Technology As Magic

Author : Richard Stivers
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 9780826413673
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Technology as Magic written by Richard Stivers and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2001-08-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What gives the mass media, particularly advertising and television, their extraordinary power over our lives, so that even the most jaded and sophisticated among us are troubled and fascinated by their allure? The secret, according to Richard Stivers, in this brilliant new book, lies in the curious relationship between technology and magic. Stivers argues the two are now related to one another in such a way that each has taken on important characteristics of the other. His contention is that our expectations for technology have become magical to the point that they have generated a multitude of imitation technologies that function as magical practices. These imitation technologies flourish in the fields of psychology, management administration, and the mass media, and their paramount purpose in human adjustment and control. Advertising and television programs, in particular, contain the key magical rituals of our civilization.In a fascinating analysis of television programming, Stivers shows how various genres--news, sports, game shows, soap operas, sitcoms, etc.--have their distinct mythological symbols. Through dramatized information, they symbolically connect consumer goods and services to desired outcomes--the utopian goals of success, happiness, and health--thus enveloping technology, both real and imitation, in a magical cocoon.

Author : Dennis R. Wier
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1888428392
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trance: from Magic to Technology written by Dennis R. Wier and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes a new model for trance as well as practical techniques to analyse and design trances. Writing from his personal experience, Wier suggests that some of these ideas might represent new practical precision tools for psychologists as well as for those who work with the occult. Practical suggestions for meditators, yogis, witches and others are included to deepen trance and to increase the trance force as well as techniques to terminate a trance. Pathological trance and trance abuse are also described with suggestions on how they may be recognized and prevented.

Author : Virginia Heffernan
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501132679
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magic and Loss written by Virginia Heffernan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A digital-culture expert who writes for The New York Times Magazine discusses the logic, aesthetics, cultural potential and societal impact of the Internet, a medium that favors speed, accuracy, wit, prolificacy and versatility."

Author : Tanya Huff
Publisher : Astra Publishing House
ISBN 13 : 1101597593
Total Pages : 581 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Silvered written by Tanya Huff and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2013 Aurora Award! From the author of the bestselling Blood books, a brilliant new tale of shape-changers, mages, soothsayers,and a power-mad emperor. The Empire has declared war on the small, were-ruled kingdom of Aydori, capturing five women of the Mage-Pack, including the wife of the were Pack-leader. With the Pack off defending the border, it falls to Mirian Maylin and Tomas Hagen—she a low-level mage, he younger brother to the Pack-leader—to save them. Together the two set out on the kidnappers’ trail, racing into the heart of enemy territory. But with every step the odds against their survival, let alone their success, grow steeper...

Author : Erik Davis
Publisher : North Atlantic Books
ISBN 13 : 1583949305
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book TechGnosis written by Erik Davis and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy.

Author : James Howard Kunstler
Publisher : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802194389
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Too Much Magic written by James Howard Kunstler and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The Long Emergency explains why technology can’t solve all our problems, and how excessive optimism can endanger our future. The Long Emergency quickly became a grassroots hit, offering a shocking vision of our post-oil future and capturing the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike. As discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions continues, the author returns with Too Much Magic—evaluating what has changed and what has not, and what direction we need to take in this post-financial-crisis world. “Too much magic” is what James Howard Kunstler sees in the bright utopian visions of the future dreamed up by optimistic souls who believe technology will solve all our problems. Their visions remind him of the flying cars and robot maids that were the dominant images of the future in the 1950s. Kunstler’s image of the future is much more sober. With vision, clarity of thought, and a pragmatic worldview, Kunstler argues that the time for magical thinking and hoping for miracles is over—and the time to begin preparing for the long emergency has begun. “A sharp critic of energy-sucking, big-box landscapes.” —Winnipeg Free Press

Author : Margaret Weis
Publisher : Spectra
ISBN 13 : 0307434680
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Triumph of the Darksword written by Margaret Weis and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III in the heroic saga of magic, betrayal and adventure, The Darksword Trilogy. In the realm where magic is life, Joram was one of the Dead. Born without power, he was denies his royal birthright and sentenced to the Turning—his mind to be imprisoned inside a husk of living stone. Yet at the last moment, Saryon took his place, suffering the eternal torment for his young master, And joram and his wife Gwendolyn vanished into the mists that marked the Border of the World. . . . Now, ten years later, Joram and Gwendolyn have returned to reclaim their rightful place in Merilon. Wielding one last time the terrible, magic-thirsting Darksword, Joram must confront the evil sorcerer Menju and his army of Technologists from beyond the Border in a final apocalyptic battle. Rejoined by Saryon, the mage Mosiah and Simkin, Joram will fulfill the ancient prophecy of the Darksword—the prophecy that puts in his hands the power to destroy the world . . . or save it.

Author : Mark Cotta Vaz
Publisher : Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0345381521
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Industrial Light & Magic written by Mark Cotta Vaz and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 1996 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The way that special effects are designed and then created in films is explained in this lavishly illustrated book that traces the development of the ILM company of George Lucas.

Author : Alf Hornborg
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137567872
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Global Magic written by Alf Hornborg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern thought on economics and technology is no less magical than the world views of non-modern peoples. This book reveals how our ideas about growth and progress ignore how money and machines throughout history have been used to exploit less affluent parts of world society. The argument critically explores a middle ground between Marxist political ecology and Actor-Network Theory.

Author : C.S. Friedman
Publisher : Astra Publishing House
ISBN 13 : 1101464321
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Sun Rising written by C.S. Friedman and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 1992-09-01 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a millennium ago, Erna, a seismically active yet beautiful world was settled by colonists from far-distant Earth. But the seemingly habitable planet was fraught with perils no one could have foretold. The colonists found themselves caught in a desperate battle for survival against the fae, a terrifying natural force with the power to prey upon the human mind itself, drawing forth a person's worst nightmare images or most treasured dreams and indiscriminately giving them life. Twelve centuries after fate first stranded the colonists on Erna, mankind has achieved an uneasy stalemate, and human sorcerers manipulate the fae for their own profit, little realizing that demonic forces which feed upon such efforts are rapidly gaining in strength. Now, as the hordes of the dark fae multiply, four people—Priest, Adept, Apprentice, and Sorcerer—are about to be drawn inexorably together for a mission which will force them to confront an evil beyond their imagining, in a conflict which will put not only their own lives but the very fate of humankind in jeopardy.