Marshall McLuhan's late-1960s companion phrase to the global village, and the station Bob's book reaches at p.87 as it turns into Part Two. Cameron reads it synchronically: the Global Theater is not an advance on the global village but a derivative of it — once the village is understood ontologically, the fact that human beings can only "fulfill roles from moment to moment to moment" is already the theater. Bob's book-definition takes the phrase from McLuhan's 1968 DEW Line executive newsletter (not from War and Peace in the Global Village), where the satellite technology of the 1960s "turned the global city, or megalopolis, into an art form." New to it — start with dialogue 46, where the whole session tears the opening paragraph apart.
Across the dialogues
Read at last as the overlay it names — not a stage after the global village but its derivative, the village's roles and perspectives turned into an art form, sourced to the 1968 DEW Line newsletter and folded into "the medium is the message"
The episode's core synchronic move — the theater is not a later stage but a derivative of the village; the two are "translucent surfaces through which the other can be seen," an overlay rather than a succession.
"the global theater is not an advance on the global village. It's a derivative of the global village."
Bob's book-definition, read from the section opener — the phrase names the satellite-era turning of the global city into an art form, taken from the 1968 DEW Line newsletter rather than the 1968 book.
"the satellite technology of the 60s had turned the global city, or megalopolis, into an art form."
Cameron grounds the theater in role-playing — because humans are "in being," vertically connected to the plurality of possibilities, they can only fulfill roles moment to moment, and that interplay between being and beings is the Global Theater.
"then the fact that human beings can do no more than fulfill roles from moment to moment to moment is obvious."
Traced to its Cliché to Archetype source and pushed toward its unbuilt sequel — Sputnik's proscenium arch turning village into theater, and the 1960 "global city" as the center-for-margins McLuhan wanted built by computers
The theater's source-text, read from From Cliché to Archetype — Sputnik framing the globe "in a proscenium arch" transforms the global village into a Global Theater given over to "doing one's thing," the passage the whole session unfolds.
"Since Sputnik put the globe in a proscenium arch,"
The theater's unbuilt sequel — a "global city, capital letter C-I-T-Y, as center for the village margins," a software program McLuhan wanted "built by computers in the way in which a big airport has to coordinate multiple flights," turning the theater into a governable art form.
"today with electronics we have discovered that we live in a global village and the job is to create a global city,"
Credited with a service and then dated — the 1960s overview it made possible is called its pinnacle, with LSD as the drug that simulated the same comprehensive scan
The period's characteristic feeling is given a medium and a chemical with the same effect — a scanning overview that the later phase withdraws.
"You could get some interesting overview and think you had comprehensive awareness, and probably that was the appeal of LSD. It simulated that, made people think that they were getting some independent and scanning view and knowing what's going on."
Connections
Not a later stage but a derivative of the global village — the village's roles and perspectives seen as an art form.
The second station of Bob's six-phase map — global village, global theater, global membrane / Android Meme, Anthropomorphic Physical, Tech Body.