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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 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

Future Design Science
Expanding Mind Podcast
60 min
Future Design Science
Expanding Mind

The Dreamspell Calendar
Subcultures
The Dreamspell Calendar
Jose Argüelles' Telektonon

Exploring Salvia Divinorum
Expanding Mind Podcast
60 min
Exploring Salvia Divinorum
Expanding Mind

G.K. Chesterton
Articles and Essays
G.K. Chesterton
Anarchists, beer, and the man in the moon

The Computational Brain
Expanding Mind Podcast
58 min
The Computational Brain

Algorithms, drum circles, and the trouble with mirror neurons: a talk with software entrepreneur and computational neuroscientist Paul King, visiting…

Listening in on Christian rock
Music
5 min
Listening in on Christian rock
From the Danielson Famile to Relient K

Occult Control Systems
Expanding Mind Podcast
60 min
Occult Control Systems
Expanding Mind

The Freaky Origins of Christian Rock