From the printing press to the telegraph, through radio, TV and the Internet, TechGnosis explores the mystical impulses that lie behind our obsession with information technology. In this thrilling book, writer and cyber guru Erik Davis demonstrates how religious imagination, magical dreams and millennialist fervour have always permeated the story of technology. Through shamanism to gnosticism, voodoo to alchemy, Buddhism to evangelism, TechGnosis peels away the rational shell of info tech to reveal the utopian dreams, alien obsessions and apocalyptic visions that populate the ongoing digital revolution. 'Beautifully written, carefully conceived and absolutely accessible, TechGnosis proves that it?s time we sat up and took notice? Observer ?A masterpiece of informed polemic, welding seemingly disparate blocs of knowledge and thought into a coherent, challenging whole with passion, erudition and wit? Independent.