Bob's name for the fourth of the six schools in his long essay on Media Ecology — the post-McLuhan scholars who understood the electric effects perfectly well and went on valuing the Gutenberg world anyway. The word is chosen for the disconnection it names: they never formed a movement, only mourned separately. Bob has named the school since dialogue 55; dialogue 79 is where the roster is read out in full and the diagnosis given.
Across the dialogues
The label acquires a roster and a mechanism — what had been a passing bit of Bob's taxonomy is named as the fourth of six schools, given five members, and explained by a single structural fault (electric perception held alongside undiminished Gutenberg loyalty), which turns a category into a diagnosis of why post-McLuhan media study stayed popular and stayed stuck
The fourth school of Media Ecology gets its name and its membership in one breath — Postman, Strate, Powe, Thompson and de Kerckhove — which fixes a loose grouping of Toronto and New York readers as a position rather than a generation.
"That's the Diasporic School."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 40:46
The school's defining fault is not ignorance but divided loyalty — they took McLuhan's account of the electric and kept Gutenberg's values, and the one thing they could not accept is the thing McLuhan did: that it is not coming back.
"They were hip on the electric effects."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 41:07
Their success is turned into evidence against them — an audience seeking the same restoration is what carries them, so popularity measures the size of the nostalgia rather than the reach of the analysis.
"So they futilely become popular because the population is yearning to get the Gutenberg back, whether they know it or not."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 41:26
The name's real content is organizational — a diaspora is a disconnect, and what marks the school is that each member bemoaned the situation individually instead of doing what Bob and Nelson Thall did on the radio: use an electric medium to form a movement.
"They're all literate guys, and they didn't get together and form a movement."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 41:37
The school is given its expiry date — still speaking in media terms into the early 2000s, it arrives at the digital late, which is what leaves the field open for Zingrone and Kroker.
"because the diasporic school, they're still talking in media terms."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 79 (7 Dec 2023), 2:06:11
Connections
The fourth of the six schools of Media Ecology in Bob's long essay.
Bob's counter-case — where the diasporic scholars bemoaned their situation individually, he and Thall formed a movement using an electric medium.