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Cyberdelics in context: On the prospects and challenges of mind-manifesting technologies
By Ido Hartogsohn
This perspective article traces cyberdelics from their 1980s–1990s cultural formation through their contemporary return alongside renewed interest in psychedelics and virtual reality. It argues that understanding cyberdelic technologies requires attention to psychedelic set and setting, cultural conditions, and the tension between humane transformation and attention-extractive media systems. The article is conceptual and historical rather than an empirical test of any specific technology.
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- 2023Where it sits among everything in the Knowledge Bank, by year
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About the paper
The article traces cyberdelics from their 1980s–1990s cultural formation through their contemporary return alongside renewed interest in psychedelics and virtual reality. It examines how psychedelic set and setting, cultural conditions, and contemporary media systems shape the prospects of technologies intended to support presence, awe, transcendence, and other mind-manifesting aims. This is a historical and conceptual Perspective article, not an empirical efficacy or safety study.
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