Bob Dobbs's 187-page (189 PDF pages) essay on McLuhan, the Tech Body, and Trump . Published October 31, 2020, written over roughly three months, and posted on the New Explorations blog/journal.
Across the dialogues
Bob's 2020 essay — spurred by the flat COVID webinars, built in two tracks to make McLuhan relevant via the "Tech Body," closing on the Take Today "drips blood" line
The essay was spurred by Bob's disappointment with Paolo Granata's April–June 2020 COVID webinars, where he felt McLuhan scholars showed no vitality, no authority, no charisma.
"Nobody seemed to be handling the new situation with the COVID virus and lockdown with any vitality like McLuhan… there's no vitality, no authority, no charisma."
Bob's stated goal — make McLuhan relevant to 2020 and tie his ideas to his own concept of the "Tech Body," developed with esoteric colleagues over the prior year.
"I'm going to make McLuhan relevant to today somehow… relate McLuhan to this phenomenon that I call the Tech Body."
The essay runs in two tracks — essay-style prose linking McLuhan quotes, and conversational Q&A from oral sessions with Bert Hill in Zurich (transcribed by Bert, cleaned up by Bob).
"Then I sent them to a friend in Zurich… Bert Hill… so two tracks."
In its first ten days the essay drew friendly reviews and, posted on New Explorations, a lot of hits.
"friendly reviews… And they got a lot of hits."
The closing quote, from Take Today (~p. 210, on Catch-22) — "every financial transaction drips blood" — which Bob frames as the essential McLuhan line to use instead of clichés.
"where every financial transaction drips blood."
A Father Patrick Peyton quotation (Family Theater, 1971) — "I'm not sure what's the difference anymore" — recurs two or three times in the book (around pp. 40–42); Bob calls it the quotation that "got me to today."
"I'm not sure what's the difference anymore… They got me to today."
The reading reaches the essay’s end — its Appendix 2, an October 2020 "interview with the Tech Body," taken as the first time the Tech Body speaks as its own autonomous voice rather than being described by iON
The twenty-first session reaches the essay’s Appendix 2 — a transcribed October 2020 interview in which Bob questions the "Tech Body" directly.
"we're looking at Appendix 2, which is an interview with the Tech Body."
Bob frames the appendix as a first — the Tech Body speaking "as its own autonomous entity," not merely described by iON.
"This is the first interaction with the Tech Body as its own autonomous entity or phenomenon, as opposed to being described by iON, which is what we had up to this point."
The last pages read aloud — resuming at "PDF 181," the session works through the interview's culminating passage, the "punchline of the book," where the Tech Body declares itself the "single driver"
The essay's culminating passage read aloud — resuming at "PDF 181," Bob voices the interview's self-description, the "punchline of the book," in which the Tech Body recounts absorbing the older media into itself.
"the Tech Body, the TV body, the mechanical bride, the application of what humans are supposed to know, has been attacked, captured, and moved to what is now known as the Tech Body."
The passage's climactic assertion — the essay has the Tech Body call itself "the driver, the single driver," where "nothing else applies," the terminal claim the whole book has been building toward.
"It's now the driver, the single driver."
The interview's last movement read from page 183 — the Tech Body captures the printing press, indicts women's lib and "equal box rights," and ends by naming power as "your human power" handed off to "something smarter to run the ship"
The reading resumes at p.183 with the Tech Body absorbing print itself — "there are no presses anymore… The Tech Body took them all over… The Tech Body decides," the medium-eats-medium logic pushed past McLuhan's own language.
"the Tech Body captured the printing press."
The interview's terminal turn — technology is "extensions of the human powers" that people "separated [them]selves from," handing it to "something smarter to run the ship," so the Tech Body humans built now "sucks it away from us."
"It's your power. It's your human power."
The reading reaches its end — the Tech Body’s "final word" (pp. 179–184) read to the close, from Pong and "the power that flew itself" to "Undo 45," finishing the two-year traversal of the book
The reading reaches the essay’s page-179 inventory, "The Technological Evolution of the Tech Body," which opens with Pong and Atari — the Tech Body circling back to its own origin as the appendix closes.
"The Technological Evolution of the Tech Body, page 179. Number one is Pong and then Atari."
The essay’s terminal figure — "the power that flew itself" — read as power that was never humanity’s to grant, only submitted to, so people who "take credit for it" mistake the arrangement.
"The power that flew itself was always there. People were starting from Pong."
The book reopened from its front — the two titles laid out (the 2017 shaman essay and the 2020 "What We/You Didn't Know About Trump") and the opening read line by line through McLuhan's two schools of art
The pamphlet's first title, written spring 2017 and now read from the very front — the shaman essay that the fall-2020 second part, "What We/You Didn't Know About Trump," was written to update.
"I called that how President Donald Trump has become the first executive political leader to put on the shamanic tradition."
Connections
2020 essay (~187 pages), posted on the New Explorations blog/journal.
Bob's attempt to make McLuhan relevant to 2020 via his "Tech Body" concept.
The conversational Q&A track came out of oral sessions with Bert Hill in Zurich.
Co-produced the conversational track of the tech-body essay — Bob answered his questions orally, Bert transcribed.
The disappointment of his 2020 webinars was the direct motivation for Bob's tech-body essay.