Theall's term — the merging, driver's-seat counterpart to synaesthesia — which Bob uses to name the position the internet puts you in: the director at the still center of the swirling media, not the content passing through. He distinguishes it sharply from synaesthesia (the content's own interplay), makes it the perceptual mechanism of the God self, and notes it "doesn't occur in McLuhan." New to it — dialogue 40 carries its fullest statement.
Across the dialogues
Promoted from a passing term to the episode's engine — Theall's coenaesthetic becomes Bob's name for how the internet seats each user as the director at the still center of the media storm, the consumerist form that Web 2.0 only upgrades to producer-mania
Bob credits Theall with the synaesthetic/coenaesthetic pair — the episode's key borrowed term, one he says is absent from McLuhan himself.
"Professor Donald Theall termed this the synesthetic versus the co-anesthetic."Donald Theall, quoted by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 40 (4 Nov 2021), 30:40
The coenaesthetic names the media's own merging dynamics — the pull that seats the user as driver rather than as a spectator of content.
"So the co-anesthetic is being the dynamics of the media merging, so it puts one in the driver's seat."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 40 (4 Nov 2021), 30:57
Bob glosses the coenaesthetic as the director's position — at the still center of all the media swirling around you, the panopticon turned inside out.
"It's the idea of the director. In the middle of all the media swirling around you."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 40 (4 Nov 2021), 43:25
The everyday coenaesthetic is consumerist — the center-of-the-storm grants access and consumption, not command; Web 2.0 only upgrades it to producer-mania while leaving you in charge of nothing.
"it's more of a consumerist co-anesthetic. You're in the center of the storm of media, and you've got lots of stuff you can consume."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 40 (4 Nov 2021), 46:13
Pushed to its paradox — the digital center where everyone is "equally powerful" is "nowhere," and the move from synaesthesia to coenaesthetic is named a pluralization that forces the question of who the "you" at that center even is
Dialogue 54 turns the coenaesthetic center into a vanishing point — the digital position that makes each user feel "equally powerful" is "nowhere," and grasping that is itself "the outside position."
"They're putting us in the center, which is nowhere."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 54 (4 Aug 2022), 27:40
Cameron reads the pair as a pluralizing turn — synaesthesia looks like the single bringing-together of the senses, but the coenaesthetic reveals it as "a whole series of possibilities," legible only by "raising the question of who the hell this you is."
"the move from synesthesia to co-anesthetic is a pluralization."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 54 (4 Aug 2022), 28:16
Connections
Bob takes the synaesthetic/coenaesthetic pair from Theall — a term he says does not occur in McLuhan.
the coenaesthetic seating of the user at the media's center is what Bob reads as the technological God position.