The Magic Of Technology

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 : John Potts
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 190 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Technologies of Magic written by John Potts and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technologies of Magic charts curious territory - a place occupied by both machines and magic. This collection of essays investigates the co-existence of very old forms of thought - belief in ghosts, magic, spirits - and contemporary culture. Refracted through highly technologised societies, magic manifests itself in surprising ways and through a diverse range of practices. Apprehension of the magical - in the world of machines - can give rise to a feeling of uncanny unease. These essays show that ultimately this produces another way of thinking about technology in contemporary culture.

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 : Alf Hornborg
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000686825
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Magic of Technology written by Alf Hornborg and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines our understanding of technology and suggests that machines are counterfeit organisms that seem to replace human bodies but are ultimately means of displacing workloads and environmental loads beyond our horizon. It emphasises that technology is not the politically neutral revelation of natural principles that we tend to think, but largely a means of accumulating, through physically asymmetric exchange, the material means of harnessing natural forces to reinforce social relations of power. Alf Hornborg reflects on how our cultural illusions about technology appeared in history and how they continue to stand in the way of visions for an equal and sustainable world. He argues for a critical reconceptualisation of modern technology as an institution for redistributing human time, resources, and risks in world society. The book highlights a need to think of world trade in other terms than money and raises fundamental questions about the role of human-artifact relations in organising human societies. It will be of interest to a range of scholars working in anthropology, sociology, economics, development studies, and the philosophy of technology.

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 : Eden Medina
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262526204
Total Pages : 411 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Imported Magic written by Eden Medina and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies challenging the idea that technology and science flow only from global North to South. The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present. The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. Contributors Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Morgan G. Ames, Javiera Barandiarán, João Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, Henrique Cukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, Jonathan Hagood, Christina Holmes, Matthieu Hubert, Noela Invernizzi, Michael Lemon, Ivan da Costa Marques, Gisela Mateos, Eden Medina, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Hugo Palmarola, Tania Pérez-Bustos, Julia Rodriguez, Israel Rodríguez-Giralt, Edna Suárez Díaz, Hernán Thomas, Manuel Tironi, Dominique Vinck

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 : 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...