The academic field that grew up around McLuhan — and, in Bob's usage, less a discipline than a symptom of one. He runs the term in two registers at once: the sophisticated practice he says McLuhan himself applied , and the crude instinctive version he says the whole population now performs without knowing it . Between them sits his 1995 essay sorting every post-McLuhan tendency into six numbered schools, the last of which is himself . Cameron uses the word almost entirely in the second register, as the steersman's posture he wants out of . New to it — read the six schools below, then dialogue 57, where Bob puts the field through a Tetrad and concludes that McLuhan was not doing it.
The Six Schools
The long essay Bob refers to across the series sorts post-McLuhan media study into six numbered schools, running from Marshall's death to 1990:
- Toronto — the circle around the estate after Marshall died: Barry Nevitt, Bob, Nelson Thall and Eric McLuhan, "doing our books and records and stuff."
- New York — not Lance Strate's group but Sylvère Lotringer, who created Semiotext(e) and began publishing Baudrillard and the French theorists.
- Montreal — Concordia and the Kroker scene, feeding off the second school and pushing its patterns further than the French were taking them.
- The diasporic school — the "print-oriented bastards" who knew from McLuhan that book culture was "weak and anemic" and went on writing books anyway: Neil Postman, Bruce Powe, Derrick de Kerckhove, Robert Logan. Scattered, and never in contact with each other.
- The Android Meme — the school that arrives with 1990 itself rather than with a person.
- Bob on the radio — a single line: "You're looking at it."
The essay's method is comparative: for each author in each school Bob finds a key quote, then a McLuhan quote that anticipates it, cited by page and line rather than reproduced. The 1990s output of all six schools is then read as knee-jerk extensions of the Android Meme they were missing.
Across the dialogues
Enters as a clinical proposal — attached to stress and disease, so the term's first sense in the archive is dosage rather than description
The term's first appearance in the archive is a prescription rather than a description — with Selye's stress of life read onto the media environment, McLuhan is cast as a physician and the field's business becomes dosage: how much environment a body can take.
"saying media ecology is what medicine needs to consider. We need to have television turned off six months of the year because the decibels are too high, causes too much stress, and that would lead to cancer."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 3 (19 Nov 2020), 59:47
Pinned to McLuhan himself as something he performed, which puts every later school in the position of imitation
The field is made McLuhan's own method rather than a discipline built on him afterward, which puts every later school in the position of imitating a practice instead of extending a theory. The proof offered is a proposal, not a reading — evidence that the man was operating on the environment rather than describing it.
"Media ecology is definitely the way McLuhan applied it. By the time of his Playboy interview, he was saying, we need to turn off the environment for a few weeks."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 5 (10 Dec 2020), 16:02
Given a charter sentence out of Take Today, and with it a relocation of its object from territory to psyche
The charter sentence, and with it the field's object relocated — ecology moved off the map and into the psyche, which is what lets media ecology be a matter of consciousness rather than of policy or conservation.
"media ecology or something that's in take today and he says the future of ecology lies not in a national or international basis but in the realm of psychic ecology right remember that line"Marshall McLuhan, quoted by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 11 (21 Jan 2021), 22:25
Acquires a written map — the six-schools essay — and in the same breath meets the objection that the field outgrew it
The schema enters the record as an existing document, so the dialogues are working from a map Bob drew in 1995 rather than building one. Cameron's reply — that there are fifteen schools by now — marks the gap between a fixed lineage and a field that kept multiplying past it.
"Have you ever seen this long essay I did on the six schools of media ecology?"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 13 (11 Feb 2021), 2:08:23
Splits along a national seam, the first sign that the word names temperaments rather than a single method
A national seam opens in the term, with Mailer's public combat on one side and McLuhan's detachment on the other. Media ecology stops being one practice with better and worse practitioners and becomes two temperaments — the seed of the schools schema.
"And I put it into, it's an American version of media ecology versus a Canadian type of media ecology."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 14 (18 Feb 2021), 1:19:27
Turned into a diagnostic instrument, so that bans and prohibitions become symptoms of the field rather than politics to argue with
Prohibition, the drug bans and cancel culture are gathered as one reflex — a population regulating an environment it has no theory of. The demotion is what does the work: these become bad media ecology rather than politics, and so symptoms to diagnose rather than positions to argue with.
"prohibition in the 20s was an attempt, a crude attempt at media ecology. … All these are distorted, uninformed, botched versions of McLuhan sophisticated media ecology."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 23 (22 Apr 2021), 54:30
Shown to be quittable — one of its founders walks back out of it into specialism
The field loses a founder by choice rather than by dispute. Carpenter's retreat into anthropology gives Bob his precedent: media ecology is a practice one can stop doing, and stopping is what the specialist does.
"he says in his article, he gives up on the whole media ecology thing by 1970, 71 … And stops doing the media ecology."Ted Carpenter, read by Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 26 (17 Jun 2021), 54:53
Claimed for the broadcast itself, with Baudrillard and science fiction admitted as sources alongside McLuhan
The live edge of the field is claimed for the broadcast itself — not commentary on media ecology but its current state — and its ingredients named, with Baudrillard and science fiction admitted as sources on equal footing with McLuhan.
"So I consider what goes on in our show very advanced media ecology, and it's applied McLuhan, plus applied Baudrillard, applied science fiction."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 35 (26 Aug 2021), 1:07:25
The field's live practitioners are amateurs on the open web, not the association — which is the practical form of Bob's claim that everybody is already a media ecologist.
"So this interesting blogger named Amazing Polly out of Kingston, Ontario, I enjoy her work, and she ends each podcast, which is 30 to 40 minutes often."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 36 (9 Sep 2021), 1:29:15
Declared obsolete in McLuhan's technical sense, which moves the frontier past the field rather than into it
The field is retired in McLuhan's technical sense of obsolescence — universally performed, therefore finished. If everyone already does it, the McLuhan industry's project of getting it recognized is not late but backwards, and the live question moves to whatever succeeds it.
"So everybody is a media ecologist. They're trying to be media ecologists. Crude, but they're doing it. And they don't get the post-media ecology situation we're in."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 40 (4 Nov 2021), 1:14:42
Given a folk form in the protective reflex, granting the crude version a mechanism instead of a failing
The seatbelt as the field's folk form — a public that can see an environment's effects and straps itself in. The crude version gets a mechanism rather than a failing, and the same reading runs forward onto the padded body of hockey and football.
"That was the populist expression of media ecology."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 42 (9 Dec 2021), 46:13
Dated as an institution, with Bob placed inside the room where it happened
The date the field became an institution, and the record that Bob was in the room when it did — which is what makes his standing critique of the association an insider's account of a founding rather than an outsider's complaint about a club.
"I found my talk at Fordham in 1998 at that Media Ecology Legacy of McLuhan conference that Lance Strate organized and they began the Media Ecology Association in that year."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 54 (4 Aug 2022), 26:16
Laid out end to end as a numbered lineage that closes on a school made of speech rather than books
The schema closes on its own author, and closes by changing medium: five schools of writers and one of a broadcaster. The single-line entry is the argument — the sixth school leaves no literature because it is speech.
"It says the sixth school of Media Ecology, and it has one line. You're looking at it. Which is me talking on the radio and explaining what they're doing."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 55 (1 Sep 2022), 1:54:34
Tetradized — and the reversal that falls out of the probe turns the founder out of his own field
Put through McLuhan's four-part probe, the field yields a reversal: what it enhances is pattern recognition, what it flips into under pressure is programming the environment. The developmental sense of the term — getting media to people who lack them — comes out as a category error rather than a milder version of the same thing.
"the one for media ecology, it enhances pattern recognition. Obsolescence is when we retrieve something, but it flips into programming the environment. Media Ecology doesn't mean making sure Venezuela gets radio when they need it. That's not Media Ecology."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 2:24:27
The founder is written out of the field on the Tetrad's own logic — McLuhan had already passed through media ecology into the reversal, leaving the discipline that carries his name parked at the level he left. Cameron will not take the reversal whole, splitting recognizing a programmed world from trying to program one.
"I just wanted to point out that in that Tetrad, that McLuhan was not doing Media Ecology, if you understand that Tetrad. He was in the fourth level. He flipped out of it into trying to program the world."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 57 (29 Sep 2022), 2:26:20
Met by a counter-definition that ages it by five thousand years and makes its seeing the problem rather than the method
Cameron's counter-definition ages the field out of novelty — not a young discipline but the oldest posture available, the subject at the helm cataloguing what dominates it. On that reading the seeing is the trap, not the method, and the alternative is to come from the dominations rather than look at them.
"The whole notion of civilization for 5,000 years is of the subject as steersman. That's what media ecology amounts to."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 59 (27 Oct 2022), 2:15:18
The word itself splits, and the two speakers stop agreeing on what it names
The word comes apart and the two speakers land on opposite halves of it — Bob keeps a real version in reserve behind the reflex, Cameron answers that the reflex is simply what the field is, and Bob's fallback concedes the usage while holding the ideal.
"the limited understanding of McLuhan, which we don't do, that leads to knee-jerk media ecology."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 60 (17 Nov 2022), 8:30
Tracked upward into the tech elite, where advocacy of limits gets graded rather than welcomed
The reflex tracked upward into the tech elite. When Silicon Valley starts advocating limits on its own product, Bob grades the performance rather than welcoming the convert — partial McLuhan applied at that scale being worse than none.
"I see that these guys who are doing knee-jerk media ecology are bad McLuhan."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 65 (16 Feb 2023), 1:45:55
Its foundation pushed back before McLuhan and out of the academy, into art theory
The founding is pushed back before McLuhan and out of the academy, to Lewis tracking technological stress through painting and criticism. What reads as his inconsistency becomes the method itself: no point of view, only reaction to changing perception.
"he's a major figure in the foundation of media ecology, and he did it through art theory."Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 70 (25 May 2023), 30:43
Given a causal origin rather than a description — the field is recast as a symptom produced by the Android Meme's replay, and the point where quadrophrenia's symptoms enter the record
The field is given a cause outside itself — six schools are treated as the output of a decade-long replay rather than as six readings of McLuhan, which is what lets Bob diagnose rather than argue with them.
"six schools of Media Ecology are the result of the Android Meme replay of McLuhan in the 90s"Bob Dobbs, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 73 (27 Jul 2023), 2:25
Connections
Bob's baseline — the field is McLuhan's own applied practice, not a discipline built on him afterward.
The sentence Bob treats as the field's charter — ecology's future lying in psychic rather than national or international ecology.
Carpenter quits the field around 1970-71 and returns to anthropology, the precedent for media ecology as something one can stop doing.
In Bob's Tetrad of the field, media ecology enhances pattern recognition and flips into programming the environment.
Cameron's counter-definition — the field is the steersman's posture, and its seeing is what keeps it locked in Gutenberg.
Bob dates the field's foundation before McLuhan, to Lewis tracking technological stress through art theory.
Bob's claim that the six schools are an effect of the Android Meme's 1990s replay of McLuhan.
The six schools are where Bob dates the entrance of quadrophrenia's symptoms.