Erik Davis

Erik Davis (1967, Redwood City, California) is an author, podcaster, journalist, and popular speaker based in San Francisco.

Davis was born during the Summer of Love within a stone’s throw of San Francisco. He grew up in North County, Southern California, and spent a decade on the East Coast, where he studied literature and philosophy at Yale and spent six years in the freelance trenches of Brooklyn and Manhattan before moving to San Francisco, where he currently resides. He is the author of four books: Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Yeti, 2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), with photographs by Michael Rauner, and the 33 1/3 volume Led Zeppelin IV (Continuum, 2005). His first and best-known book remains TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), a classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages and recently republished by North Atlantic Press. He has contributed chapters on art, music, technoculture, and contemporary spirituality to over a dozen books, including Suzanne Treister’s HFT: The Gardener (Black Dog), Future Matters: the Persistence of Philip K. Dick (Palgrave), Sound Unbound: Writings on Contemporary Multimedia and Music Culture (MIT, 2008), AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man (University of New Mexico, 2005), Rave Ascension (Routledge, 2003), and Zig Zag Zen (Chronicle, 2002). In addition to forewords and introductions, Davis has contributed articles and essays to a variety of periodicals, including Bookforum, Arthur, Artforum, Slate, Salon, Gnosis, Rolling Stone, the LA Weekly, Spin, Wired and the Village Voice.

Davis has given talks at universities, media art conferences, and festivals around the world. He has taught seminars at the UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Rice University, as well as workshops at the New York Open Center and Esalen. He has been interviewed by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the BBC, and appeared in a number of documentaries, as well as in Craig Baldwin’s underground film Specters of the Spectrum. He wrote the libretto for and performed in How to Survive the Apocalypse, a Burning Man-inspired rock opera. He has hosted the podcast Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network since 2010, and earned his PhD in Religious Studies from Rice University in 2015. (2020)

Publications

• TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, New York: Harmony Books, 1998, x+353 pp; London: Serpent's Tail, 1999, 353 pp; new ed., Five Star, 2005; new ed., upd., forew. Eugene Thacker, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2015. Publisher. Author.
  • Techgnosis: miti, magia e misticismo nell'era dell'informazione, trans. Buonomo M., Naples: Ipermedium libri, 2001, 346 pp. (Italian)
  • TechGnoza: mit, magia + mistycyzm w wieku informacji, trans. Jerzy Kierul, Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 2002, 438 pp. (Polish)
  • Tecgnosis: mito, magia y misticismo en la era de la información, Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, 2023, 509 pp. [1] (Spanish)
  • Techgnosis: mito magia e misticismo nell'era dell'informazione, trans. Francesca Massarenti, Rome: NERO, 2023, 496 pp. Publisher. (Italian)

Links

• Website
• Wikipedia