Digital
shamanism
Hybrid Design,
Creativity
and Holistic Interaction with Machines
Book by Prof. Amit Raphael Zoran
Read the full book in an interactive flipbook, designed for wide screens (15 USD, not for phones)
Order your own colorful printed copy. Available in hardcover and paperback editions.
Digital Shamanism invites readers to rethink how they meet technology. As digital systems pull attention and shape perception automatically, the book turns to projects where machines act as partners in attentive practice and quiet catalysts for awakening, showing how technology approached with clarity can loosen the patterns it reinforces.
Through hybrid tools, prototypes and artistic investigations, the work creates spaces where human presence stays clear while machines introduce unfamiliar movements of thought and perception, widening experience beyond what control alone allows.
The book is for readers who feel the influence of contemporary tools on how they see, feel and choose and who want a more deliberate, grounded way to engage with technology.
Drawing on shamanic traditions, philosophy and years of experimental research at the Hebrew University and MIT, Professor Amit Zoran presents a body of work that questions familiar assumptions about intelligence, authorship and control while returning attention to human agency and perception.
Digital Shamanism offers designers, researchers and curious readers an invitation to reimagine their relationship with technology as a place where creativity, meaning and awakening can emerge.
About the Author
Amit Raphael Zoran, PhD (MIT), is a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and head of the Hybrid Design Lab. His research spans human–computer interaction, design, craft, and ecology, seeking new ways to perceive and reshape our relationship with technology and nature.
Zoran’s path weaves together engineering, digital fabrication, traditional craftsmanship, and ecological wisdom. From hands-on making to shamanic traditions, his work reimagines technology not as an authority of control, but as a medium for creativity, perception, and renewal.
Through experimental projects and design practice, he explores how humans can reclaim agency in their interactions with machines while deepening their connection to craft, nature, and consciousness.
