The founder of the World Economic Forum, invoked by Bob and Cameron as the contemporary face of a managerial ambition to steer the whole planet. He enters chiefly through the WEF slogan Cameron paraphrases — "you'll own nothing and be happy" — and through the charge that he means to "program the anti-environment" , which the dialogue reads less as a conspiracy than as a misunderstanding of how environments actually work. The page records their characterization; it does not endorse the larger claims attached to the figure. New to it — start with dialogue 48 for the "program the anti-environment" reading.
Across the dialogues
Enters through the WEF slogan Cameron paraphrases — "you'll own nothing and be happy" read as the consolidated experience people cannot see their way out of
Cameron folds the WEF's own slogan into the cul-de-sac — the "consolidated experience" people "need desperately to get out of but cannot see any way to extricate themselves" from, with Schwab's promise as its cheerful public face.
"Klaus Schwab saying, well, you're not going to own anything and you're going to be happy."
Recast as the man who "is going to try to program the anti-environment," the ambition Bob and Cameron read as a category mistake about how environments work
Cameron names the real objection — not that Schwab is powerful but that "program the anti-environment" is a category mistake: the anti-environment is what makes an environment perceptible, not a control panel a manager can operate.
"Klaus Schwab at the WEF. They say, this guy is going to try to program the anti-environment. This is outrageous."
Given Bob's verdict — a figure who "pontificates the whole world about how it's going to go," a steering claim he calls inadequate and erroneous
Bob's verdict on the ambition — Schwab as a would-be pontiff of the whole world, whose confident forecast of "how it's going to go" Bob calls not sinister so much as "inadequate" and "erroneous," out of scale with the process it claims to direct.
"it's the way presently Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum is trying to be… It pontificates the whole world about how it's going to go. And it's so inadequate, so erroneous."
Connections
Bob and Cameron treat Schwab as the face of the WEF's stated program — "you're not going to own anything and you're going to be happy."
Cameron reads Schwab's ambition as a crude attempt to "program the anti-environment" — the very thing McLuhan said could not be managed that way.