− | '''Abstract''' - With the expansion of [[consciousness]] comes new ways of seeing [[reality]]. The hypercontextual pretexts, contexts and subtexts created by the new technologies of virtual, immersive and cyber realities create boundaryless [[experience]]s that are analogous to the archaic techniques evolved through [[shaman]]ic journeys designed to [[transcend]] all [[human]] boundaries. | + | '''Abstract''' - With the expansion of [[consciousness]] comes new ways of seeing [[reality]]. The hypercontextual pretexts, contexts and subtexts created by the new technologies of virtual, immersive and cyber realities create boundaryless [[experience]]s that are analogous to the archaic techniques evolved through [[Shaman|shamanic]] journeys designed to [[transcend]] all [[human]] boundaries. |
| The magico-spiritual [[imagination]], far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic [[vision]]s, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today’s ‘technological unconscious’. The [[language]] and [[ideas]] of the [[information]] [[society]] have slipped into and even transformed the myriad worlds of contemporary [[spirituality]]. What is emerging is a networked framework for grappling with some of the impulses that are currently tearing us apart: [[spirit]] and the [[machine]], modernity and nihilism, technology and the human. ‘We find ourselves trapped on a cyborg sandbank, caught between the old, smouldering campfire stories and the new networks of programming and control’ (Davis 1998: 131). We are ‘beached’ between the archaic sea of our magico-spiritual ancestors, freshly emerged from our proto-modern past, and spawned into the [[postmodern]] reality of fragmented selves, networked options, downloadable digitized consumerware and ‘technologies of [[ecstacy]]’. | | The magico-spiritual [[imagination]], far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic [[vision]]s, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today’s ‘technological unconscious’. The [[language]] and [[ideas]] of the [[information]] [[society]] have slipped into and even transformed the myriad worlds of contemporary [[spirituality]]. What is emerging is a networked framework for grappling with some of the impulses that are currently tearing us apart: [[spirit]] and the [[machine]], modernity and nihilism, technology and the human. ‘We find ourselves trapped on a cyborg sandbank, caught between the old, smouldering campfire stories and the new networks of programming and control’ (Davis 1998: 131). We are ‘beached’ between the archaic sea of our magico-spiritual ancestors, freshly emerged from our proto-modern past, and spawned into the [[postmodern]] reality of fragmented selves, networked options, downloadable digitized consumerware and ‘technologies of [[ecstacy]]’. |