All Lectures are free and open to the public.
Mysticism and Information Culture Historians inform us that the West's mystical heritage of occult dreamings, spiritual transformations, and apocalyptic visions crashed on the shores of the modern age. In this view, technology has helped disenchant the world. Taking his cue from Arthur C. Clarke's famous remark that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic, Davis will tonight peer into the history of phantasms in order to open up the digital imagination. He will discuss the ancient Art of Memory, and trace this mnemonic techne through Dante and Renassiance magic into the hypertext hieroglyphics of the World Wide Web. Davis will also explore the metaphoric role of magic in computer games, from Adventure to MUDs to the latest RPGs, arguing that this curiously persistent topos reveals a great deal about the semiotics of computer interfaces and the nature of virtual worlds.