The more disempowered people are, the more they long for magic, which explains why magic becomes the province of women in a sexist society. And what are most spells about? Usually procuring love, with the hexing of enemies running a close second.
// Erica Jong, Witches
One of the first books to turn me on to technomancy was William S. Burroughs’s The Electronic Revolution, wherein the author explains his ideas about the word virus and how to exploit it via manipulating and playing back media including photographs and audio tape recordings. Below is an excerpt from the text, which describes an essentially sorcerous operation against a small business that had offended Burroughs; seems petty, but the final paragraph maps the technique onto ‘the arena of politics’. As you read the excerpt, compare ‘tape recorder 2’ to a magical link.
Hungry for more? Here is the complete text (pdf).
See also: Cursing (and Hacking) Up
