McLuhan's op-ed in the New York Times of September 21, 1974 — a short piece on gambling, commodity futures and inflation that Bob treats as the key document of the late work, "what he was really working on that nobody had a clue." Its argument is that at electric speed the interval itself becomes the commodity: the gambler, the Russian-roulette player and the futures trader are all exploiting "this very nothing" as a situation with laws of its own. Bob uses it to date tactility past itself — his claim that McLuhan "even got post-tactile" rests on this essay. New to it — start with dialogue 57, where it is read aloud in full.
Across the dialogues
Read end to end for the first time and promoted from citation to centerpiece — the essay becomes the pair's evidence that the 1970s McLuhan was not in decline but working out an economics of the gap, and the frame through which the session's whole surveillance argument is finally priced
The essay's founding move — the gambler is not chasing an outcome but working the gap before it, which makes the void a structured field rather than an absence and sets up everything that follows about markets.
"It is the peculiar character of the gambler that he seeks to exploit this very nothing or interval as a situation with its own laws."Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 1:40:36
The wager relocated from the object to the space between objects — what is bet on is the empty chamber, so fascination scales with the gap itself and not with any prize, which is the mechanism McLuhan then transfers wholesale to the commodity market.
"The Russian roulette player stakes his life on the intervals in the chamber."Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 1:41:31
Inflation taken out of economics — once markets become "art form or playgrounds for economic playboys," the phenomenon stops being monetary and becomes a condition of the whole information environment, which is why McLuhan can propose "a cure beyond economics and politics."
"the new inflation goes beyond all markets."Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 1:43:35
The essay's furthest reach — the interval trade scales up from the individual gambler to entire economies, educational systems and political regimes, the sentence Bob reaches for to explain both a currency raid and a presidential campaign as the same operation.
"At electric speed, it is possible to play Russian roulette with whole economies, with entire educational systems, and with political regimes."Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 1:46:49
Paired for the first time with the book it was written to sit beside — the essay stops being a standalone late curiosity and becomes one half of a two-text argument, the op-ed supplying the mechanism (the interval sold as an object) that Take Today's last page then asks to be made conscious
The sentence Cameron brings to the table as the op-ed's hinge — it converts the interval from a condition into inventory, and by naming opportunities rather than effects it puts the essay on the supply side of everything the pair had been describing as ground.
"In the pulsating world of the intervals in electronic information, there are innumerable opportunities to seize and abstract the interval itself as a new kind of object to be exploited."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 74 (17 Aug 2023), 1:59
Bob's reason for treating the op-ed as a turning point — it records the moment the century's ground flips into a figure, so the essay is not a note on economics but a dating of when tactility became sellable.
"where tactility was the ground in the 20th century via the extended electricity or the extension of our central nervous system, it now becomes a figure and exploited."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 74 (17 Aug 2023), 2:49
Inflation redefined as a ground operation rather than a monetary one — which makes "public interest" the ground term the whole session then has to unpack, and lets the 1974 essay speak directly to a book about the Tech Body.
"inflation makes everything a figure against the ground of public interest."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 74 (17 Aug 2023), 4:00
The question the essay left open, and Bob's answer to it fifty years later — the new ground is the digital, machines extending themselves rather than extending us, which is what finally lets him place cable TV and the Android Meme inside McLuhan's inflation argument.
"what is the ground when tactile is the figure?"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 74 (17 Aug 2023), 1:49:55
Connections
McLuhan's New York Times op-ed of September 21, 1974 — the late, economic McLuhan Bob calls "his last great swan song."
The op-ed's closing paragraph makes Kissinger "the current triggerman" among the intervals of the four worlds.
Bob reads the market's trade in intervals as tactility with the Android Meme rather than in products or software.