person
1923–2008·also known as Tony Schwartz

The media figure whose recordings, in dialogue 24, preserve a McLuhan remark Bob uses to open his last argument: "in the future, just knowing what's going on will be all that you have to do." Bob reads the prophecy darkly — a future "endlessly driven by the cognitive thrills of pattern recognition" — while Cameron reads the same line as a summons to real knowing, the reception of "real information" against the Hollywood script. Schwartz is only the vessel of the quotation, but the quotation carries the dialogue's closing dispute.

Across the dialogues

24

Enters as an archival source — his recordings hold the McLuhan line about a future whose only task is "knowing what's going on," which Bob and Cameron read in opposite directions

Schwartz's recordings supply the dialogue its closing McLuhan text — the prophecy that knowing becomes the whole job, which Bob turns toward endless pattern-recognition and Cameron toward genuine reception of the real.

"there's a section in Tony Schwartz's recordings where he says, in the future, just knowing what's going on will be all that you have to do."
Marshall McLuhan, read by Bob Dobbsreported

Connections

Schwartz's recordings preserve McLuhan's prophecy that "just knowing what's going on" becomes the whole job.