Davis: Chapter 6

Chris Carr

Davis Chapter 6

            The main idea I seemed to pull out of this chapter is that these many different offline and online communities seem to create connections and idea between the many different generations. He speaks on the use of rhetoric in maintaining the values of the sixties such as “radical democracy, personal empowerment, alternative community, and decentralized society of free-flowing data.” Davis speaks a lot about the Grateful Dead and many of their extensive offline and online groups who spread things as simple as set lists between one another. He speaks about how the Grateful Dead was able to connect the 60’s to the 80’s and 90’s through the online community, Whole Earth ‘lectronic Links, which was heavily occupied by dead heads.

            When he began his comparison of LSD and the computer, I found it very far-fetched. However, when he began using the story of people trying to put LSD in the water supply, I began to notice some similarities. Mainly the fact that electronics, especially the internet, can take over you in certain ways. It can make you think in different ways due to the overstimulation and unbelievable amounts of information. I really enjoyed the quote “it may turn out that digital devices and media machines wind up dosing the population.” This technology can have a certain level of control over your mind, but without the individuals really noticing it. The internet could be the new generations version of LSD, without the stigma behind it.

            I also feel the need to mention technopagans, because they seem to support the idea of many generations becoming connected. While most of their traditions may come from the 40’s, many believe some of their traditions are centuries old.  However, They also seem to use many of the values mentioned which have been preserved from since the sixties. For instance, Davis mentions “Pagans also set themselves in opposition to what they see as the patriarchal, authoritarian, and antiecological forms of spirituality that have dominated the Christian West.” If Pagans are not an example of radical democracy, personal empowerment, alternative community, I don’t know what is. These Pagans are not only living off Ideas from the 1940’s and earlier, but things from the 1960’s to now.