TECHGNOSIS is a tour de force of scholarship, insight, and juicy writing. Like McLuhan, Erik Davis sheds light on the shadows—the places we've neglected to look, or have feared to look, in our search for the meaning of human inventions.
—HOWARD RHEINGOLD, author The Virtual Community

Religion constitutes the perfect content provider (it's already virtual) and techgnosis makes the perfect religion for a world where Capital is god. But before you sign up to download your consciousness, better read Erik Davis...
— HAKIM BEY, author of T.A.Z.

TECHGNOSIS is at once an EEG of our silicon unconscious and a recovered memory of sacred technologies. Erudite but wired to the eyeballs, Davis is that rare blend: a postmodern classicist, equally at home with ancient automata and alien autopsies. A true believer in the politics of myth, he âs mindful, nonetheless, of the social issues that haunt our techno-eschatologies. Erik Davis is the perfect tour guide to our Disneyland of the Gods.
— MARK DERY, author of Escape Velocity and editor of Flame Wars

Erik Davis has written one of the best media studies books ever published. There's never been a more lucid analysis of the goofy, muddled, superstition-riddled human mind, struggling to come to terms with high technology. Unlike most tomes about tech, the occult, and social theory, TECHGNOSIS is literate, accessible and funny. A real winner all around!
— BRUCE STERLING, author of The Hacker Crackdown

TECHGNOSIS is a delirious and exhilerating exploration of the metascapes of new mind and new nature. Pungent and profound, the writing is pure alchemy, and the reader is re-designed in the very act of reading. This is perhaps the best book written on where we are going and how we got there.
—JEAN HOUSTON, author of A Mythic Life

Erik Davis is an astute guide through the heavens and hells where cyber-reality, pop culture, and spiritual impulses arm-wrestle each other for dominance. TECHGNOSIS is a fascinating book which rewards the reader with an uncommon number of surprises and insights.
—JAY KINNEY, Editor-in-Chief, Gnosis magazine

Erik Davis' compendious recitation of the history of communications technology dominates the discursive landscape of techno-exegesis like a Martian war machine. In the grand style of H.G. Wells, TECHGNOSIS is an apocalyptic synopsis of this century's technological climax.
—TERENCE MCKENNA, author of The Archaic Revival

Davis takes on subjects that would appear to be ridiculous in the hands of a lesser writer and renders them appropriately sublime.
—R. U. SIRIUS

I guess you could say Erik Davis is a secret agent of informational change, but make sure you have your mirror shades on, 'cause the information is crisp and thoughtful, sharp as a monomolecular razor, and basically just straight up ridiculously well researched — all while being accessible and fun to read. Not since Jeremy Campbells' groundbreaking Grammatical Man have we had as diverse and engaging a book on the linkages of information and culture, and how the two shape and mold each other. Davis's book cuts through the jargon and empty rhetoric of electro-theory and goes beyond all the cliches of a culture of total amnesia. A great debut by an eclectic and dynamic mind. A new Rosetta Stone for the Digerati.
—PAUL MILLER, a.k.a. DJ SPOOKY

Davis sets his sights high — to explain the philosophical and mystical history of the West against the development of our technologies. While the argument is often made that technologies are value-neutral, Davis proves — conclusively — that our technological fancies rise from our intrinsic spiritual natures, even as every new scientific discovery equally spawns a new era of spiritual "research". From the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus to the noospheric prognostications of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Davis shows that being and doing, in the guise of spirituality and technology, are the twinned halves of the cultural DNA within which we operate. This book isn't just a good read, it's a necessary read, a clever antidote to all of the business-as-usual explanations of the age of information. Anyone interested in the history of science, the history of religion, and the history and ethics of technology should read this book.
—MARK PESCE, co-inventor of VRML

Davis performs alchemy, fusing disparate strands of techno-hype, mystical speculation, and hard-nosed reporting into a Philosopher's Stone, unlocking secrets our culture doesn't even know it has. Like Greil Marcus, Davis is readable when the thinking gets heavy and in touch with pop culture without being overwhelmed by trivia. TECHGNOSIS is written smart, and far more rare, written well.
—PETER LUNENFELD, director of the Institute for Technology & Aesthetics at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena