Communication Tech as Chakras

On Dosenation, Erik "Techgnosis" Davis gives a short review of Steven Vedro's Digital Dharma: A User's Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere.

It is, if I may say, a deeply techgnostic text, almost a workbook of IT mysticism. Using a perspective loosely inspired from Ken Wilber’s integral thought, Vedro looks at a variety of electronic media technologies as expressions and reflections of the evolution of consciousness (which I tend to think is really a mutation). With not a small amount of audacity—especially for a telecommunications consultant—Vedro maps seven different communication regimes (telephony, peer-to-peer networks, pervasive computing, etc.) onto the classic system of the Hindu chakras. The muladhara chakra at the base of the spine, associated with security and earthly reality, gets linked to radio telegraphy, which not only needs a good ground connection but which formed the infrastructural basis of the electronic universe in the late nineteenth century. Later in the book, Vedro also connects the visionary third eye with digital compression, the array of algorithmic processes that drive the vast multiplication of concocted worlds that now make up the multi-perspectival matrix of digital reality.

Digital Dharma [Dosenation.com]

[#1 posted by Skep , January 23, 2008 12:38 PM]

You lost me at "Chakras."

A title like "Communication Tech as Chakras" might as well be "Science as medieval BS."

From the website:

Digital Dharma was published by the high-quality Theosophical press Quest, and it is unquestionably an example of the spiritual self-help genre. It’s got a blurb from the What the Bleep?! physicist Amit Goswami,

Just that blurb alone is enough to give this work a pedigree of the clearest claptrap. I'm not sure what we get by comparing things that work and actually exist ("Communication Tech") to things that don't exist and are part of ancient attempts to explain how humans function ("Chakras"). It certainly won't enlighten the theosophists, who think that Chakras reside one's "astral body.

Ancient Claptrap + Tech doesn't sum. You just get Ancient Claptrap + Tech, not some form of higher understanding. Bad data plus good data doesn't equal better data.

[#2 posted by joymonk , January 31, 2008 3:19 PM]

It is always funny to me how people who consider themselves "skeptics" and look to "science" as an answer to all things, frequently are as biased as the people who reject the scientific method of inquiry as the work of the devil. Nearly as if "science" was not a method, but a religion in itself...

Likening 'Chakras' to medieval BS or 'Claptrap' is not a particularly scientific or skeptical approach, but simply expresses a bias. Scientific would be to say "I don't know, let's see" and set up experiments to test the validity (or more proper, test for the antithesis like Sir Popper suggested).

Apart from 5000 years of anecdotal evidence, there has also been a bunch of research done around chakras utilizing scientific methods. To ignore them or worse to consider them "bad data" just because there is a lack of understanding around them does not strike me as particularly scientific. And if you take the time, you can even learn to easily feel your own chakras, notice distinct differences between them, and become one of the many many people in history who used them not just as metaphors, but as active means to understand and heal themselves.

It might do you good to actually read the book instead of condemning it as the "Clearest Claptrap". You might learn some things...

[#3 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , January 31, 2008 3:31 PM]

Look! Two people who have completely missed the concept of the useful metaphor!

That's kind of cool. You don't often get a perfectly polarized set like that.

[#4 posted by joymonk , January 31, 2008 5:39 PM]

Glad you are enjoying the polarization... Apart from the validity of chakras as such, I completely agree that the most important piece here is the METAPHOR. Nothing is. Everything appears. Every word, every fact in a way is simply a metaphor.
Vedro draws some amazing parallels between the world of communication technology and the inner world in which we live. By enjoying the ride and taking what is useful, I believe, most people can gain something from playing with these metaphors - if you are open to that, of course ;-)

[#5 posted by joymonk , January 31, 2008 5:41 PM]

oh, yeah... and IF you are interested in exploring these metaphors and you happen to be in Los Angeles, Steven will be presenting and leading a workshop on these topics on February 9/10 through c3: Center for Conscious Creativity (http://consciouscreativity.org)