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Technoanimism
Technoshamanism
Image from Steve Bowers

A common memeplex that reached currency in the Interplanetary Age with the advent of sentient and sapient ais, bots, and vecs and widespread gengineering and provolution. To a technoanimist, the default assumption is that every item and environment has an indwelling or governing spirit/intelligence. The environment of a typical sophont at this technology level includes so many sentient, sophont, or pseudosentient entities that most objects are most profitably dealt with as if they were alive and even conscious or self conscious -- which in fact they may be. This is not necessarily a formal belief system, though it may be; it is more a useful habit of mind. Technoanimism is reminiscent of beliefs and attitudes that most human baselines had before well into the Agricultural Age, but it is a highly adaptive behaviour in the typical modern context. A person with a technoanimist attitude and a high degree of skill and understanding in dealing with the modern environment may be referred to as a technoshaman.

 
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Appears in Topics
CommunicationsDaily LifeEverydaytech
MetaphysicsTechnology
 
Development Notes
Text by Stephen Inniss
Initially published on 17 January 2010.

 
 
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