The Evolutionary Importance of Technology

Summary

The talk centers on a 1989 workshop by Terence McKenna, introduced by Lorenzo in the context of the Psychedelic Salon podcast and a memorial announcement for Sascha Shulgin in Berkeley, California. The host frames the episode as both a tribute to the psychedelic community and a presentation of McKenna’s ideas about technology, consciousness, and the future. The memorial details, including the Berkeley Community Theater venue, RSVP instructions, and potluck gathering, serve as a brief opening before the discussion shifts into McKenna’s lecture. McKenna’s core argument is that information is becoming increasingly self-organizing and self-reflective, moving beyond the control of political or corporate institutions. He describes human civilization as a wavefront of knowledge in which scientific fields such as solid-state physics, nanotechnology, and gene transplantation are converging, even if specialists do not fully understand one another’s work. In his view, information has been “bootstrapping” itself through successive media—geology, biology, tools, electronics—toward higher levels of coordination. He presents technology not as a separate force but as a prosthetic extension of the human species and, more importantly, as an evolutionary driver that is reshaping humanity. A major theme is McKenna’s belief that the future will be defined by a convergence of cyberspace, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. He imagines a world in which virtual reality, matter compilers, and atom-by-atom fabrication make it possible to grow cities like forests and reduce dependence on industrial agriculture. He suggests that these developments could free humanity from scarcity and create political breathing room by loosening the grip of the agricultural cycle. At the same time, he argues that the future is already arriving and that people must decide how to position themselves within this accelerating informational matrix. He recommends the stance of artist and producer rather than passive consumer, warning that those without a plan will become part of someone else’s plan. McKenna also emphasizes embodiment and feeling as the most reliable anchor in a rapidly abstracting world. He cites Alfred North Whitehead, Morris Berman’s Coming to Our Senses, and David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous to argue that the primary datum of experience is feeling, not detached theory. He links this to psychedelics, which he sees as tools for deculturating people—revealing the mechanisms of society rather than simply integrating individuals into it. He describes the psychedelic experience as a way of becoming an “extra environmental” observer, someone who can see cultural games with ironic sophistication. This perspective, he says, is increasingly important in an era of accelerating novelty. A substantial portion of the conversation turns to psychedelic plants and their chemistry, especially salvia divinorum. McKenna explains that psychedelics are plant-derived alkaloids or related compounds used in shamanic traditions, naming peyote, ayahuasca, mushrooms, cannabis, datura, and others. He discusses how legal restrictions have pushed people toward horticultural and chemical strategies for accessing altered states. Salvia divinorum becomes the main example: he recounts how Brett Blosser’s fieldwork with Mazatec people helped establish its psychoactive properties, and how Daniel Siebert and others isolated alpha-salvinorin, a diterpene unlike the more familiar alkaloid psychedelics. McKenna notes that salvia is unusually potent, easy to grow, and at the time largely legal, making it a significant case study in how drug laws may become irrelevant through loopholes and botanical diversity. He gives a practical description of salvia’s effects, including its rapid onset, short duration, bitter taste, and intense, twisting, dimensional hallucinations. He compares the experience to being rotated or folded into another space-time domain, and he stresses that the substance is powerful enough to be both satisfying and disorienting. He also notes that the experience is not necessarily nauseating and that some users are more susceptible than others. The discussion broadens into the legal and cultural implications of psychedelics, including ayahuasca and DMT, which he argues are difficult to regulate because their chemistry overlaps with endogenous human chemistry. The final section expands into McKenna’s vision of future communication and virtual intimacy. He imagines virtual reality systems that allow people to show one another the “mansion of the soul,” revealing hopes, fears, unfinished projects, and inner landscapes. He believes increased bandwidth will deepen human understanding and dissolve social differences. He also speculates that future interfaces may become biologically integrated—implants behind the eyelids, nanocytes, and even internet access through trees or mycelial networks. Nature, he argues, is the model for future technology because it achieves complexity without the toxic heat and heavy metals of industrial manufacturing. The talk closes with Lorenzo’s retrospective commentary, noting how prescient McKenna’s remarks were about the internet, DMT information abundance, and the later regulation of salvia divinorum, while also pointing listeners to Erowid and Daniel Siebert for further research.