You Shall Be as Gods: The Poetics of Technology

We basically think our world into being and then we inhabit these condensations of our imagination, as Terence McKenna tells us.  We are already magical creatures.

Every time we make a telephone call we create techno-social wormholes that connect us with other minds, essentially electrified thoughts traveling at the speed of light.  I mean, we are, to me, god-like.  Certainly to the generations that came before us, if they could see the average person chatting on Facetime on their iPhone, they would say witchcraft, heresy.  

You should read Erik Davis’ book, TechGnosis, which talks about the relationship between technology and mysticism and magic and the idea that having created the gods we have effectively turned into them. 

And that’s kind of exciting to me on multiple levels: metaphorically, poetically, but also the idea that we might actually use this technology to reengineer our biological substrate and turn ourselves into creatures that don’t necessarily have to be victims of entropy is also a real realistically exciting possibility. 

So it’s not just that it’s poetic, but if it actually happens, it would be nice to be part of the generation that achieves that.  

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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