Jeremy Johnson

Consciousness Studies

Nov. 23 2012

Ensouling the Media: Towards an Understanding of Digital

Networks and Planetary Culture

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Thesis Abstract:

In this essay, I examine digital culture as the manifestation of a networked, planetary human

society. By employing the methodology of cultural historian William Irwin Thompson and

mathematician Ralph Abraham, I examine three core characteristics of the new digital culture

as the manifestation of a new socio-cultural consciousness. This new culture, I argue, is

exemplified in its planetization of society through communication networks, its new

relationship to time and space, and its retrieval of mythological consciousness. The purpose of

this thesis is to demonstrate that the complexity, interdependence, and new modes of thinking

in digital culture is best understood through the hermeneutics of the imagination.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction: An Evolutionary Perspective.! ! ! ! ! ! ! 4

1.1. Methodology: Cultural Evolution and

Complex-Dynamical Systems! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 6

1.2. Planetary Culture: Interconnectivity, Complexity,

and Imagistic Thought in Electronic Culture! ! ! ! ! ! ! 11

2. The Rhizome: Networks and Planetization! ! ! ! ! ! ! 21

3. Chaos-Dynamics and Nomadic Digital Culture! ! ! ! ! ! 35

4. The Return of the Image: Digital Animism

and Virtual Poesis! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 57

4.1. The Importance of Imagistic Thinking and Myth!! ! ! ! ! 58

4.2 Digital Technology Revives an Animistic Cosmology! ! ! ! ! 59

4.3 Virtual Poesis: Digital Networks, Spaces

and the Polytheistic Self! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 62

4.4. Challenges to Western Cosmology! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 65

4.5 The Imagination, Mythology

and the Network: Conclusions! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 68

5.0 Conclusion! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 71

6.0 Annotated Bibliography! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 73

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7.0 Works Consulted! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 83

1.0 Introduction: An Evolutionary Perspective!

! The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the dominant characteristics of the

transformation of consciousness and society taking place within the digital age. First, I will

present the reader with my methodology, introducing cultural evolution. In this regard, I draw

from the works of cultural historian William Irwin Thompson and mathematician Ralph

Abraham and their theoretical work on cultural evolution. Secondary sources include Jean

Gebser and Teilhard de Chardin.

! Secondly, I will attempt to create an initial draft of characteristics of this emergent human

society. This new social consciousness, I believe, is synonymous with what William Irwin

Thompson designates “planetary culture,” and the “complex-dynamical mentality” of Ralph

Abraham. I attempt to relate my own findings to both Thompson and Abraham through a

close look at the new social consciousness and its complexity, interactivity, and ability for rapid

change. My thesis, in short, is that the new consciousness, due to it being decentralized, highly

complex, nomadic, and mythological, is prepared like no other human society to adapt to the

impending ecological and economic crisis of the 21st century. I conclude with a close look at

how this new consciousness is also re-introducing previously undermined mythopoetic – or

occasionally considered “right-brained” – modes of cognition.

! The participation in traveling between waking and virtual worlds, and partaking in

networks which are by definition transitional spaces, are now part of daily life. This, I believe,

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has reinforced the role of creativity and re-introduces the role of ritual, as well as what

Thompson has called the “animistic retrieval” in the 21st century. I leave my speculations for

the long-term impact living in a society where the inner and outer world of Descartes has been

rendered irrelevant. I also leave a brief speculation for the transition from a culture that has

largely ignored myth and the imagination to one which not only embraces it, but in which it

dominates.

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1.1 Methodology: Cultural Evolution and Complex

Dynamical Systems

! This section introduces the concept of cultural evolution as understood by cultural

historian William Irwin Thompson and his colleague, the mathematician Ralph Abraham.

Thompson has authored a number of books on the evolution of consciousness since the 1970’s,

and predates many contemporary writers such as Ken Wilber. I believe his writings are astute

and complex enough to best tackle the subject matter, more so than other contemporary

thinkers who rely too heavily on categorical and developmental systems, or writers who are

too nebulous or “New Age” for the sensibility of scholarship. Thompson’s thinking, analogous

to the complex global era we are entering, is holistic and trans-disciplinary, bringing together

concepts from James Lovelock’s theory on Gaia Hypothesis, to Lynn Margulis’ theory on the

evolution of the cell, to his own studies on mythopoetic and “big picture” thinking. Arguably,

Thompson’s scholarship brings together both the humanities and the sciences in what he

called an “imaginary landscape” (also the title of his book, Imaginary Landscape: Bridging Worlds

of Myth and Science). I believe his writing is uniquely effective in highlighting the cultural

changes that are currently taking place. In combination with Ralph Abraham, a mathematician

at the Santa Fe Institute who has done extensive research on chaos theory and cultural

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evolution, Thompson and his colleague provide us with a rigorous and extensive

understanding of the transformation of consciousness through history. First, I think it is

important to define what we mean by “cultural evolution.” Then we will apply some of their

important insights to the digital revolution.

! Thompson defines evolution as a series of “bifurcations,” a term adapted from chaos

theory, which can loosely understand as a shift of “attractors” or centers of gravity in a

complex system. “At each fork in the road,” Thompson writes, “…the new chreod, or

necessary path, of development opens up a whole new adaptive landscape of possibilities, and

as some organisms cross the threshold into this landscape, the whole relationship between

organism and environment changes” (Thompson 14). “Organisms change their environment

and the environment channels their “natural drift” in new directions with new effects,”

Thompson writes (14). The concept of “natural drift” is a term borrowed from his previous

colleague, the late biologist Francisco Varela. “Natural drift… is a narrative of bifurcations

with consequences,” quips Thompson, differentiating it with the more common idea of natural

selection in evolution. His notion of “evolutionary bifurcations” is a concept that can also be

applied to cultural evolution. For example, the evolution of agriculture, as Jane Jacobs

theorized, may have occurred through the gradual accruement of grains may have led to the

first human settlements (Thompson 15).

! Coinciding with the idea of “evolutionary bifurcation” through “natural drift,” is the

concept of emergence. Also influenced by Varela’s autopoiesis, Thompson suggests that, “one

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can affirm the validity of emergent properties and emergent domains in the articulation of a

phenomenology of culture” (15). In other words, Thompson suggests that emergence and self-

organization happen within cultural evolution.

! Here we can begin to articulate further concepts in the Thompson-Abraham study of

cultural evolution. “Technological innovation is itself deeply embedded in various systems of

values and symbols; a new tool can emerge synchronous with a new form of polity, as well as

with a new form of spirituality,” Thompson writes. “Cultural history, as opposed to the more

linear history of technology, is concerned with the complex dynamical system in which

biological natural drift, ecological constraints, and systems of communication and social

organization all interact in a process of “dependent co-origination.” Similarly, Ralph Abraham

defines this methodology as “dynamical historiography,” which means a look at “world

cultural history regarded as a complex dynamical system, a network of cultural ecologies, a

history of evolving through epochs (plateaus), segmented by bifurcations (generalized

paradigm shifts) (Abraham 1).” The term cultural ecology was coined by Thompson after

working with James Lovelock, and the idea largely derives from Lovelock’s Gaia Theory.

! Gaia Theory posits a “massively integrated theory,” bringing together the Earth’s life

forms, atmosphere, geology and more into a single “living Earth” (Abraham 4). This is taken

one step further by Thompson and Abraham, with the concept of a cultural ecology. This

would include human societies into the drama and dynamics of the Earth’s living system.

“Cultural ecology regards culture as an ecosystem,” writes Abraham,

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Its parts–for example, literature, visual arts, musical creations and performance,

mathematical developments and applications, scientific discoveries, economics, etc..–are

interconnected like the flora, fauna, and environment in a biospheric ecosystem

(Abraham 4).

In addition, local “microsystems” are connected to the larger world ecology through trade,

migration and communication.

! Finally, Thompson has categorized “six transformations,” which are embodied in seven

“cultural ecologies,” throughout history: Hominization, Symbolization, Agriculturalization,

Civilization, Industrialization, Planetization. The seven cultural ecologies themselves are:

Silvan, Savannahan, Glacial, Riverine, Transcontinental, Oceanic, and Biospheric (Thompson

14).

! For the sake of brevity we will not be exploring each transformation and its cultural

ecology in detail. This essay will be examining the cultural bifurcation from Oceanic to

Biospheric, or Industrialization to Planetization.

! Ralph Abraham has described five “mathematical mentalities” which coincide with

Thompson’s cultural ecologies. The system can become complex, fast, but it is important to

remember that each of these terminologies attempt to describe different, inter-related facets of

culture. These five mentalities include: the Paleolithic (arithmetic), the Riverine (geometric),

Islamic (algebraic), Renaissance (Galilean Dynamical) and Modernist (Chaos Dynamical).

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! Reviewing this work, we can now turn our attention to the current evolutionary

bifurcation; the movement from Thompson’s Oceanic cultural ecology to the Biospheric, or

Abraham’s Galilean-Dynamical to Chaos-Dynamical. Thompson has also called this new social

consciousness “Planetary Culture,” a phrase we will use interchangeably.

! In my study of digital media and technology, I believe we can assess a number of

important parallels with the Chaos-Dynamical mentality and Oceanic cultural ecology and the

emerging digital culture. First, we can look at their characteristics.

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1.2 Planetary Culture: Interconnectivity, Complexity, and

Imagistic Thought in Electronic Culture

! To discuss the emerging Biospheric cultural ecology, Thompson references Teilhard de

Chardin’s “Planetization of Mankind.” In this essay, Teilhard argues that at the global level of

social complexity, even World Wars result not with increasing separation, but ever greater

forms of “interpenetration” of culture. “Every new war,” Teilhard writes, “embarked upon by

the nations for the purpose of detaching themselves from one another, merely results in their

being bound and mingled together in a more inextricable knot.”

! Thompson gives us an example that, after World War II, Japan gave the US Zen

Buddhism and the US gave Japan auto-factories (pg 127). Today, Japanese technology

innovation and production is not only important for the US, but globally. Steve Jobs was a Zen

Buddhist himself, and applied many of the principles of Japanese aesthetic to Apple products.

! Of all dimensions of cultural evolution, technology has been one of the most important, if

not the most tangible. This had made it easy for many authors like Kevin Kelly and Ray

Kurzweil, two technological enthusiasts and prophets in their own rights, to proclaim the

evolution of life on Earth from the lens of the information age.

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! After examining Thompson and Abraham’s “complex-dynamical” approach to cultural

evolution, it is clear we will be using more than a study of technical innovations. Nevertheless

they are important. Especially in the case of Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian media

theorist, who coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” and wrote extensively on the

impact of what he called “electronic culture.” McLuhan suggests that it is the adaptation of

electricity in all facets of Western civilization that has most profoundly influenced cultural

changes during the past 150 years. Thompson seems to at least concur in part. While the

counter-cultural movement of the 1960’s was important to planetary culture, he recognizes a

“second wave” with the birth of Silicon Valley in the 1980’s. The computer and internet

revolution:

Here we see a shift from the consciousness of an autonomous self within a biological

evolutionary body to more distributive lattices of multidimensional mind in which new

media constellate new forms of extensive phase-space consciousness through personal

computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. (pg.. 128)

Thompson suggests that there is often a Yin-Yang effect to cultural transformations, where

opposites create a “diploid sexual reproduction,” and the tension of opposites produce a new

culture. In this case, it is the ecological movement combined with Artificial Intelligence and

computer revolution, creating a strange hybrid of natural and artificial life. Thompson argues

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that this is a “planetary cellular mitosis.” He also cites the development of scientific theories,

such as Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, to represent the first indications of planetary culture.

! In addition to Gaia Theory, Forester and Meadows published Limits to Growth on the

relationship between economy and ecology, catastrophe theory and chaos dynamics were born

(Thompson 128). Thompson argues that the complexity of our relationship with the planet has

grown beyond the control of the ruling “globalist managers,” and we will have to make the

shift from “competing industrial nation-states to a planetary culture, the shift from a global

economy to a planetary ecumene” (pg 128).

! Coinciding with the developments of increasing social interconnectivity, planetary

awareness through sciences like Gaia Theory, and biological/technological hybridization,

Abraham dates the incipience of this new consciousness to the artistic-mathematic movements

of the early 20th century.

! In the early 20th century, there were scientific-literary movements in novelists like Proust’s

Madeleine and Bergson’s thoughts on “matter and memory.” There was the new mathematics

from Poincare, chaos dynamics, the relativity of Einstein, Picasso, and the Surrealistic art

movement. Each of these served to break down the traditional Victorian picture of a stable and

objective universe. The destabilizing character of these discoveries is something we will be

returning to.

! Of importance in this list is Poincare’s discoveries. Abraham suggests that in addition to

chaotic dynamics, he also discovered that our solar system was not smoothly rotating, but

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actually chaotic in its motion. “This shift in the perception of our solar system,” Abraham tells

us, “is as profound for us as the Copernican/Keplerian one had been for the Renaissance

world view.” In addition, Poincare’s books were read widely by Parisian intellectuals and

artists (Abraham 102).

! The computer revolution also served to help Poincare’s chaos theory, which although was

discovered in 1889, it was improved by Gaston Julia and came to the public’s attention only

after computer graphics were invented in the 1970’s (Abraham 95). It was through computer

graphics that we were first able to see fractal patterns through a seemingly chaotic system.

Benoit Mandelbrot developed fractal geometry in 1967 (Abraham 101).

! In Thompson’s forward to Bolts from the Blue by Abraham, he offers us a general synopsis

that can help review and bring us back to the central characteristics of our evolutionary

bifurcation in consciousness. The complex dynamic systems we have been describing thus far,

describe a “shift from linear modernist ideologies and religions to planetary ecologies of

consciousness in which diversity” can now be affirmed (Thompson, Abraham vii). With a

similar hypothesis to Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet vs the Goddess, Thompson suggests that this

shift entails an activation of the right-brain. Most importantly, he attributes this shift to the re-

emergence of symbols. Similarly, Shlain argues that it is through television and computers that

the inclusive Icon has returned to public consciousness, triggering a movement back to the

holistic right hemisphere of the brain. As we learned from Abraham, it was through the

computer’s ability to generate graphical images that we could see fractals. “This emergence of

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a new visual mathematics expressed, in effect, a return on a higher turn of the spiral to

hieroglyphic thinking,” Thompson suggests (pg viii). ! So far there are four important

characteristics of this era: the increasing interpenetration and interconnection of human

societies, an incipient planetary awareness through ecology and Gaia Theory, the discovery of

chaotic systems and the return of imagistic thinking through electronic computers.

! The discovery of chaotic systems contributed a breakdown of what Thompson calls the

“linear reductionism” of modernism. Coinciding with the mathematical breakthroughs was a

“cultural retrieval of animism” and premodern esoteric thought. He notes that the composer,

Satie, was a Rosicrucian (a school of Hermeticism and alchemy), while painters like Kadinsky

and Mondrian were in fact, Theosophists (pg viii). Cultural writer Erik Davis affirmed in

TechGnosis that Theosophy coincided with the rise of electricity in the 19th century. Meanwhile,

the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and esotericist Rudolf Steiner were coming into their own.

Thompson characterizes this premodern retrieval of esoteric thought and animism as an

important characteristic of planetary culture. “Clearly,” he writes, “complex dynamical

systems began to impact on the cultural evolution of human spirituality” (pg viii). Through

our knowledge of McLuhan, we can also say that the retrieval of animism, and the breakdown of

linear reductionism, were both due in part by the rise of electronic culture.

! McLuhan attributes many of these artistic and cultural changes to the adaptation of

electronic communication – the telegraph – in 1844. This pushes planetary culture’s birth back

half a century. Further insight can be gleaned from Erik Davis, who ties the discovery of the

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electromagnetic spectrum, which revolutionized the sciences in the 19th century, with a major

paradigm shift in Western culture. ! Effectively, the discovery of electromagnetism resurrected

– in a scientifically acceptable way – invisible realities. And for the first time: non-local

communication. These indeed had magical qualities for public consciousness, and as Davis

notes with great detail, electromagnetism retrieved the world of animism. That is, the world of

invisible relationships and correspondences. As Davis notes, electricity – at least

psychologically – is tied to animistic, Hermetic, and magical forms of thinking. It is worth

considering that the rise of esoteric, animistic and consciousness movements that punctuate

the 20th century are as a result of electricity’s catalyzing effect on our “cultural Imaginary.”

! There is some evidence that psychology and the study of the unconscious was due in part

to electromagnetism. Early pioneers of hypnotism, such as Mesmer himself, helped bring

interest to the field of psychology. Mesmer had a long discredited theory that tied the mind to

magnetism, and larger “fields” of consciousness that his patients would access for healing and

self-diagnosis. Freud would take what he saw from a student of Mesmer’s and apply it to his

own theory of the unconscious (Davis 162).

! On a social level, McLuhan attributed the sixties cultural revolution to the rise of

television and the retrieval of what he designated “oral culture.”

! We can draw connections between the Thompson-Abraham model of cultural evolution

to both McLuhan and Davis, who push back the new electronic culture to the 19th century

artistic, spiritual, and scientific breakthroughs. We can summarize thus far that planetary

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culture and the “complex-dynamical” mentality were inspired, at least in part, by the rise of

electricity, scientific-artistic paradigm shifts that destabilized previous worldviews, and

retrieved esoteric, imagistic, and animistic thought to public consciousness. As we heard from

Abraham earlier, the “dynamic historiography” is a holistic approach to studying cultural

evolution. So we cannot disentangle scientific breakthroughs from artistic movements, from

technological innovations. They are in a co-dependent and emergent relationship which,

together, give us a holistic image of a cultural shift.

! To conclude, we can re-iterate the introduction’s central themes. In the first section, I

introduced my hypothesis. Digital culture indicates a shift in social consciousness that has at

least three primary characteristics:

1) Network/Interconnectivity

2) Nomadic/Chaotic

3) Imagistic/Mythological & Digital Animism

These coincide with and shed light on the Thompson-Abraham model of cultural evolution,

with respect to what they call Planetary Culture. I summarized their characteristics as:

1) Interpenetration of World Culture and Societies (Planetization).

2) The Discovery of Chaos-Dynamical Systems

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3) A return of Imagistic or “Hieroglyphic” thought, coinciding with a retrieval of animism.

! I believe that the internet age has not only confirmed these characteristics, but takes them

to a new level of intensification and proliferation. With the proliferation of digital environments

blending into real ones, we are slowly becoming immersed in a part material, part dream-like

virtual world. We will examine this as it relates to the digital recreation of animism as the

environment that millions, perhaps billions now live in.

! The revolution of electronic communication that began with the telegraphy has reached a

new order of complexity with the cell phone and internet. This is effectively transforming our

experience of time-space, or as Amber Case calls it, “a-synchronous time.”

! Combined with a new sense of time, we are also gaining new identities as the sense of

self extends to include digital avatars and gadgets. The self becomes symbiotic with machines.

As Thompson noted earlier, “we see a shift from the consciousness of an autonomous self…to

more distributive lattices of multidimensional mind in which new media constellate new

forms of extensive phase-space consciousness through personal computers, the Internet, and

the World Wide Web.”

! This new world is chaotic, extremely dynamic and rhizomatic. Furthermore, it is nomadic,

in that virtual culture is inherently unstable – much like the complex-dynamical

understanding of complex systems – constantly re-inventing itself. In cultures like Burning

Man, a phenomenon which began in the early 90s, we see embodied examples of cities that

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literally pick themselves up after a week and vanish for the remainder of the year. With the

coming climate and ecological crisis, such a dynamic, imaginative, and techno-nomadic

culture seems uniquely well-adapted to face the challenges for humanity ahead.

! Finally, this new culture is deeply Imaginal. Meaning it utilizes creativity and collective

problem solving to adapt to new situations, play, innovate and develop. These characteristics, I

believe, will continue to spill into the “real” world from the virtual as the ubiquity of

technology continues to increase.

! In the following section we will examine my three characteristic’s of the emergent digital

culture as they relate to, and give unique insight with the Thompson-Abraham findings on

Planetary Culture.

! I believe that a number of parallels are not only possible, but serve to update and

contribute to the Thompson-Abraham model and, hopefully, contribute an added and

significant layer to the study of our rapidly changing contemporary consciousness.!

!

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2.0 The Rhizome: Networks and Planetization

! In this section, we will examine the first characteristic finding of the digital age: the

network. I believe this is, in fact, a symptom of the complex-dynamical mentality in the

Thompson-Abraham model that the first section introduced. This mentality is noted for its

systemic view of inter-related systems of emergence, which is an apt description for a network

itself.

! We start with this characteristic because it is the most general, observable, and sociological

phenomenon of the digital age. Digital media and communication systems now envelop the

globe, and in doing so, they offer unprecedented means of communication and

interconnection. The sociological impact on our consciousness due to this rapid socio-

technological evolution will be examined here.

! Media theorist Marshall McLuhan was, early on, acutely aware of the implications of

electricity. In Understanding Media, McLuhan expresses his famous axiom: the medium is the

message. While this idea might be taken for granted now, during his lifetime this struck many

as a peculiar thought. It implies that the technologies we use have a reciprocal effect on us.

They change the way we experience the world, and in return we change our world. This is a

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similar idea to Thompson’s concept of natural drift and a complex-dynamical view of history,

where technology and consciousness co-depend on one another to create transformation.

! In one part, McLuhan uses a light bulb to exemplify the “message” of electricity:

The message of the electric light is like the message of electric power in industry, totally

radical, pervasive, and decentralized. For electric light and power are separate from their

uses, yet they eliminate time and space factors in human association exactly as do radio,

telegraphy, telephone, and TV, creating involvement in depth. (Pg 25)

! Long after this statement was made, we can confirm McLuhan’s analysis of electricity by

the proliferation of digital networks through the World Wide Web, laptops, cell phones, and

wireless signals. McLuhan’s bold statement regarding time and space can be confirmed with

further reflection. Entire communities exist online, such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online,

Minecraft, and other communities defy the boundaries of geographical location, time zones,

and sometimes even language itself.

! McLuhan associates all forms of electronic technology exemplifying decentralization, but

its latest form, digital media, strikes me, and many others, as the most pervasive and powerful

force yet. Like no other medium before, digital media empowers a radical form of

decentralization, best exemplifying McLuhan’s “electronic culture.” Electronic culture itself is

a term he designated for society in the age of electricity (McLuhan 4). He differentiates this

social order from older ones, such as Print Culture. Print culture originated out of the printing

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press, emphasizing rational analysis, intellectualism and detachment. McLuhan suggested that

many of the radical crisis and problems of the modern world were as a result of Print Culture’s

mechanization and over-rationalization of nature. He saw the emergent electronic culture, as

noted earlier, “creating involvement in depth” (pg 25). In other words, participation.

! What McLuhan means by decentralization is the socially empowering effects of electronic

media. Radio could broadcast to thousands, millions across the globe. A single voice could be

heard clearly, in real-time. Television has a similar effect in broadcasting media to a larger

audience. These two forms of media enabled the modern age of music and film as we know it.

One of the most famous examples is the Kennedy vs. Nixon debate, the first American

presidential debate aired in history. The popular opinion of the candidates was swayed for the

first time by their image. When NASA landed two men on the moon, the whole world watched

via their television sets. When McLuhan wrote that electronic media involves us “in depth,” he

means that we participate somehow. Arguably, we can participate with a book, too. But the

kind of participation with electric media is more immediate. Take the example of digital

media. Cell phones and computers let us download our own music without having to go to

the store. Software lets us publish our music directly online. Sophisticated programs turn our

laptops into portable recording studios and publishing houses. In other words, one of the most

powerful effects of digital media and electricity at large is that they decentralize the roles that

institutions previously held in society, thereby giving us more participation.

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! Many forms of media that once required a professional class – like books, music, and film

publishing – are now in the hands of everyday people. Often quite literally. An iPhone comes

installed with an HD video camera and self-publishing software, instantly letting its users

upload videos onto YouTube. During times of intense political climate, this has been an

immense aid to protestors.

! In Clay Shirky’s important book, Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without

Organizations, he writes that “our social tools remove obstacles to public expression, and thus

remove the bottlenecks that characterized mass media. The result is the mass amateurization

of efforts previously reserved for media professionals” (pg.55). Furthermore, he argues that

our new communication networks have removed the obstacles to “group forming,” which had

previously been constrained by “transaction costs.” (pg. 55).

! The elimination of financial costs as well as technological impediments have created an

explosion in the kinds of social groups that can form, and in the case of recent political

upheaval, provided an unprecedented degree of democratic empowerment in Occupy, the

Arab Spring, and earlier, the famous Seattle 1999 protests.

! These examples demonstrate the decentralizing effect of digital media. In the place of

normal, bureaucratic institutions, corporations, or professional classes, we now have vast

communication networks. While Shirky does not believe we are headed toward a “post-

hierarchical paradise,” he does suggest that the relative advantages of using institutions has

radically shifted. “Instead,” he writes, “most of the relative advantages of those institutions

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have disappeared.” It is now easier for someone to publish their own blog than submit a

column for the New York Times, and they may be even more successful sharing their story that

way. Because of the complexity of human societies, organizational problems were addressed

by traditional institutions. Very often, these have been centralized and, religious or secular,

they have been hierarchical. With electronic culture, this structure has been challenged. “New

social tools,” Shirky writes, “relieve some of those burdens, allowing for new kinds of group

forming” (pg 25).

! Notably, many of these groups have mainly affected media: the entertainment industry

most of all. Digital culture has only become more powerful, however, and political movements

like Occupy are beginning to demonstrate the power these new networks have in challenging

the traditional institutions of global civilization. Still more examples include Wikileaks, by

which Julian Assange and a small group of hackers threatened government security by

releasing “dirty laundry” – big and small – and swaying popular opinion.

! Finally, the sociologist Douglas Rushkoff has noted the potential that digital media has

for challenging centralized banking systems. Current experiments with peer-to-peer network

economics include projects like Bitcoin. Many decades, perhaps centuries down the road,

governmental and corporate institutions could become replaced by their networked counter-

parts (Rushkoff).

! In The Open Source Everything Manifesto, Robert David Steele argues that we can discern

two forms of organization. These are “Epoch-A Leadership” and “Epoch-B Leadership.” The

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former is a traditional mode of organization which emphasizes exclusivity, centralized control

and “secret sources and methods that are not accountable to the public.” Beginning in the

industrial era, this mode of organization has reigned, set up on a “Weberian concept of

organizational design, one that emphasizes command and control over a rigidly structured

“top-down” form” (Steele 11). Steele paints this form of leadership as an ineffective and out-

dated system for an age of global complexity. “In sharp contrast,” he writes, Epoch B is

“collaborative” and “multi-lateral,” rather than “uni-lateral.” This approach allows for all

histories and perspective to be included, enabling more “beneficial and sustainable decisions

are reached, grounded in the collective intelligence of the group” (Steele 13). Steele claims that

this new method of social organization is better equipped to address and solve collective

problem solving, and is largely due to communication technologies of the Information Age (pg

13).

! The meaning of “open source” philosophy began as a transparent network of programmers

who openly shared their coding. Operating systems such as Linux were developed as a result

of this network of coders. This open source philosophy, argues Steele, is now ready to be

utilized beyond the realm of programmers and into the realm of the global, social commons. In

other words, open source philosophy is relevant not only to programmers but the future of

human society. Here, he sums up the intention of his manifesto and the adoption of a new

political and social system of networks for global society:

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“New, open source, populist-based, information-era strategies will also serve our increasingly complex

lives better in future situations of crisis such as natural disaster, war, and social disintegration. Collapse is

cultural, systemic, a failure of process, not of any discrete event, institution or location. The industrial-era

model of command and control cannot adequately process information for a complex system, but an

information-era model of distributed localized resilience can” (Steele 14).

Utlimately for Steele, we are facing a transition from an industrial civilization “of unbridled

consumption, selfishness, and “anything goes,” to an information era where “it’s all

connected’… we are all accountable for the whole. Resources are limited, brain power is

virtually infinite. Open Source everything is the meme, the mind-set, and the method” (pg 21).

Steele introduces the reader to the concept of panarchy, in which “every individual would be

connected to all relevant information and able to participate in every decision of interest to

them,” which he suggests might be part of future human societies (pg 23).

! There is a significant difference between Shirky’s more immediate analysis of digital

media’s impact on social behavior, and Steele’s long-term philosophical, political and social

ideas. I believe both of these theorists can be understood better in light of Thompson and

Abraham’s concept of the “complex-dynamical” mentality, which first arose in the early 20th

century. Discoveries in mathematics and physics, from Poincare to Einstein, and artistic

breakthroughs, such as Picasso and Surrealism, indicate this discovery of a new relationship to

space and time. There appears to be at least two connections between the nature of digital

networks and the complex-dynamic mentality.

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! The first is the switch from centralized to decentralized models of communication and

social organization. Hypothesizing on the planetary culture, Thompson writes that “egocentric

monumentality and the extensive clutter of industrial civilization could be

eliminated” (Thompson, Abraham viii). Centralized control becomes displaced by other means

of social and cultural order. This idea strongly correlates with Shirky’s and Steele’s claims

regarding the decentralization of social order and the rise of digital networks. As an important

comparative note, we can observe similarities between the displacement of classical

Newtonian physics with Einstein’s relativity theory at the turn of the 20th century, and the

displacement of traditional social institutions at the turn of the 21st century. Relativity theory

challenged, and transformed our understanding of the universe and is used by astrophysics

and astronomers to this day. The rise of power in social networks have similarly relativized the

effectiveness of traditional institutions and hold a similar promise for potentially revolutionary

social changes in our present century.

! The second connection is the nature of the network itself as a self-organizing system. “The

architecture for the complex-dynamical mentality,” Thompson writes (my highlights), “is an

emergent metasystem concerned with the self-organizing architecture of many possible

architectures: life or artificial life” (pg 20). “Meta-system” is an important phrase here,

implying that self-organization is a concept that applies to multiple fields of knowledge. In

Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control and What Technology Wants, he draws intriguing parallels between

technological and biological self-organization, concluding with the hypothesis that technology is,

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in fact, a force of nature that is out of our control. The notion of self-emergent and self-

organizing systems has been existent in philosophy, biology and science since at least the first

evolutionary theories, but it has taken on a new life in the 20th century since the 1970’s.

Francisco Varela, and Humberto Maturana, developed the concept of autopoiesis with regards

to consciousness studies in their book, The Embodied Mind. Here we can quote them at length.

First, to demonstrate how self-organization is an important school of thought in biology and

consciousness studies, and secondly, because of its relevance and parallels with digital

networks:

…Because of the system’s network constitution, there is a global cooperation that

spontaneously emerges when the states of all participating “neurons” reach a mutually

satisfactory state. In such a system, then, there is no need for a central processing unit to

guide the entire operation. This passage from local rules to global coherence is the heart

of what used to be called self-organization during the cybernetic years. Today people

refer to speak of emergent or global properties, network dynamics, nonlinear networks,

complex systems, or even synergetics.

! There is no unified formal theory of emergent properties. It is clear, however, that

emergent properties have been found across all domains–vortices and lasers, chemical

oscillations, genetic networks, developmental patterns, population genetics, immune

networks, ecology and geophysics. What all these diverse phenomena have in common is

that in each case a network gives rise to new properties, which researchers try to

understand in all their generality (Varela, Thompson, Rosch 88).

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! The phenomena of self-organizing networks gets to the heart of this discussion. Without need of

a centralized state or authority, digital networks proliferate and self-emerge of their own

accord, challenging the role of traditional economic and bureaucratic institutions in the 21st

century. They also transform the behavior of modern society, promoting – to borrow Varela,

Mutarana and Thompson’s descriptors – “global cooperation,” and “self-organization.” This

passage also goes further to demonstrate just how meta-systemic the knowledge of self-

organizing systems is.

! The impact of these networks is no longer an esoteric or academic problem. It is now a

social phenomena as ubiquitous as the cell phone, satellite and automobile. It is a lived

environment we are faced with. The implications for social consciousness are enormous.

Digital networks serve not only to bond communities and forge “bottom-up” social structures

within society. They are also, perhaps for the first time in history, catalyzing an emergent sense

of global consciousness. Like a global rhizome, we find ourselves enmeshed within a global network of

communication systems.

! Similarly, in Daniel Pinchbeck’s Notes from the Edge Times, he cites the work of Michael

Hardt and Antonio Neri, who call for the creation of a global “society without a state.”

Pinchbeck writes, “our increasingly networked society points toward a new global

orchestration that would eliminate the need for a centralized state apparatus” (pg. 41).

! In The Media Ecosystem, Antonio Lopez suggests that “we see hope in people’s

movements around the world: across the planet citizens take root, occupying the last remnants

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of the commons.” According to Lopez, our social commons – the sum total of the world’s

cultures, ideas, languages and stories – has been threatened by the colonization of media by

corporations and the state. “Colonized media coordinates the interests of corporate

kleptocracy; decolonized media emerges from daily practice and the communication habits of

people,” write Lopez. Like Steele’s Epoch A and Epoch B societies, colonized media is

“vertically structured and controlled by a handful of multinational megacorporations,” while

de-colonized media is “horizontally networked communications environment that makes up

the rest of the global mediasphere” (Lopez x). Here we have a similar idea, and can now turn

to the concept that Thompson raised earlier concerning the planetization of humanity.

! “The more we seek to thrust each other away, the more do we interpenetrate,” wrote

Teilhard. Thompson contributes to this idea, noting the cultural exchange that took place

between the United States and Japan following World War II. “After World War II,” he writes,

“Detroit automative factories end up in Japan and Japanese Zen Buddhist monasteries end up

in California” (Thompson 125).

! In The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard de Chardin analyzes the impact of industrial

civilization as an important player in the “compression” of human cultures. In his typical

eclectic writing style, Teilhard asserts, “through the multiplying effect of generations, we have

come to constitute, as we do at present, an almost solid mass of hominised substance” (pg 240).

What is this hominised substance? Teilhard may be attempting to describe what the human

race might look like to an alien race visiting from another world. They might look over the

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planet and see networks of roads and infrastructure, cities and villages that envelop entire

continents in a radiant glow at night; that strange “hominized” substance that envelops the

Earth with 7 billion people and all of their cultural and technological constructions.

! Another, more well known description for this “human-substance” is the noosphere,

developed by Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Verdansky. Like James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory

– which sees the whole Earth as organism – the noosphere is the collective consciousness of

humanity.

! Rapid technological change over the past few centuries has revolutionized the face of the

planet. During the Industrial Revolution, human population exploded. For the first time, more

people lived in cities than on farms. Teilhard writes on this expansion:

Through the discovery yesterday of the railway, the motor car and the aero-plane, the physical

influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, now extends to hundreds of leagues or

more (Teilhard 240).

Here, Teilhard near prophetically suggests the role of electromagnetism in planetization:

Better still: thanks to the prodigious biological event presented by the discovery of electro-

magnetic waves, each individual finds himself henceforth (actively and passively)

simultaneously present, over land and sea, in every corner of the Earth (Teilhard 240).

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Teilhard was famous for saying “everything that rises must converge,” (Which Flannery

O’Connor adopted for her novel, with the same name) and perhaps more poetically than

scientifically, he has pointed out that rise of human civilizations would culminate in their

unification in some greater, supra-civilization. A planetary human society, or planetary culture.

“Mankind,” he writes, “forced to develop as it is in a confined area–has found itself

relentlessly subjected to an intense pressure.” He also notes the importance of the shape of the

Earth – a sphere – in spurring human culture to “compress” in on itself. (Teilhard 239).

Interestingly but for different reasons, another “evolutionary” thinker, Jean Gebser, would also

describe in his book that the up and coming consciousness could be represented as a sphere.

Philosopher and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva coined the term Earth Democracy, which,

according to Lopez, “encompasses the planetary community of beings that comprise our living

systems,” and originates in the Indian concept of vasudhaiva kutumbakam or “Earth Family” (pg

viii). Lopez suggests that our era has the potential to actualize such an awareness of Earth

Family. However, corporate media often works actively against that awareness by promoting

“technological ‘progress’ while excluding living systems from our awareness.” Lopez suggests

that our part to play is to “occupy” our media space and work towards a healthy planetary

culture. As noted earlier,

...occupations glocalize their struggles by linking local conditions with a larger globalized

network. In the process they engage in a kind of cultural citizenship that is shifting planetary

culture toward an Earth Democracy. (Lopez x)

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This “shift” is also what Ervin Laszlo describes as a move away from “conquest, colonization,

and consumerism to connection, communication and consciousness” (Lopez x).

! Behind these calls to actualize an Earth Family or global consciousness is the influence of

digital networks, assisting us in coming to that awareness. Keeping in mind the dynamic-

historiographical approach to history, we can see the rise of these global ideas as a co-

dependent process with the rise of technological and social complexity. Digital networks seem

only to affirm and carry forward this process of planetization.

! It is also of note here that many of these big picture philosophies such as Teilhard’s

noosphere, Thompson’s Planetary Culture, and Vandana Shiva’s Earth Democracy are, like

Gaia Theory, another characteristic of the complex-dynamical age.

! We have noted at least three earlier: planetization/interpenetration of cultures, the discovery

of complex-dynamical systems, and the return of Imagistic/Mythological thought. It would seem that

Gaia Theory, the Noosphere and other modern concepts are a mix of all three characteristics.

They are holistic “big-picture” images of our world, sophisticated and complex networks of

inter-related systems, and encourage sense of planetary solidarity or global consciousness.

! As we learned from Thompson and Abraham, the complex-dynamical age is marked by a

confrontation with chaos-dynamics, complexity, new experiences of time-space, and self-

organizing systems. To summarize, we can conclude that the complex-dynamical mentality of

Thompson and Abraham is affirmed by the proliferation of digital networks, which seem to

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manifest the principles of self-organizing systems, decentralizing social order, and planetizing

human consciousness. These networks confront legal systems, social structures, and traditional

nation-states with a newer, more complex and interdependent social order.

! Digital networks have revolutionized communication and created a social web that

envelops the Earth, regardless of geographical location. Despite firewalls and digital “walled

gardens”that block off some networks from the rest of the world, digital networks have

nevertheless created a tremendous impact in raising social awareness and eroding what Shirky

described as the “absolute advantages” of traditional institutions. They have also inspired calls

for the propagation of a planetary cultural commons, as espoused by Steele, Lopez, Vandana

and countless other contemporary theorists and activists. Finally, we have Hardt and Negri’s

call for a global stateless democracy, organized by digital networks who could “organize

themselves through distributed networks” (Pinchbeck 41).

! We have examined the rise of self-organizing networks and planetary thinking and their

correlation with the complex-dynamical mentality. Part of this new mode of thinking, as we have

noted, is its chaotic dimensions. In the following section we will examine a characteristic at the

forefront of digital culture: its nomadic and chaotic nature.

! We will examine this in light of its relationship to Thompson and Abraham’s analysis of

chaos dynamics and planetary culture.

!

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3.0 Chaos-Dynamics and Nomadic Digital Culture

“From the destruction of civilization comes the unimaginable creation of planetization” (Thompson 75)!

!

! In this section, we examine digital culture as a destabilizing force in the modern world. It

exhibits this in two ways: through retrieving nomadic behavior, and exhibiting many of the

characteristics described in chaos-theory.

! In Thompson’s Darkness and Scattered Light, he writes that, “like Bosch before us,” we

“cannot tell whether we are living in a period of literal destruction or of restructuring, perhaps

because both processes are going on at once” (Thompson 75). I believe this is an apt way or

describe the current age’s paradox. In many ways, digital culture is exploding and writhing

with potential. In other ways, the future is entirely uncertain. Global economic, political and

ecological problems are reaching a boiling point, and we are uncertain how to go forward.

Occupy pushed for total reform – but, as some argue, and as Thompson himself noted to me in

an interview1 – it could not articulate its demands for change in a way that could be

universally applicable. That last point could be argued against. After all, the sociologist

Douglass Rushkoff has noted in his article on CNN following the 2011 protests in Zuccotti

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1 William Irwin Thompson Interview: Consciousness, Occupy Movement and Planetary Culture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1iFpoXF0-I

Park2, “we are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, which – unlike civil

rights protests, labor marches, or even the Obama campaign – does not take its cue from a

charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as

having a particular endpoint” (Rushkoff). Yet this movement has yet to apply such a lifestyle

to human civilization as a whole. The question that remains is whether we can actually enact

such a way of life for an entire civilization.

! As we noted in the previous section, this question is probably going to be answered in the

next century or two – as many continue to develop approaches to self-organizing social

structures like peer-to-peer currencies. But can this kind of human society be actualized in time

before collapse? Many are hopeful, like Daniel Pinchbeck writes in his social commentary

book, Notes from the Edge Times: “The chance for a conscious and participatory social evolution

is predicated on a great awakening happening quickly–before ecological meltdown leads to

systemic breakdown” (pg. 7). In a later chapter, Pinchbeck also calls our attention to the works

of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who suggest that a global democracy is possible, a

“planetary ‘society without a state,’ with a new set of institutions, legal codes, and social

systems” (pg. 40). According to Hardt and Negri, production has shifted from material goods

to “immaterial production” of software, media, information and creativity. This immaterial

production relies more upon the utilization of social networks and collaborative teams.

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2 Think Occupy Wall St. Is a Phase? You Don’t Get it: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html

However, as Pinchbeck notes, there is a tremendous task at work for these social networks to

take up the burden of building, not merely a protest culture, but human society itself:

For this to happen, the multitude would have to realize a shared political project – not just

demonstrating against the powers-that-be, as in massive international protests against the Iraq

War, but self-organizing into a truly constitute body. Although they admit they do not know how

this takes place, Negri and Hardt theorize that “insurrectional activity” is no longer divided into

successive states, as in the revolutions of the modern era, but “develops simultaneously (pg. 41).

Furthermore, Hardt and Negri seem to affirm the paradox stated at the beginning of this

section:

Resistance, exodus, the emptying out of the enemy’s power and the multitude’s construction of a

new society are one and the same process (Pinchbeck 42).

If a new human society can be realized in the coming decades, or centuries, its characteristics

will have to be far more suited for adapting to a human society that must account for the

complexities of global politics, the health of the biosphere, and the well-being of billions of

people upon the Earth. What I find to be interesting about digital culture, however, is that in a

period of destabilization, the new media revolution is catalyzing a culture that is as wild and

chaotic as the crisis that faces us; in it lies, I believe, our hope and potential. If there is anything

to take away from this essay, it is that sentence.

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! Let us look at the emancipatory power of chaos from a mythological lens. “In the old

Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish,” Thompson writes, “the great male god, Marduk,

tore the Great Mother Goddess, Tiamat, apart to build the masculine citadel of Babylon.” As

we confront the chaos of the modern world, however, “the Goddess draws back the

dismembered pieces of her body to regain her ancient life, she is pulling Babylon to pieces...

The Goddess has come back to take all their toys of civilization away and dance gleefully in

the ruins,” Thompson suggests, in a mythological interpretation of our time (pg. 47).

! Ancient mythologies often concern the destruction of some great god or goddess in order

to create the world, and establish a new order on Earth. In an earlier article of mine, “There Be

Dragons,”3 I suggested that we can interpret the confrontation with climate change and super

storms as the mythological return of the serpent – so often expressing and embodying the

chaos, or prima materia of a universe not yet forged by the order of the gods (Johnson).

Thompson utilizes a similar metaphor through his reflection on Marduk and Tiamat, but he

also adopts a Jungian understanding concerning a confrontation with chaos: “What the

confrontation of ego and Self is all about is... the interface between opposites. The interface

between opposites is the place of transformation” (Thompson 38). In this unstable relationship

there lies the chance for something new to be born. Thompson suggests that our current

tension of opposites lies in “culture and nature, civilization and savagery... chaos and creation

in the emergence of a new world culture.” He writes further:

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3 There Be Dragons! Or Chaos, Complexity and Catastrophe: www.evolutionarylandscapes.net/there-be-dragons-or-mythopoeisis-chaos-catast

Think of the pregnant moment of silence the instant before Creation, when God is envisioning

everything there is to be. There is something wild about the totally open potentialities of of a

universe that is about to be, but has not yet been created. The complete wildness of total

potentiality seems almost the annihilation of all possible order; and then the Word is sent forth,

the hieroglyph for the universe that is to be with all its systems of order, and out of chaos begin to

appear specific limitations (pg. 39).

Within the seeds of chaos, there is some new order stirring. We also, I believe, have to

understand that digital culture is not merely in a period of “destabilization,” I believe that it is,

in itself, chaotic and extremely dynamic in nature. The opposite of this new chaotic culture is the

older, more stable human society: civilization. Between civilization and chaos, a culture that is

more dynamic can emerge.

! As I described in the opening of this section, there are two main characteristics to digital

culture’s destabilizing effect: nomadism and chaos-dynamics. The nomad is closest in resemblance to

digital culture, in that they both exhibit a de-structuring effect on civilization.

! John David Ebert highlights the tension between the culture of nomad and that of the

city-state in his latest book The Age of Catastrophe. He suggests that the coming age of climate

change and technological disaster will make it impossible for civilization to exist as we have

known it to for millennia. He notes Kenneth Clark’s statement in a BBC documentary series

called Civilization, “the Vikings, though they had culture, since they did produce works of art,

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nevertheless, did not have civilization, properly speaking, since they were nomadic (at least,

early on) and therefore hostile to the very idea of living in cities – the principle and anchor of

civilization – wherever they went” (Ebert 39). Ebert notes that we appear to have the opposite

problem now. We have skyscrapers and buildings, but we no longer have culture. “Electronic

technology has liquidated much of high culture, and the pop culture that now remains as the

tides of civilized, metaphysical society recede, is a poor excuse for culture of any kind” (Ebert

39). According to Ebert’s hypothesis, electronic technology, and digital culture, sound the

death knell of civilization. “High culture,” accompanying civilization’s roads and cities, are no

longer possible in the “age of catastrophe.” That is, the age of climate change, environmental

crisis, rising sea levels and a dynamic environment that removes the stability necessary for

building a civilization.

! Ebert specifically explores digital culture’s impact on Western civilization in his book, The

New Media Invasion, in which he argues that electronic media is causing a catastrophe of

knowledge and culture. Websites like Wikipedia make stable knowledge impossible, creating a

situation like Jorge Luis Borges’ “infinite library,” where texts by anonymous authors are

constantly re-writing history. Meanwhile, he suggests that, “the Internet is a force of disruption

and discontinuity in the evolution of the Western mediascape” (Ebert 12). They stop the

process of typography and the printing press, the possibility of “high culture” and academics.

“It is rather the incarnation of a new kind of mentality altogether,” Ebert writes, “one in which

technology, learning and information occur at the speed of light via digitization. It is a

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mentality that is at its best when its concern is with images, pattern recognition and icons; at

its worst when it attempts to take over and mimic the functions of the Gutenbergian landscape

that it is in the process of dismantling” (pg. 12). Digital culture, as a complex-dynamical

system, characteristically has events occur all at once: creation and destruction, learning, and

creation all happen simultaneously. Furthermore, while print media “builds up, favoring

structurally organized hierarchies of knowledge,” the internet “tears down, favoring

nomadologies of one sort or another.” He borrows a phrase from the philosophers Deleuze

and Guattari, designating the internet as a “nomadological technology,” while the printing

press as a “state apparatus” (Ebert 13).

! This seems to confirm Hardt and Negri’s understanding of the new media’s potential to

create a human society without the need of a centralized state. Hardt and Negri seem to affirm

my point that, unlike Ebert, nomadism is not a negative culture, but holds the potential to

create what they call a “global democracy,” or as noted in the earlier section, the first Earth

Democracy. While this new digital nomadic culture may bring down civilization as we know

it, it might also pave the way for a new planetary culture.

! As Ebert states, the coming age of climate change and technological catastrophes, like

Chernobyl and Fukushima, are ushering in an age where the relatively stable environment,

required for civilization and high culture, will cease to exist. As I pointed out, Ebert

successfully argues that the Internet, and digital technologies in general, are nomadological;

borrowing the phrase and Deleuze and Guattari. They are discontinuous with the technology

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of the printing press, which builds up linear systems of order, legality, and centralized control.

He notes that the printing press is a state apparatus while the Internet is inherently

decentralizing and nomadic. The problem with Ebert’s thesis, however, is its bias in favoring

civilization’s “high culture” over the nomadic cultures of the past and present. What makes

them intrinsically better, or even more sophisticated, than nomadic culture? Furthermore, it

would seem that nomadic culture is far better suited for the “age of Catastrophe” than high

culture ever could be. Its dynamism and movement is properly suited to be “on the move,”

pitching up tent in one place and leaving by week’s end when that place is no longer safe, or

habitable. The nomad has a healthier relationship with his or her environment and less of an

impact on its ecosystems, and the nomad is more immersed in the dynamics of the biosphere

because of having to live, and survive, in accordance with non-human laws like weather and

other animals.

! Like the nomad, while online we peruse websites with startling speed and flow.

Navigating the digital world requires the behavior that nomads exhibit; flowing from site to

site, picking what we need and moving on. A popular phrase these days has been to describe

Internet users as “hunter-gatherers” of the Information Age. As we browse page to page, we

move through a steady running stream of images and text. On websites like Twitter, you never

stand still. Your page is constantly rushing with an influx of tweets and links. In the culture at

large, digital media as a nomadological technology is inspiring democratic philosophies that

imagine societies without the need of a centralized state or hierarchical control. Arguably,

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digital culture is prepared like no other to face the catastrophic age we are entering and the

level of social complexity and interdependence with the world’s cultures and biosphere. We

will now look at a few examples that see, like I do, digital culture as a constructive force for

world change.

! Burning Man is a fascinating cultural phenomenon that happens each year. Exhibiting a

nomadic lifestyle, thousands of people gather each year in Death Valley, NA and construct a

massive city which can be seen by astronauts from space. It is a culture of celebration, ritual,

psychedelics and imagination, ending each summer with a ritualistic burning of “The Man.”

Burning Man is a world phenomenon, attracting participants from all over the globe to

experience it. We recall earlier that Douglas Rushkoff suggests Occupy is the first “internet

generation” movement. Burning Man is analogous to Occupy in its emphasis on celebration

and cultural participation without any specific set of goals or long term plans (except perhaps,

to design the next year’s Burning Man). If Marshall McLuhan were still alive, he might

celebrate or speak at one of Black Rock City’s many lecture tents. Certainly, he would see this

culture as a demonstration of his “Global Village,” electronic culture’s retrieval of nomadic

values of participation, celebration, and collectivized ritual4 (McLuhan). McLuhan himself

might have been a man of the old print culture, but he repeatedly noted that electronic

culture’s “re-tribalism” was necessary and important to heal the planet.

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4 Marshall McLuhan – The World is a Global Village: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDnPP6ntic

! The correspondent example in virtual space has been the rise of video game culture and

the generation of virtual realities. Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

(MMORPG’s) are international digital communities that run entirely in graphically generated

world (sometimes worlds). In 2010, Warcraft reached a population size –12 million – larger

than over 100 small countries, like Greece and Cuba5(Epic Toon Blog). With computers, entire

worlds can be generated with the flick of a switch. Millions of youth now partake in video

game consoles and interact with others around the globe. Jane McGonigal believes that this

new generation of gamers have a dynamic and creative “problem solving” approach to reality:

if something is broken, you can re-code it. She suggests that this attitude will begin to spill

over outside of the entertainment industry and into reality in her book Reality is Broken. “More

and more,” she writes on collaborative gaming, “these crowdsourcing games won’t just be

about online work or computational tasks... they will take us out into the physical

environments... these new games will challenge crowds to mobilize for real-world social

missions” (McGonigal 246). In addition to Warcraft, there are other games like Eve Online

which has been the subject of study for serious economists. In a BBC article, “Money Matters

in Eve Online game,” the author writes that “the virtual universe with its hundreds of

thousands of players is an economic petri-dish in which the operation of markets can be

observed with a clarity impossible in the real world” (Vallance). It just goes to show that

digital worlds are equally capable of generating economies, politics, love affairs and complex

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5 http://www.epictoon.com/blog/2010/10/11/wow-hits-12-million-subs-overtakes-population-cuba-greece/

social dynamics that civilization could. But they do so without the need of being tangible like

their material counter-parts. The ability to “turn off” civilizations with a button might help us

alleviate the devastating effects of their carbon footprint, and let us, like Burning Man, pitch a

tent-city when the weather is good and move on when the storms come.

! William Irwin Thompson agrees that such nomadism is a positive quality and one of the

central characteristics of planetary culture’s “self-organizing architecture.” In Darkness and

Scattered Light, he imagines what this might look like:

I have no way of knowing, but I imagine someone playing a musical instrument and expressing

with it certain images in algebra and topology; as the instrument is played, the physical form of

the building is created... I imagine a future architecture in which you turn on a building the way

we now turn on the lights. These buildings will be temporary like concerts, and not enduring

like the pyramids; and so when the use of the building is finished, the people can move on... The

culture will be similar to the nomadic way of life of the old paleolithic hunters and gatherers; the

people will carry their cultures in their souls (Thompson 176).

Virtual worlds seem to foreshadow this process in which a code is “played” into the computer,

and a world is generated. When the game is up, the world closes up shop and vanishes back

into the computer’s memory. Thompson’s description of buildings “not enduring like the

pyramids,” reflects the true difference between Ebert’s praise of civilization – as a stable, long

lasting high culture – and the dynamism of nomadic culture. While we are a long way from

virtualizing our cities and buildings, we are already well on our way, if Jane McGonigal’s

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hypothesis is even remotely true. Virtual reality has been consistently enroaching on the rest of

our lives, and no doubt barring catastrophe (and even then it may) will continue. Earlier we

referred to Thompson’s statement that “the egocentric monumentality and the extensive

clutter of industrial civilization could be eliminated. We could shift from industrial object to

ecological process” (Thompson viii). This further highlights the differences between

civilization and nomadism; while the former favors object and stability, the latter is dynamic

and process-oriented. Civilization, then, becomes something that we “do.” An activity rather

than a static high culture that is permanent and remains for centuries in the stone. This new

understanding and ability to “carry” our culture “in our souls,” I believe, is a deeper

understanding and far more compatible, as well as harmonious, way of life with the planet.

Thompson suggests one way these virtual cities might be constructed – through nano-

technologies, “etherealizing” human civilization forevermore.

! At this point, I have argued for the dynamism of digital culture exhibiting traits which

parallel it with the nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers, and the “de-structuring”

characteristic of nomads as they compare to relatively stable civilizations throughout history.

However, I have attempted to demonstrate that these dynamic qualities are process oriented and

in line with an emergent understanding of the world-as-process, dynamic and fluid, complex

and interconnected. This new emergent understanding, reflected in popular culture in

examples like Burning Man and virtual realities, point to a new culture which virtualizes – or

etherealizes as Thompson suggests – civilization itself, packing up cities into hard drives and

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potentially making us more prepared, as well as compatible, with the age of ecological change

and increasing social complexity. Human societies re-enter the wild from within; our cultures

are beginning to resemble a prehistoric past of being at home in dynamic movement and

relative instability. Digital culture is therefore extremely adaptable, creative and virtualized,

carrying its “culture in its soul.” This new attitude will make it more equipped than older,

static philosophies of centralized control, “high culture,” and long-standing civilizations. We

can describe this new culture a “digital nomadic” culture, utilizing “nomadological”

technologies which are, in fact, the way of the future as well as a retrieval of a lifestyle echoed

in the distant past.

3.1 Digital Culture: Entangled Time-Play

! Digital culture is like a storm. It is always in flux, shifting centers of gravity like

ecosystems put in fast-forward of millennia. Within thriving digital networks and wireless

communication systems, we have the mashing together of different temporalities. Past, present and

future entangle in one another, as virtual worlds and waking worlds get tied up, too. The

architecture of the net gives us an idea as to why this happens: different virtual spaces,

communities and, truly, virtual realities all co-exist with each other in a vast techno-social

ecology. This ecology, however, is not just online. Websites like Meetup.com bring real people

together. But then program developers isolate themselves physically to meet in the virtual

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world to produce new software, which reverberates back out into the network to affect

millions of lives through new operating systems, games, and programs. We have examined

digital culture’s nomadic like qualities; now we will examine its relationship to chaos theory

and a new complex sense of time and space. If we recall, one of the breakthroughs of the

“complex-dynamical” mentality was a new relationship to time-space. We can now examine

how digital culture exhibits and embodies the concepts discovered in relativity physics and

chaos-theory.

! With digital networks comes a new experience of time and a new way to encounter space.

In the Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology, Amber Case introduces a concept called the

“automatic production of space,” which defines a “new geography created by software running in

networked environments.” She cites Nigel Thrift and Shaun French, who both suggest that this

new geography has come to effect “nearly all aspects of everyday life,” and Case adds that,

“the web has created a layer of infinite spaces between everyday reality, people, and

devices” (pg. 19).

! In addition to space, there are also new changes to our experience of time. Another

important term that each of us now experience on a daily basis is “asynchronous

communication,” where we communicate with another person through cell phones, computers,

email, or even letters. These messages are often received at different moments than when they

are sent, even if it is just a fraction of a second, like a text message. Another quality to

asynchronous communication is that it gives the user the experience of communicating in real

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time. In her thesis, “Cell Phones and their Technosocial Sites of Engagement,” Case suggests

that “the ritual of picking up the cell phone and transitioning to a conversation that exists on

another time/space plane is a liminal one” (Case 11). She cites Victor Turner’s definition of

liminality, “betwixt and between” to analogize the use of cell phones. Furthermore, she argues

that there is something ritualistic about cell phone usage. “A ritual, especially a rite of

passage,” Turner writes, “involves some change to the participants, especially their social

status” (Case 12). Furthermore, Sadie Plant has suggested that the cell phone has created a “bi-

psyche,” which “has created a new mode in which the human mind can operate,” where the

user can be both physically present and also partaking in an ethereal space where a mobile

conversation is taking place. “The cell phone user is operating as though in two worlds,” Sadie

writes (Case 12). Case suggests to us that the “cell phone user” becomes, through their activity,

a transitional being. This highlights the dynamism so evident in the first part of this section:

the digital-user-as-nomad. A transitional being reflects the flux and flow of nature, and also,

arguably, retrieves in digital fashion the notion of altered states of consciousness – another trait

of indigenous and religious cultures – which will be explored further in the final section.

! There is one particular philosopher who we can utilize to understand this new sense of

time. Jean Gebser’s concept of the “a-perspectival” helps us understand this new, complex

relationship with time and the new “transient being” we become when using our

communication media. Writing in the early half of the 20th century, Gebser studied culture,

language, and poetry of his time. His many works, the most well known of which is Ever-

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Present Origin, suggests that an emergent sense of time and space was occurring in Western

culture. After spending most of his career attempting to understand this new consciousness, he

designated at least four major “structures” of consciousness throughout history.

! According to Gebser’s phenomenology of consciousness, human beings have undergone

five mutations. The latest of which is the “integral” structure, which exhibits an “a-

perspectival” experience of time and space, marked by what he calls time-freedom. “To the

perception of the aperspectival world time appears to be the very fundamental function, and

to be of a most complex nature,” Gebser writes (Feuerstein 152). Integral consciousness, he

suggests, has everything to do with the “irruption of time,” where systematic attempts to

rationalize our experience of time – what he called “clock time” – were doomed. The late

Georg Feuerstein, his biographer, writes, “What then, is time in Gebser’s sense? To begin with,

it is undoubtedly more or other than clock time, or measured-spatialized time. It is more than a

concept... Gebser calls it an intensity.” Furthermore, he remarks this form of time could

actually be called “the achronon itself – time-freedom” (Feuerstein 152). For Gebser, emergent

examples in art, poetry, and photography were each attempting to deal with the “time

problem.” That is, to express time in a non-spatialized or systemic way. Feuerstein notes that,

“the new sensitivity towards space-time which marks much of contemporary art is also

characteristic of avant-garde architecture,”which often transcended the “fixity” of “inside/

outside” dualisms – an understanding that is similar to the architecture of the net, which also

blurs the distinction between digital and physical realities (Feuerstein 148).

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! Gebser feared that Western civilization was on its way towards collapse by the end of the

century, should this new consciousness not take hold. While deserving a full essay – and even

graduate study – himself, Gebser’s integral consciousness and its characteristic “time-

freedom” are helpful to borrow from here to understand what is going on with digital culture.

As previously mentioned in section one, the breakdown of linear clock-time is also consistent

with Thompson and Abraham’s complex-dynamical paradigm breakthrough (and break

down) in the 20th century.

! In order to demonstrate the “irruption of time” in Western culture, Gebser, being a

cultural philosopher, looked to art and poetry. He argues that the qualitative dimensions of

life, which Western philosophy and rational science had so underplayed, were part of this new

mutation. I think that we can see various forms of “time irruption” in the digital age, and

digital culture indicates a potent new relationship to time that is relevant to the conversation

that this essay began with. This new relationship to time and space is synonymous with

Thompson and Abraham’s complex-dynamical mentality: of multiple temporalities existing in

a larger, more multidimensional mathematical understanding of the universe.

! On the net, history has become a vast play of time in which cultures can enter, inhabit,

and make art out of. The most powerful example is remixing art. Musically, remixing requires

“sampling” of various audio clips from everything and anything audible. These clips are

uploaded onto software which the artist can then string together with a beat (which can also

just be another clip). Remix culture has been popular for as long as digital media has been

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available. In the 2000s and onward, we have witnessed an explosion of digital art. The artist,

Pogo, takes both audio and visual clips from old films and transforms them into beautiful

songs. There is a qualitative sense of magic in the creation of his music – the old films seem to

be re-animated – as if Pogo has found something intrinsic, but unsung, in them and helps them

play what was already there. His song, Bloom – which mixes multiple Disney characters

together – caught viral attention at 3.2 million viewers. Other artists, like Deadmau5 and

genres like dubstep, take noise and transform it into music. John Ebert has noted that, at the

end of Western civilization, we have all this old media sitting around collecting dust, stored up

and documented over the past fifty years. YouTube, he suggests, is like the scrap yard of old

media. Well, there is profound art to be made, even in scrapyards. Remixers go into the

compost heap and grow new life from old media. This new sense of time, where we can go

into different records of films, texts, and songs, and put them all together into remixes, I am

calling “time-play.” Not unlike Thompson’s description of “meta-systems” emerging out of

our system-sciences, new art forms emerge out of the information overload of the digital age.

They take huge amounts of information and see patterns, symbols, and meanings amongst all

of them. Thompson has consistently noted that when you “think big, you think myth.”

! So it is with digital culture, rendering a musical-mythos out of the vast swaths of

cultures, languages, sounds and media present now around the world. Mashups of different

times and places have become more and more common. Just as this has happened in music, it

has also happened in photography. Shawn Clover demonstrates this through an eerie series of

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images of San Francisco, mashing up our time with photographs of the infamous 1906

earthquake.6 Numerous other examples abound on the net. There is a tangible, qualitative

sense one experiences from these photos, as if they are really revealing different qualitative

times. These photos converge present and past within the same moment, and are therefore

liminal in their effect. Finally, because of these new art forms, entire genres and subcultures

have emerged that combine nostalgia with futurism, including vintage, retro, hipsters,

steampunk, cyberpunk, and alternative history cultures. At this point, we can recall

McLuhan’s concept of a “global village” that is formed by a world “acoustic” echo chamber.

The digital, planetary culture is maturing into what I call “time-play.” We can understand this

through Gebser’s concept of the a-perspectival. The contemporary internet user is certainly

still embedded in time, but they are also free to float through multiple experiences of time, and

multiple places, via virtual realities. We can inhabit alternate temporalities, remixing 1950’s

movies with digital beats and sounds. Perhaps digital culture is even exhibiting what Gebser

called time-freedom, enabling us to become artists of different temporalities.

! Science fiction, unlike any other fiction genre, exhibits most of the qualities discovered by

the new scientific and cultural mentality of our age. This makes sense, since science fiction is

by its nature exploratory and brings the scientific possibilities to life. Television shows and

movies seem to be exploring “chaos-dynamics” the most: of worlds, times, and realities all

smashing into each other. Television shows like Fringe start on the premise that our reality is

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6 Earthquake ‘mashup’ blends 1906 San Francisco, today: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-09-04/news/33587195_1_huge-sinkhole-photos-earthquake

doomed to smash into another, parallel reality. It plays with time-travel, alternative histories

and explorations of the nature of consciousness. Specifically of interest in Fringe is a particular

human species – the Observers – who originate from one of many possible futures for

humanity. These Observers seem to be exhibiting Gebser’s time-freedom. They “observe” time,

never aging, watching significant historical events unfold and occasionally getting involved

with them. The catch in Fringe, however, is that when you interfere with the flow of time, you

create unforeseen consequences. This complex reality, where fractures and splits in time and

space can occur, reflects the chaos-theory understanding of our universe. A popular image,

and metaphor used throughout the show is that of an immanent storm, as emphasized in my

article, “There Be Dragons.” Quite frequently, the image of the storm represents the chaos of

reality beyond our control. In the Fringe world, the storm is encountered on a daily basis.

Another example would be Jurassic Park, in which both the book and the film explore the

possibility of different evolutionary epochs, modern and prehistoric, colliding with each other.

Finally, the show LOST, by J.J. Abrams, explores time-travel, alternative realities, and quantum

physics experiments gone wrong. Each of these shows often demonstrate some form of

“storm,” which occurs as a result of science leading us into creating, or discovering realities

that are out of our control. This, I believe, aptly represents the chaos dynamics of planetary

culture.

! Each of the examples I have given from modern art and cinema reflect the world we

already live in: a world of networks inhabited by different cultures, in different places, and

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sometimes different time zones. The metaphor of realities and temporalities “clashing” and

colliding, tangling us into complex situations reflects chaos and complexity of our own

modern world. Digital networks, even if they only serve us as an un-reflected background in

our lives, create a new experience of reality: one where other places and cultures are wrapped

up and interpenetrating with our lives no matter if we like it or not. This takes us back to the

first section, where I analyze the interpenetration of human cultures through digital networks.

The universe that is full of many other universes, side by side, is none other than our own

digital reality. These artistic narratives describe a reality where the protagonists must learn to

internalize chaos, and find a home within it. The storm is a part of nature. And now that nature

is reflected in our own society through complex networks of communication, we seem to be

confronted with the “wildness” of reality first hand.

! In conclusion, we are seeing a new cultural consciousness that exists within a complex-

dynamical reality. This new culture is relativistic, chaotic, and nomadic in its ability to be so

transient. We can inhabit different virtual spaces, as a simple web browsing experience

demonstrates, but this is extended to whole cultures and communities online and offline, as in

the example of Burning Man. We can also inhabit multiple times, through retro and vintage

subcultures. This new culture views time as play, remixing the world’s history into new

mashups. In addition, this new culture is fascinated by mashing together different

temporalities, and seems to express an anxiety for the sheer overwhelming complexity the

universe beholds us with. As I demonstrated, that anxiety is often expressed in science fiction.

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All of these cultural traits are influenced deeply by the nature of networks: themselves being

liminal machines of transient communication.

! !

!

!

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4.0 The Return of the Image: Digital Animism and Virtual

Poesis

! In this final section, we examine the third characteristic of the digital age: the return of

Imagistic and Mythological thought. I argue that our techno-social media landscape is retrieving an

animistic cosmology, and the daily use of computers has inspired what I call a virtual poesis, or a

creative act of imaginal world building.

! The hermeneutics of myth and imagination are, I believe, at the basin of understanding

the digital age. We demonstrate this through the works not only from the works of Thompson

and Abraham, but also from James Hillman, Henry Corbin, and Cliff Bostock. Mythological

thought, as understood by Corbin, Hillman, and others, is rhizomatic, immanent and

multidimensional. Imagination lies at the heart of the other previous two characteristics of

digital culture: Complex/Networked, and Chaotic/Nomadic.

! Through participating daily in the ritual of logging on to our Facebook accounts,

checking our text messages, and browsing the web, we partake in a dream-like virtual space.

The reality is that over a billion people, each day, enter what could be argued to be a

hypnagogic or altered state: bombarded with a rush of imagery, icons, and text, the net truly is

quite different than our regular waking state in our offices, homes, and work places. It is a

realm of symbols and pattern recognition. Furthermore, we will examine a concept that I call

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“virtual poesis,” or an imaginative state of mind that the user enters into when using digital

media. Virtual poesis is adapted from mytho-poesis, or myth-making. Virtual poesis concerns

itself with the creative act of world-making when we use the net. Another important concept

introduced here is digital animism, a phrase that I adapted earlier on in my graduate research.

This term can be defined as the process where our techno-social environment has retrieved

some of the same behavioral qualities, and cosmologies, as animistic cultures.

4.1. The Importance of Imagistic Thinking and Myth

! We begin with the return of big picture thinking. Thompson describes the birth of

computer graphics – specifically fractals – contributing to the return of the Image. As he

mentioned in the introduction to this thesis, “our cultural Imaginary was given a gift of a new

alphabet of symbols. Dynamical systems were given geometrical portraits of their behavior,

and these were therefore called phase portraits.” (Thompson, Abraham vii). In the age of

information overload, what helps us most is discerning patterns through the noise. “The

linearity of the left-brain thinking was now to be balanced with a right-brain activation... a

new visual mathematics expressed... a return on a higher turn of the spiral to hieroglyphic

thinking” (Thompson, Abraham). Earlier than Thompson, Marshall McLuhan suggests that it

was television before the computer that returned us to imagistic thought. In Understanding

Media, he writes how the linear film making process creates an iconic effect in our

consciousness:

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!

The movie, by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us from the world of

sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure. The

message of the movie medium is that of transition from lineal connections to

configurations... We return to the inclusive form of the icon (McLuhan 27).

In addition to McLuhan, Leonard Slain’s book, The Alphabet vs. The Goddess, suggests that the

television has begun to move our consciousness away from left-brained, analytical thought,

and back into right-brained holistic thinking. Other, more recent texts such as A Whole New

Mind by Daniel Pink suggest that the emergent culture belongs to the holistic-oriented and

right-brained thinkers, creative types who can adapt to the information age. It is clear that the

adaptation of visual media, through both television, film and the internet, have had a

profound impact on the mind in the 21st century. But more so than television, digital media

intensify imagistic thought in a way that, arguably, is revolutionizing the invisible cultural

environment of the modern world.

4.2. Digital Technology Revives an Animistic Cosmology

! The aggregate of our technological devices creates an environment around us that is often

the focus of media studies, and has a profound influence on us. More recently, Donna

Harraway and Amber Case’s cyborg anthropology studies the the emergent techno-social

environment. McLuhan was famous for claiming that technologies are extensions of ourselves.

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Similarly, Case writes that, “devices are becoming external brains. Presentation of self extends

into the digital network now, just as one must present themselves in the analog world through

physical actions and clothing” (Case 7). Donna Haraway developed the concept of

“companion species.” Our technology, Haraway argues, could be considered companion

species. Case writes that, “cell phones... could be considered a companion species. They cry,

and must be picked up. They must be plugged into a wall at night to be fed. They must be

upgraded, protected, and cared for. In return, they provide information, connectivity and

entertainment.” Most importantly, the evolutionary dimensions of technology-as-companion-

species is in our mutual adaptation to each other. “They grow alongside humans,” Case writes,

“and adapt to fit their needs, as humans adapt to fit the needs of the device.” This “natural

drift” of human beings and their technology is perhaps as old as we are. But it does highlight

the important, and challenging symbiotic relationship with technology in our time. Thompson

describes this evolutionary bifurcation:

Here we see a shift from the consciousness of an autonomous self within a biological

evolutionary body to more distributive lattices of multidimensional mind in which new

media constellate new forms of the extensive phase-space through personal computers,

the Internet, and the World Wide Web (Thompson 127).

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The emergent environment created from the sum aggregate of our digital devices has

tremendous influence on our identity, sense of self, and even our sense of reality. This new

environment, arguably, is retrieving a form of digital animism.

! In the last section, I examined how the modern human being lives in a new techno-social

liminal space. The iron walls of waking, material reality have become porous, filled with

portals into cyber worlds with different rules and different ontologies. Our technology has re-

introduced other imagined realities into the public sphere. “In the Caves of Paleolithic man,”

John Ebert writes, “the animals were painted onto the walls with casual disregard for

direction: they float – disconnected from all contexts – like astronauts in outer space.” Ebert

suggests that the internet has recreated the world-as-cavern. “Online,” he writes, “we are all

present everywhere on the planet at once... All the limitations associated with embodiment in a

material world are gone, for the Internet not only eliminates hierarchies, it also abolishes the

very idea of physical location in a specific place” (Ebert 24). Amber Case suggests that “the cell

phone itself is a liminal space because it is a space that exists as auditory signals in transit. It

exists between lived realities, and is a transitional communication medium” (pg. 13). Digital

networks of all kinds, specifically the Internet, also demonstrate liminal spaces. Case suggests

that our use of cell phones fits the definition Victor Turner gave to “liminality” as a ritual, “a

state between states.” Since the adaptation of all forms of digital communication, the modern

human being lives within an entirely transitional space. The stable offline world, once the

center of reality, becomes relativized amongst other dimensions of reality: other portals

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through which we now communicate with and travel through. The act of using any of our new

media devices to communicate can be interpreted as a new form of ritual, one that is

ubiquitous in modern society and part of our daily activities. This new environment

technologically retrieves the cosmology of animism: where reality becomes porous with

meaning, material objects become luminous and intelligent, and reality is infused with

imagination and meaning through our devices. A technological “participation-mystique.”

! Physical and virtual space are blurred with modern cell phones and digital devices. Case

writes, “cell phone technology has thus changed the dichotomies of place and non-place as

well as the private and public dichotomies into a technological-human hybrid” (pg. 6). To

summarize, digital technology revives animism, to some degree, by remaking our entire

techno-social environment into a liminal and ritualistic space.

4.3 Virtual Poesis: Digital Networks, Spaces and the

Polytheistic Self

! In accordance with my claim that digital media is retrieving animism, the internet is also

reviving the importance of dream consciousness and the active imagination. In Cliff Bostock’s

article, “Cyberwork: The Archetypal Imagination in New Realms of Ensoulment,” he suggests

that the Internet is outering the imagistic psyche into waking reality. He refers to Hillman, who

suggests that every image has a telos, or meaning dwelling within it. The image, however, is

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never static. Quoting Ezra Pound, Hillman suggests that “the image is more than an idea. It is

a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.. a vortex, from which and

through which and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.” This, Bostock suggests, is what is

happening when we surf the web, “a center through which pours all manner of

thoughts” (Bostock). The internet, Bostock argues, is akin to the dream images, a bricoleur,

“cobbling together in the psyche” a series of images that are “actually the construction of

soul.” From Bostock’s point of view, the internet is none other than a new modality of soul

making. Here I would like to formally introduce “digital poesis,” as just that – a new form of

dreaming or soul making utilizing digital media. Arguing against the claim that technology

disembodies us, he sides with McLuhan’s philosophy that technology extends the body. The

net, for Bostock is sensual, creative image making. “‘Cybersex’and “virtual sex” describe new

styles of lovemaking,” he argues, “the erotic, as image-production, is erupting and birthing

itself in cyberspace” (Bostock). The dream, as a means of soul-work, is thus irrupting into our

waking reality through daily participation in cyber space.

! Another important dimension to dreams and virtual poesis is Hillman’s concept of the

polytheistic self. “The many personalities of the night world infuse themselves into the attitudes

that dominate our daily lives,” Hillman writes. “To define my person by my waking state

neglects these figures and their influences. I then become tyrannical, reflecting the jealous

monotheism of Number One” (Hillman 33). Hillman argues that we are actually made up of

“little persons,” of dreams and imagination. “If I let myself be defined as well by the little

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people of my dreams, I am free of self-tyranny,” he suggests. In Hillman’s therapy,

incorporating our dream selves is a crucial component to healing. They make the difference

between soul work and “building” the ego (Hillman 33). He continues further by suggesting

that the psyche’s basic structure is an “inscape of personified images,” and the structure of

myth is very much in step with this characteristic. “It too is polycentric, with innumerable

personifications in imaginal space.” Hillman suggests that “personifying means polycentricity,

implicating us in a revolution of consciousness–from monotheistic to polytheistic” (Hillman

35). He refers both to Hermes-Mercury, the Trickster, and Dionysus as the personification of

this consciousness. Arguably, Hillman suggests that a consciousness with no center is no worse

than a monotheistic one. It is simply a different “style.”

! We can compare the description of Hillman’s polytheistic psyche to the impact the

Internet has on our sense of self. It breaks us up into “little persons,” and images. It

deconstructs a monotheistic sense of self in favor of a pluralistic one. We can also begin to

connect this new sense of self to the larger, sociological changes in consciousness that digital

networks are doing to human society: breaking down center-periphery models and

decentralizing authority. Hillman suggests that “self-division, dismemberment, and a flowing

multiplicity belong to a mythic pattern” (pg. 35). Both the individual and collective seem to be

returning to this polytheistic and mythological self.

! On the internet, the descriptions Hillman offers of the psyche are part of everyday

experience. The internet thus becomes a mirror for our own psychological makeup, for both

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the internet and the psyche are concerned with the production of images and dream-making. It

begs the question: why does the Internet reflect our own psychological makeup? McLuhan

suggests that technology is an extension of the body. So with the internet, we may at last be

extending our consciousness into reality.

! Through Bostock and Hillman, we can understand digital media as comparatively similar

to dreams and Hillman’s polytheistic self. It produces images, reflects the polytheistic nature of

the psyche, and equally mirrors structure of myth.

! In other words, digital media appear to be re-producing a kind of mythical or imaginal

reality, exteriorized through technology and democratized for each of us through the net.

Digital media “outer” our psyches, placing us in a new material space where our inner world

is reflected in a techno-social environment.

4.4. Challenges to Western Cosmology

! The digital retrieval of dream-states in waking life has caused Jennifer Cobb and Pierre

Levy to consider that a new, ontological realm is being created through cyberspace. Through

digital technology, they argue, the classical notion of the Anima Mundi, or Henry Corbin’s

Mundus Imaginalis (Imaginal World) is being born. They also suggest that the internet is

analogous to Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere, a collective mind of the Earth

(Bostock). Despite the fact that these concepts are far-fetched from the perspective of

mainstream academia, the intriguing challenge to Western materialism is offered to us by the

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Internet itself. Despite our disbelief, digital culture and the new techno-social space that now

surrounds, and envelops us, is enacting paradigms and philosophies that have been shrugged

off long ago. These include the relativizing of waking and dreaming states of consciousness,

the belief in the World Soul – common in Neoplatonism and many ancient cultures – and the

idea that we can, and do, partake with other realities and daimonic intelligences. Each of these

concepts are being retrieved through technological means.

! Books like Chorost’s World Wide Mind legitimize Teilhard’s noosphere for technological

materialists, and artificial intelligences become the new daimonic presences, as well as gods,

which futurists now envision. The net itself is full of “little people” – trolls and avatars – which

populate the digital world and seem to have an autonomous life of their own. Like shamanic,

or even priestly rituals, members of social forums take on “memes” in order to participate with

each other and gain social status online. This has convinced me that the the animistic

psychology of the ancient world has never been fully transcended by Western society. Instead,

it appears to come back to us through the back door of our own technology, retrieving

animism through electronic media.

! We have already seen through Hillman and Bostock that a form of mythological

consciousness is returning to us through digital media. But why is this the case? Henry Corbin

suggests that Western culture, since the Renaissance, has lost a critical imaginative faculty that

has resulted in a loss of soul, causing the schism of Descartes’ mind-body dualism:

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Between the sense perceptions and the intuitions or categories of the intellect there has remained

a void. That which ought to have taken place between the two, and which in other times and

places did occupy this intermediate space, that is to say the Active Imagination, has been left to

the poets” (Cheetham 136).

!

Between the faculties of “sensation” and “intuition” lies the imaginative cognition. It is an

intermediate realm which each of us participate in, and with, on a daily basis. I believe the

Internet, and digital media at large, fits the definition of Corbin’s Active Imagination, or

Imaginal World. More and more so, virtual reality is the passageway by which we interact

with the world. It helps us organize our tasks, communicate with friends and colleagues, and

shapes our sense of reality. As Amber Case suggests with her concept of “architectural fiction,”

virtual spaces enable us to experiment with designs before we construct them in the material

world (pg. 13). The internet is an imaginal space, the “vortex” of dream-making. Perhaps even

an extension of soul. I believe that Cobb and Levy are correct in their hypothesis that the net is

a form of embodiment for the Imaginal realm. The most powerful argument in favor of this

hypothesis is the sheer fact, or reality, of digital media, which is becoming relevant for

increasing numbers of people.

4.5. Imagination, Mythology and the Network: Conclusion

! Digital media immerse us and present us with an environment in which invisible

realities, intermediary realms, myth and dream, liminal spaces, and the imagination are each

and all important to our daily existence. Corbin’s Imaginal World, Hillman’s “imagistic” and

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polytheistic psyche, and Bostock’s cyber work all point to a shift in the psyche from centralized

and waking consciousness, to the return of the imagistic, polycentric self. I believe that digital

networks have a large role to play in the polytheistic/polycentric self’s return. Arguably,

digital networks are also images of the psyche. The imagination, as Corbin defines it, and as

Hillman especially outlines, is not “centered” but exists as a “bricoleur” of images and

personifications. Networks seem to reflect this decentralizing orientation. As we studied in the

first section, centralization and hierarchy are slowly (or rapidly, depending on how you look at

it) being eroded through digital technology and the rise of new open-source philosophies.

They return us to more organic models and structures – rhizomes and networks. !In the same

sense, networks are also “dismembering” us, breaking us off into multiple persons, avatars,

and worlds. Secondly, digital networks are creating a new type of dream state, analogous to

the “bricoleur” rush, or vortex of images that Bostock and Hillman claim are essential to “soul

work.” Finally, the Internet as a whole can be viewed as the return of the Imaginal Realm of

Corbin; a means for it to become embodied and materialized in modern society. Each of these

examples represent powerful examples of a shifting orientation in the Western psyche.

! This thesis has explored the three central characteristics of of the new digital culture as

they have related to Thompson and Abraham’s model of cultural evolution. Networked,

Chaotic, and now Imaginal or Mythological. Thompson himself has attributed our age to an

“animistic retrieval,” as we noted in the introduction. These have occurred through esoteric

and artistic movements in the 20th century, through Steiner’s anthroposophy to Yeats’ poetry.

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Secondly, digital technologies, according to Thompson, have aided the return of pattern

recognition and imagistic thought. I have attempted to demonstrate that the Internet and

digital culture as a whole goes further than introduce imagistic thought. The techno-social

spaces digital media creates effectively outers the inner realms of the psyche, dream

consciousness, and mythological thinking.

! The deepest layer in which to understand digital culture is mythological consciousness,

which is Imagistic and decentralized. I am left to conclude that the hermeneutic which we may

best understand digital culture is the Imagination, as defined by psychologists like James

Hillman, and philosophers as Henry Corbin.

! The tremendous techno-social changes that are taking place are arguably undoing the

course of Western cosmology, technologically re-introducing Corbin’s Imaginal World through

virtual realities, and the importance of mythological thinking through participating in digital

media.

! My findings coincide with Thompson and Abraham’s model of the emergent “complex-

dynamical mentality,” in which a planetary culture emerges as both new complex political and

social relationships through interconnected networks, and an “animistic retrieval” through

what Thompson describes as “the planetization of the esoteric” (Thompson 128).!

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5.0 Conclusion!

! My thesis set out to understand the evolution of digital networks as they relate to an

emergent, planetary culture. My thesis was that digital culture was exhibiting three

characteristics, each interrelated: Self-organizing networks, nomadic lifestyle and a new

complex relation to time and space, and the retrieval of mythological consciousness and

animism. I concluded that the last characteristic: mythological/animistic, is the core means of

understanding digital culture, because the mythological consciousness and the imagination

compellingly exhibit the previous two characteristics.!

! In section one, I introduce the concept of cultural evolution, and set the context of my

thesis as an examination of the current evolutionary bifurcation in human culture and

consciousness. This bifurcation is the shift from industrial nation-states to a planetary human

society, what Thompson describes as the Biospheric cultural ecology. I adapt Thompson and

Abraham’s theoretical concept of the “complex-dynamical” mentality in order to analyze and

describe three core characteristics of digital culture: a) Networked/Interconnected, b)

Nomadic/Chaotic, and c) Mythological/Animistic.

! In section two, I argue that digital culture, through its embodiment of organic networks

of communication, is toppling down hierarchical structures of government and political/social

philosophies.

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! In section three, I examine digital culture as nomadic, through the lens of Ebert’s analysis

of the Internet as a “nomadological technology,” and Thompson’s reflection on planetary

culture becoming “nomadic” in nature. I examine the new relationship to time and space that

digital culture exhibits, and give multiple examples, such as Burning Man and MMORPGs

(massive multiplayer online role playing games), and remixing art. This new relationship to

time and space, which digital culture allows, is consistent with Thompson and Abraham’s

model of the complex-dynamical mentality, where linear time breaks down and cultures now

live in multiple temporalities and inhabit more than one space in any given moment.

! Section four introduces mythological consciousness as a key characteristic of digital

culture, consistent with the Thompson-Abraham model. Mythological consciousness not only

retrieves the importance of images, pattern recognition and “hieroglyphic” thinking, but it also

“outers” the psyche into the physical world, rendering us in a techno-social dream space

through the internet and digital media. This new environment embeds us in reality where

inner and outer are blurred, and may eventually challenge Western cosmological stances. I

suggest an interpretation by Henry Corbin, who argues that the faculty of the Imagination has

been largely ignored by the West since the Renaissance, and has caused many of the mind-

body problems thereafter. I also introduce the psychologist James Hillman’s concept of the

“polytheistic” psyche to help us understand a new identity that is being formed through our

use of the internet and our extended virtual selves. Arguably, it is our psyche that is being

rendered material through technology.

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! In conclusion, my study utilized the methodology of Thompson and Abraham to

consider digital culture as exemplifying an evolution of culture and consciousness in society. I

attempted to draw out three main characteristics of this new digital, planetary culture as

networked/rhizomatic, nomadic/chaotic, and mythological/animistic. I concluded with a

suggestion that the best means in which to understand digital culture, going forward, is a renewed

appreciation of mythological thinking – which embodies and exemplifies all the characteristics of

digital culture at their core – and will hopefully be the subject of further study.

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6. Annotated Bibliography:

1. Bostock, Cliff. "Cyberwork: The Archetypal Imagination in New Realms of Ensoulment." CG

Jung Page. N.p., 4 Dec. 2003. Web.An incredible article, Bostock suggests that the New Media

age represents an age of Imaginal eroticism; the creation of a new imaginal body, and the

internet as a legitimate realm of ensoulment. He argues persuasively for us to view the internet

as a form of hypnagogic trance, a dream like of creative participation, and suggests that we are

in the midst of creating a new, Imaginal body, in addition to our material bodies. There are a

number of other significant ideas posited, such as the cyborg as a new symbol for the

alchemical philosopher's stone, and a postmodern view of the archetype as a "vortex," similar

in many ways to rush of images we experience while online. I adapted this because it posited

many important relationships between mythological and Imaginal studies and the Internet

age.

2. Brien, Dolores. "The Star in Man: Jung and Technology." CG Jung Page. N.p., 5 June 2005.

Web. <http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?

option=com_content&task=view&id=681&Itemid=40>.An essential Jungian interpretation

concerning the relationship between technology and the soul. Jung suggests that the machine

is actually a positive image of the soul: taking nature and transmuting it into its inner,

alchemical potential. The machine, therefore, is the symbol for the "star in man" of Paracelsus,

the alchemical laboratory of the Great Work. Brien also reminds us of Jung's thoughts

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concerning materialism: that the archetypes were forced to be projected into machines in an

age of mechanism and reductionism. These provided essential concepts for my understanding

of the relationship between the soul and technology, and encouraged me to see electronic and

digital media as a projection of soul.

3. Brockman, John. Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds

and Future. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. Print.This is a series of short essays by a number

of public intellectuals, scientists and scholars on the impact of digital media on consciousness.

It covers neurological, anthropological and sociological perspectives. While not in-depth, it is

comprehensive. I used this text to draw examples of how the new media are resurrecting older

forms of consciousness, such as prehistorical and indigenous customs and behaviors.

4. Campbell, Joseph. Creative Mythology. New York: Penguin, 1976. Print.An essential

mythological text, perhaps Campbell at his best. Here Joseph Campbell lies down a foundation

of mythological thought through human history, leading us up into the present day. I adopted

many of Campbell's insights regarding the nature of myth and its importance to

understanding our ever-changing relationship with cosmos and psyche.

5. Chardin, Teilhard De, Julian Huxley, and Bernard Wall. The Phenomenon of Man. New York:

Harper, 1959. Print.This is a seminal text for insight on the evolution of consciousness and the

internet age. In it, Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit scholar and scientist posits the existence of the

"noosphere," or "thinking layer" of the Earth. Teilhard suggests that we are transitioning into a

planetary age where the world's cultures will be brought together in some great synthesis. He

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suggests the concept of the Omega Point, and provides a complex evolutionary theory which

combines technology and consciousness in a teleological trajectory of life on Earth. I utilized

this text to adapt Teilhard's concept of the Noosphere into my own concept of the Noetic

Ecology.

6. Chorost, Michael. World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines and the

Internet. New York: Free, 2011. Print.This text hypothesizes the solution to our problems with

scattered attention with the internet by suggesting that we directly link our minds up to a

"global mind," through complex, neurological technology. This World Wide Mind would unite

everyone in a new consciousness where we could, as it were, bypass the gap between the

human organism and the lightning speed machines we are creating, ushering in a new

evolutionary epoch of human and machine cyborgs. This text, while mainly speculative, is a

good example of how technological culture mirrors most perfectly magic and supernatural

thinking of previous ages, promising to fulfill those magical abilities through science.

7. Corbin, Henry. "Mundus Imaginalis." Hermetic Library. Hakim Bey, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.

<http://hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm>.An essential text by the scholar Henry

Corbin on the Mundus Imaginalis, or the "Imaginal World," which Corbin is famous for

coining in modern esoteric literature. This world allegedly is the "intermediary" realm, the

Imagination, which Corbin suggests is a necessary ontological dimension of reality. This is a

crucial text for anyone interested in studying the Imagination, mythopoetic (or myth-making)

and a sound, philosophical argument in favor of an alternative conception of the human

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imagination. This text is also important for my research as I believe the Mundus Imaginalis is

synonymous with the advent of the Internet age. Through an analysis of the Imaginal World, I

demonstrate in my thesis that the Internet age is analogous to this ontological realm, and

represents an "eruption" of said realm into our modern, Western culture.

8. Davis, Erik. Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, Mysticism in the Age of Information. New York: Harmony,

1998. Print.This is an Internet study par-excellence. Erik Davis provides a marvelous

exploration of the mythological and magical contexts of the digital age. Suffice to say, Davis

provides a near insurmountable amount of connections between technology and the occult, the

unconscious dreams of techno-culture. I picked this text because it provides a grand study of

the digital age and its connections with esoteric motifs.

9. Dotson, Mark. "Soul Spelunker." Soul Spelunker. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. <http://

www.soulspelunker.com/>.This is an essential "hyper-text" by blogger and esotericist Mark

Dotson. Mark publishes regular articles that demonstrate the rise of what he calls the

"Rhizome Soul," whereby digital media are ushering in an era of Imagination and creativity,

and most of all, soul work. I developed a collaboration and conversation with Mark and

consider him a colleague who articulates a similar hypothesis as mine.

10. Ebert, John David. The New Media Invasion: Digital Technologies and the World They Unmake.

Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2011. Print.This is another essential text for my thesis. Ebert posits

that New Media, that is digital technology, is creating a "knowledge catastrophe," and a "mass

media extinction." In other words, electronic media are undoing hundreds of years of linear,

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perspectival thought in Western civilization. Ebert hypothesizes that electronic media are

returning us to a world of dream-like technologies that resurrect an archaic form of

consciousness that is incompatible with the realm of rational thought and Euclidian space-

time. Like McLuhan, Ebert thinks this is effectively undoing Western civilization and bringing

back a mythic civilization in its place. I adopted this text in order to emphasis my own

thoughts on the resurrection of mythic and magical consciousness, the "archaic mind," in my

thesis.

11. Gablik, Suzi. Conversations before the End of Time. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

Print.An important text by an art critic and cultural writer, Gablik suggests that we are in the

midst of a "participatory turn," in human culture. She interviews a number of important

thinkers, art critics, and psychologists such as James Hillman on the coming participatory age.

I found this text to be especially relevant for my thesis, which also posits a participatory

culture realized by New Media, one which may re-introduce a sacred vision of the cosmos and

a human relationship with the divine.

12. Gebser, Jean. The Ever-present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1985. Print.This is a

phenomenal text that more readers in the Consciousness Studies program really should read. I

write this because Gebser is "in touch" with the etymological and experiential sources of

culture. In this text, he presents an entire phenomenology as vast as Jung's in which he posits

"structures of consciousness." Gebser is a modern evolutionary thinker who, ironically, does

not adapt the term "evolution" in his writing, but nonetheless demonstrates significant

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"mutations" in human consciousness throughout history. I recommend Gebser more than most

other writers on cultural evolution because of his sensibility to postmodern thought: he is

overtly critical of positivism and Hegelian thought, and yet despite this he still provides a

coherent and beautiful picture of human consciousness that instills one with hope and depth

of vision. I adapted this work for my thesis because of his insights not only on older forms of

consciousness – what he calls "magic" and "mythic" – but also his insights for the modern

Internet age: the "integral" consciousness. I believe his descriptions of the integral structure are

not only parallel td the consciousness of the digital age, but help us understand it further and

deeper.

13. Hagerty, Lawrence C. The Spirit of the Internet. Tampa, FL: Matrix Masters, 2000. Print.This

text hypothesizes a similar view to my thesis: that the Internet is actually a "psychedelic" or

"Imaginal" medium. Hagerty claims that the Internet is actually a synthetic, or virtual sacred

plant, providing our civilization with much needed assistance for a planetary ecological and

economic crisis. Hagerty is a popular podcaster of the Psychedelic Salon, which hosts regular

interviews and discussions by countercultural authors and writers.

14. Harpur, Patrick. Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld. London: Viking Arkana,

1994. Print.This is quintessential Harpur: in this text he posits the existence of a "Daimonic

reality," adapting Jung's concept of the "reality of the psyche," and suggesting that many of the

contemporary world's issues arise from a repression, and crisis of soul. This is important

reading for anyone exploring parasychological phenomena and a cultural critique from the

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position of mythological, mythopoetic, and Imaginal traditions. I adapted his concepts to

describe the "loss of soul" and the means in which the soul can creep back in to our reality

through both scientific narrative and technological culture.

15. Harpur, Patrick. The Philosophers' Secret Fire. Victoria, Australia: Blue Angel Gallery, 2007.

Print.A longer narrative based on Harpur's earlier text, Daimonic Reality. This text explores in

detail the transition from an ensouled cosmos to the modern materialism, which rejects the

World soul at a great price. Harpur explores the crisis of modern civilization through the

tradition of Neoplatonism, Alchemy, and Mythology, suggesting that many of our world

problems are as a result of a loss of a daimonic perspective on reality. I adopted this text to

explain how the mythological narrative can inform the technological Western psyche.

Particularly. This pertained to a cosmological narrative in my thesis, and a historical

background.

16. Lilla, Jennifer. "Immanence: Divine within." Immanence: Divine within. N.p., n.d. Web. 20

Oct. 2012. <http://immanence.net/2012/03/23/the-culture-of-immanence-2/>.An important

study that hypothesizes we are entering the "age of Immanence," a time where the

transcendental spirit of Western civilization is sublimated in an immanent turn towards the

"depths" of spiritual realization, a decentralized society, and a soulful, participatory age. I

believe Lilla's work is an important contribution and synonymous with many of my own

insights on the internet age and creative soul work. It also relates to my hypothesis that the

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coming age is one of decentralized culture and an increasing participation with imaginal

worlds.

17. McLuhan, Marshall. "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." The Playboy Interview:

Marshall McLuhan. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. <http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/

mcluhanplayboy.htm>.This is a well-known and highly articulate interview with Marshall

McLuhan, of which Erik Davis cites in his book TechGnosis. McLuhan articulates his whole

philosophical vision of the evolution of media and consciousness, and provides a participatory

vision of the future, which he believes belongs to "electronic culture." McLuhan's ideas on the

future, are relevant to my hypothesis of the participatory consciousness that digital media are

inducing and encouraging.

18. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT,

1994. Print.This is an essential Marshall McLuhan text where he explains most of the core

themes of his work. I picked this text because of his concept of "reversal," where electronic

technology deeply and unconsciously affects human consciousness, resurrecting the

importance of the image, the icon, and myth. McLuhan suggests that electronic culture is

creating a "Global Village" of participatory and holistic consciousness by "outering" the human

nervous system into a global, interconnected network. In many ways McLuhan foreshadows

the internet age by this book, even though he is mostly speaking of technologies up to the

television and early computers. Still a staple and landmark text for anyone studying media

and consciousness.

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19. Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York:

Penguin, 2010. Print.This is an essential text for media studies and the internet age. Clay

Shirky demonstrates that the emerging age is one of intrinsic creative participation,

democratized by digital media. The millions of hours spent watching T.V. are rapidly being

syphoned off by digital media, which encourage not a passive, but active participatory society.

I incorporated this into my thesis in order to demonstrate the increasingly participatory and

creative characteristics of electronic media. Mainly, I appreciated its demonstration that we are

entering an age of creativity.

20. Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New

York: Penguin, 2008. Print.This is another important text by Clay Shirky, signaling an age of

decreasing bureaucratic competency and usefulness with the advent of the digital age. Shirky

carefully demonstrates the usefulness of bureaucracies as they evolved in recent history, and

then demonstrates their decline with the advent of the Internet age, where decentralized

networks and computer programs make self-publishing possible. This demonstrates the

decentralizing and "anarchic" effects of the social media revolution, with long-term

implications.

21. Thompson, William Irwin. The American Replacement of Nature: The Everyday Acts and

Outrageous Evolution of Economic Life. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Print.Another essential

Thompson text for the purposes of analyzing media. Thompson provides a brilliant synthesis

of cultural evolution, mythological and media studies to analyze the contemporary situation of

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the late 20th century electronic media. He proposes we are re-entering a mythological

consciousness, a kind of mythic retrieval by means cinema and electronic culture. In the

example of film, he asserts that movies retrieve religious experience like no religious ritual can

do. I adopted this text for my thesis because it affirms my hypothesis: that electronic media are

"resurrecting" an older form of consciousness that is most evident in Medieval and premodern

societies.

22. Thompson, William Irwin. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the

Origins of Culture. New York: St. Martin's, 1981. Print.This is Thompson's "opus" par-excellence.

In it he articulates all of his positions on the relationship between myth and science, the soul

and story-telling, and the evolution of consciousness as it originates in the Paleolithic and

moves up into our modern day Western crisis. He concludes with Aurobindo's vision of an

evolutionary future, a mutation of consciousness where the Masculine and Feminine will be

brought together in some greater and higher integration. This is a foundational text for the

understanding of myth and cultural evolution; much under-rated by current dialogue on

cultural evolution (Such as Ken Wilber's work). I utilized this text as a foundational piece for

understanding mythopoetics thought and evolution.

23. Thompson, William Irwin. Transforming History: A Curriculum for Cultural Evolution. Great

Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2001. Print.This text is an addendum to Thompson's "The Time

Falling Bodies Take to Light." In it, he offers a synopsis of the evolution of consciousness to be

utilized as a curriculum for students at the Ross School, or adopted for educators at large. I

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utilized it for his description of the current planetary epoch, the Complex-Dynamical

Mentality, which he developed in collaboration with mathematician Ralph Abraham.

7. Works Consulted:

Abraham, Ralph H. Bolts from the Blue: Art, Mathematics, and Cultural Evolution. Rhinebeck NY:

! Epigraph, 2011. Print.

Bostock, Cliff. "Cyberwork: The Archetypal Imagination in New Realms of Ensoulment." C.G.

! Jung Page. N.p., 4 Dec. 2003. Web. <http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?

! option=com_content&task=view&id=369&Itemid=40>.

Brockman, John. Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and

! Future. New York: Harper Perennial, 2011. Print.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. New York: Viking, 1959. Print.

Case, Amber. "The Cell Phone and Its Technosocial Sites of Engagement." Thesis. Lewis and

Clark College, 2007. Case Organic. Web. <http://oakhazelnut.com>

Case, Amber. The Illustrated Dictionary of Cyborg Anthropology. N.p.: Amber Case, 2012. Print.

Cheetham, Tom. All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings. Berkeley,

! CA: North Atlantic, 2012. Print.

Chorost, Michael. World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines and the

! Internet. New York: Free, 2011. Print.

Davis, Erik. "Erik Davis on Nature and Imagination." YouTube. YouTube, 04 May 2008. Web. 23

! Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLg49Yoz2kA>.

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Davis, Erik. Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, Mysticism in the Age of Information. New York: Harmony,

! 1998. Print.

Ebert, John David. The Age of Catastrophe: Disaster and Humanity in Modern times. Jefferson:

! McFarland, 2012. Print.

Ebert, John David. The New Media Invasion: Digital Technologies and the World They Unmake.

! Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2011. Print.

Feuerstein, Georg, and Jean Gebser. Structures of Consciousness: The Genius of Jean Gebser-- an

! Introduction and Critique. Lower Lake, CA: Integral Pub., 1987. Print.

Gebser, Jean. The Ever-present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1985. Print.

Harpur, Patrick. Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld. London: Viking !Arkana,

! 1994. Print.

Harpur, Patrick. The Philosophers' Secret Fire. Victoria, Australia: Blue Angel Gallery, 2007. Print.

Hillman, James. Re-visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial, 1977. Print.

Jung, C. G., and Joseph Campbell. The Portable Jung. New York: Penguin, 1976. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-biological Civilization. Reading, MA: Addison-

! Wesley, 1994. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Print.

Lopez, Antonio. The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us about Responsible Media

! Practice. Berkeley, CA: Evolver Editions, 2012. Print.

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McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the

! World. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

! Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1994. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall. "Marshall McLuhan - The World Is a Global Village (CBC TV)." YouTube.

! YouTube, 24 Mar. 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?

! v=HeDnPP6ntic>.

Pinchbeck, Daniel. Notes from the Edge times. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2010. Print.

Rushkoff, Douglas. "Think Occupy Wall St. Is a Phase? You Don't Get It - CNN.com." CNN.

! Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/

! 2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html>.

Rushkoff, Douglas. "Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Douglas Rushkoff, "Radical Abundance: How We

! Get Past "Free" and Learn to Exchange Value Again." YouTube. YouTube, 19 Nov. 2009.

! Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHMvknT_uk4>.

Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin,

! 2010. Print.

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York:

! Penguin, 2008. Print.

Shlain, Leonard. The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image. New York:

! Viking, 1998. Print.

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Steele, Robert David. The Open-source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, and Trust.

! Berkeley, CA: Evolver Editions, 2012. Print.

Teilhard, De Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Print.

Thompson, William I., and Jeremy Johnson. "William Irwin Thompson Interview:

! Consciousness, Occupy Movement and Planetary Culture." Evolandscapes. YouTube, 04

! Jan. 2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1iFpoXF0-I>.

Thompson, William Irwin. Darkness and Scattered Light: Four Talks on the Future. Garden City,

! NY: Anchor, 1978. Print.

Thompson, William Irwin. Transforming History: A New Curriculum for a Planetary Culture. Great

! Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne, 2009. Print.

Vallance, Chris. "Money Matters in Eve Online Game." BBC News. BBC, 03 Mar. 2010. Web. 23

! Nov. 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8545268.stm>.

Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science

! and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991. Print.

"WoW Hits 12 Million Subs, Overtakes Population of Cuba and Greece." EpicToon Blog RSS.

! N.p., 11 Oct. 2010. Web. 23 Nov. 2012. <http://www.epictoon.com/blog/

! 2010/10/11/!wow-hits-12-million-subs-overtakes-population-cuba-greece/>.

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