McLuhan's phrase from p.31 of Take Today for the counterfeit that rapid innovation produces: a stream of novelty that feels like it is showing you your environment while showing you nothing. Bob returns to it whenever the question is why the accelerating turnover of memes and fads does not add up to awareness. Dialogue 78 is where he states the consequence — that a genuine anti-environment may no longer be available.
Across the dialogues
Turned from a citation into a verdict on the present — the phrase stops being a McLuhan curiosity and becomes Bob's diagnosis of meme turnover, which leaves the series without a working anti-environment at all
The phrase quoted as a standing test rather than an aside — speed is what disqualifies the innovations, so the failure is structural and not a matter of their content.
"A rapid series of innovations is an ersatz anti-environment."Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 2:29:15
The counterfeit's mechanism named — it works by supplying the feeling of perspective, which is why nothing in the experience signals that perception has failed.
"It's an ersatz. It gives the impression of an anti-environment."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 2:29:24
Bob extends the verdict to the present without exempting the conversation he is having, which turns the phrase from a diagnosis of others into a limit on the series' own method.
"anti-environment can't be an anti-environment anymore though we are trying to get our talk ourselves into one"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 2:29:01
The meme turnover is classified under McLuhan's category rather than treated as a new phenomenon, which is how Bob keeps a 1972 sentence load-bearing fifty years on.
"So it's not a rapid series of memes. It's an ersatz."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 78 (16 Nov 2023), 2:29:20
Connections
McLuhan's phrase, from page 31 — a rapid series of innovations is an ersatz anti-environment.
The counterfeit supplies the feeling of standing outside the environment without the perception that would let one actually do so.