A 1973 essay by McLuhan that Cameron reads from at length in Dialogue 11. It runs from Sputnik as "an extension of the planet itself" — a new ground for man in the sky — through the "desperate depreciation of our most exciting values" to a closing quotation from Canetti that lets McLuhan name the Watergate affair "a dynamic process of humiliation." Cameron maps it onto the holeopathic Cliché Probes line of the Formula Chart.
Across the dialogues
Read aloud and unpacked end-to-end — Sputnik's new ground in the sky, depreciation, and humiliation
McLuhan's thesis — satellites extend not the body but the planet, creating a new ground "in the sky" that calls despotically for a new equilibrium.
"Sputnik, October 4, 1957, and its successors may represent something quite different, namely an extension of the planet itself, creating a new ground for man in the sky"Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 8:09
The essay's hinge — universal information depreciates the grounding values, declining personal identity and worth; apparent inflation is also deflation.
"universal information services represents a desperate depreciation of our most exciting values"Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 20:20
McLuhan's added last line lands the Canetti mechanism on Watergate — and, Cameron notes, on what is recapitulated with Trump.
"The Watergate affair is precisely such a dynamic process of humiliation."Marshall McLuhan, quoted by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 37:46
Its Sputnik passage re-read to anchor the chart's "new ground in the sky" and the despotic call for a new equilibrium since 1945
Bob traces his own "holeopathic" thinking to this essay — the re-read Sputnik passage was "part of my thinking in the holeopathic process."
"I knew that essay back then, and I'm sure that was part of my thinking in the holeopathic process."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 12 (28 Jan 2021), 2:23:30
Cameron pulls the passage's second half forward — beyond the "new ground in the sky," its despotic call for a new equilibrium is the demand of the age.
"not only the new ground in the sky is a big theme in your thinking."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 12 (28 Jan 2021), 2:23:41
Connections
A 1974 McLuhan essay, one of a cluster of newspaper op-eds with "McLuhan, McLuhan, McLuhan" (on Watergate, 1973) and "A Media Approach to Inflation."
Closes on Canetti's account of inflation and the crowd to read Watergate as a dynamic process of humiliation.