene, and restlessly moves between worlds. He thinks and acts like he spins, an endless collage that draws equally from high and low, here and there, old and new.

All this is reflected in the book, a somewhat amorphous but fascinating collection of essays by musicians (Steve Reich, Brian Eno), techies (Bruce Sterling, Jaron Lanier), edge academics (Ron Eglash, Manuel De Landa), and nomads like me. I contributed an essay I wrote over a decade ago called “Roots and Wires,” about dub music, polyrhythm, the African diaspora, and their digital mutation into drum’n’bass. (Today I would talk about dubstep, though I would be rather less enthusiastic.) In retrospect, I realize that my desire to uncover both the spiritual roots of the dub virus and its futuristic implications was another version of my concern with understanding the rapport—and conflict—between the digital and the analog, coding strategies that are also metaphors for much larger processes of understanding and experiencing culture and the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Crazy Wisdom of Philip K. Dick
An online course by Erik Davis
Maybe Logic Academy (http://www.maybelogic.org)
Sep. 17 – Nov. 11

Once a purely cult figure, Philip K. Dick ( 1928-1982) is now widely recognized as a pulp visionary of the highest order. This course will approach his work not so much as science fiction but as crazy wisdom. We’ll explore how his texts seem designed to illuminate our posthuman problems and our most ancient philosophical questions — and to then scramble those insights with a cheap ray gun. We will read two of Dick’s major novels, _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ and _VALIS_, both chosen for their heavy gnostic themes. We will discuss drugs and archons and machines that break down, including, possibly, yourself. We will also explore the two greatest examples of the many PKD movies to date, the “new” _Blade Runner_ version and _A Scanner Darkly_—further evidence that Dick’s spirit will only continue to permeate the culture at large.

Please check out
http://www.maybelogic.org/erikcrs.htm
and consider signing up!