[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:03] Bob Dobbs: it's Cameron and Bob.
[00:06] Bob Dobbs: We haven't been recorded in years,
[00:08] Bob Dobbs: three or four years.
[00:11] Cameron McEwen: That's correct.
[00:13] Bob Dobbs: Cameron's still living where he was four years ago?
[00:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[00:16] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[00:17] Cameron McEwen: Southern California.
[00:18] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[00:19] Bob Dobbs: and I'm still in Maui,
[00:21] Bob Dobbs: and I'm going to bring up your email to me.
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.
[00:33] Bob Dobbs: Chemistry and Hauntology.
[00:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[00:36] Bob Dobbs: then the second point.
[00:42] Bob Dobbs: We have a joke here from Cameron.
[00:45] Bob Dobbs: Interview with Marshall McLuhan,
[00:47] Bob Dobbs: L'Express,
[00:48] Bob Dobbs: February 1972.
[00:50] Bob Dobbs: That's in Paris,
[00:50] Bob Dobbs: I guess.
[00:51] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,
[00:52] Bob Dobbs: this is what we have reached.
[00:54] Bob Dobbs: Most people have a dog just to remind themselves of who they are.
[00:58] Bob Dobbs: This is why dogs are so important in our society.
[01:01] Bob Dobbs: I know who I am because my doggy recognizes me.
[01:04] Bob Dobbs: It is the guardian of my secret.
[01:06] Bob Dobbs: It knows my smell.
[01:08] Bob Dobbs: He ultimately guarantees my identity.
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: In today's world,
[01:12] Bob Dobbs: it is the dog that controls everything.
[01:15] Bob Dobbs: It is the dog that controls everything.
[01:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay?
[01:20] Bob Dobbs: Cameron trying to brighten up my day on October
[01:22] Bob Dobbs: 15th. Oh yes,
[01:24] Bob Dobbs: we didn't give the date.
[01:24] Bob Dobbs: This is October.
[01:26] Bob Dobbs: For me,
[01:27] Bob Dobbs: it's...
[01:28] Bob Dobbs: October
[01:29] Bob Dobbs: 20th, but for Cameron,
[01:30] Bob Dobbs: it's October
[01:31] Bob Dobbs: 21st. I'm three hours behind Cameron.
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[01:36] Bob Dobbs: so you say questions I'd like to discuss.
[01:42] Bob Dobbs: You mind me saying the questions?
[01:44] Bob Dobbs: No,
[01:44] Bob Dobbs: not at all.
[01:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: Number one,
[01:47] Bob Dobbs: how does the drama of cognition relate,
[01:49] Bob Dobbs: in your view,
[01:50] Bob Dobbs: to the electric age?
[01:51] Bob Dobbs: How do you fit them together?
[01:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[01:55] Bob Dobbs: then you say,
[01:55] Bob Dobbs: how does any age envelop?
[01:57] Bob Dobbs: That's a different topic.
[01:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[02:00] Bob Dobbs: drama of cognition.
[02:02] Bob Dobbs: One of my favorite phrases from McLuhan.
[02:05] Bob Dobbs: You'll see him talk about it around page 32 in Interior landscape for a couple of pages mixed in there.
[02:12] Bob Dobbs: The drama of cognition.
[02:14] Bob Dobbs: I think he once said language is the recognition of the drama of cognition.
[02:21] Bob Dobbs: Or maybe he said language is the drama of cognition.
[02:25] Bob Dobbs: Does that sound familiar to you?
[02:28] Cameron McEwen: Not entirely,
[02:29] Cameron McEwen: but I can imagine him saying that language is the expression of the drama of cognition.
[02:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[02:37] Bob Dobbs: So the drama of cognition,
[02:43] Bob Dobbs: don't think of it as what you see or what you hear.
[02:48] Bob Dobbs: It's your whole body in action,
[02:51] Bob Dobbs: and you're making and matching.
[02:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has all kinds of dialectics,
[02:56] Bob Dobbs: but we'll take making and matching is what you're doing every day,
[03:00] Bob Dobbs: with tactility interplaying them.
[03:03] Bob Dobbs: And if you focus on the drama of cognition,
[03:08] Bob Dobbs: not like on perfect inputs of sight and sound and movement,
[03:12] Bob Dobbs: but the drama,
[03:13] Bob Dobbs: that would emphasize the tactility.
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: And the electric age is nothing but extended tactility.
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: Drama of cognition would be an ongoing process.
[03:24] Bob Dobbs: I think that is maybe best expressed in Finnegans Wake,
[03:28] Bob Dobbs: because it includes the drama of cognition of our senses,
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: between the sexes,
[03:33] Bob Dobbs: between classes,
[03:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: of privilege and that,
[03:39] Bob Dobbs: or what else,
[03:40] Bob Dobbs: between media.
[03:41] Bob Dobbs: All dramas are in Finnegans Wake.
[03:47] Bob Dobbs: It's like oxygen.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: The drama of cognition,
[03:50] Bob Dobbs: in a way,
[03:50] Bob Dobbs: has no content.
[03:52] Bob Dobbs: You can make particulars depending on what culture you do,
[03:55] Bob Dobbs: but it's an all-purpose word like tactility.
[04:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if that's the way you say it,
[04:01] Bob Dobbs: all-purpose.
[04:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[04:03] Bob Dobbs: it indicates the core of making purposes.
[04:08] Cameron McEwen: I agree with everything you're saying there.
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[04:11] Bob Dobbs: so why did this question come to you?
[04:13] Bob Dobbs: What are you thinking of?
[04:16] Cameron McEwen: Because everything that you were just speaking about takes place.
[04:21] Cameron McEwen: place seemingly in the individual,
[04:26] Cameron McEwen: right?
[04:27] Cameron McEwen: Whereas the electric age is collective.
[04:31] Cameron McEwen: And my question is,
[04:34] Cameron McEwen: if the drama of cognition is individual,
[04:38] Cameron McEwen: then how does it relate to the collective?
[04:42] Cameron McEwen: And if the drama of cognition is not individual,
[04:47] Cameron McEwen: then how does it take place?
[04:50] Cameron McEwen: in individuals that are not
[04:56] Cameron McEwen: subject to media influence,
[04:59] Cameron McEwen: like somebody sitting on an island somewhere with no TV in the electric age,
[05:05] Cameron McEwen: are they caught up in the electric age or are they not?
[05:10] Cameron McEwen: So there's a whole bunch of questions in my mind that have to do with the individual drama of cognition and the collective fact of something like the electric age.
[05:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[05:23] Bob Dobbs: that's good.
[05:24] Bob Dobbs: I have a quote.
[05:26] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt,
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: must be in ABC of Prophecy,
[05:29] Bob Dobbs: 1980.
[05:31] Bob Dobbs: He talks about the interplay of cliché to archetype as the generator of consciousness.
[05:37] Bob Dobbs: He quotes McLuhan saying that.
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: So the interplay of cliché to archetype in that case would be the drama of cognition.
[05:44] Bob Dobbs: So the question is,
[05:45] Bob Dobbs: when do machines come alive or become conscious?
[05:49] Bob Dobbs: I think we're seeing the,
[05:51] Bob Dobbs: my term,
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme,
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: refers to technology coming alive,
[05:54] Bob Dobbs: And that means...
[05:55] Bob Dobbs: A certain interactivity or drama of cognition has happened between,
[06:01] Bob Dobbs: well,
[06:01] Bob Dobbs: at least in the digital age,
[06:02] Bob Dobbs: that would be what people understand.
[06:04] Bob Dobbs: In that new movie documentary,
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: The Social Dilemma is popularizing,
[06:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[06:10] Bob Dobbs: the possibility of consciousness or some autonomy going on in our digital world.
[06:17] Bob Dobbs: There's a quote in Playboy and a quote in
[06:22] Bob Dobbs: War and Peace in the Global Village.
[06:23] Bob Dobbs: 1969 and Playboy 68,
[06:25] Bob Dobbs: but I think the Playboy interview was probably done in late 68.
[06:28] Bob Dobbs: So that year,
[06:30] Bob Dobbs: Marshall was pointing out,
[06:31] Bob Dobbs: the only guy in the world I think was saying it,
[06:33] Bob Dobbs: that electric environments were live and organic.
[06:36] Bob Dobbs: He said they were alive.
[06:38] Bob Dobbs: Do you know those quotes?
[06:42] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I would be able to recall them individually,
[06:45] Cameron McEwen: but what you're saying is familiar to me and interesting in this context.
[06:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[06:51] Bob Dobbs: the question of...
[06:53] Bob Dobbs: Somehow the drama of cognition moves into the interaction of electric organic machines.
[07:02] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[07:02] Bob Dobbs: for me,
[07:03] Bob Dobbs: I think of what is consciousness?
[07:06] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[07:06] Bob Dobbs: I've got a memory,
[07:08] Bob Dobbs: I can think up things.
[07:10] Bob Dobbs: But a lot of what the human does in their daily,
[07:14] Bob Dobbs: normal,
[07:14] Bob Dobbs: mundane thinking is done by computers.
[07:18] Bob Dobbs: The only thing is,
[07:19] Bob Dobbs: I think people say,
[07:20] Bob Dobbs: well,
[07:21] Bob Dobbs: when I can...
[07:21] Bob Dobbs: fuck a computer,
[07:22] Bob Dobbs: that would be something.
[07:26] Bob Dobbs: Right?
[07:27] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[07:27] Cameron McEwen: I think there's a certain amount of that going on now.
[07:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[07:30] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[07:31] Bob Dobbs: I forgot.
[07:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[07:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm not up on that.
[07:33] Bob Dobbs: But,
[07:34] Bob Dobbs: yes,
[07:34] Bob Dobbs: there's been rumors.
[07:36] Bob Dobbs: But that was the old marker.
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[07:40] Bob Dobbs: if it doesn't really give you full body contact,
[07:44] Bob Dobbs: it's not human,
[07:45] Bob Dobbs: it's not conscious.
[07:46] Bob Dobbs: But step it back.
[07:48] Bob Dobbs: to the way thought is used in our society.
[07:50] Bob Dobbs: It's all done by machines.
[07:52] Bob Dobbs: So they're equal to us in making things and engaging.
[07:57] Bob Dobbs: So they're doing the drama of cognition on a mundane level like humans do,
[08:03] Bob Dobbs: mundane.
[08:05] Cameron McEwen: What I find interesting in what you're saying and what I really hadn't thought about before is that machines in developing consciousness those.
[08:20] Cameron McEwen: have become mirrors back to humans of what they were doing all along,
[08:26] Cameron McEwen: but didn't know they were doing.
[08:28] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[08:29] Cameron McEwen: So memory storage and having access to different programs and different applications is something that humans have always done and
[08:44] Cameron McEwen: was necessary for humans to...
[08:46] Cameron McEwen: speak language in the first place,
[08:49] Cameron McEwen: but for hundreds of thousands of years there was no idea about what was actually going on.
[08:58] Bob Dobbs: Unless you were a guru,
[09:00] Bob Dobbs: like a Krishnamurti who constantly talked about the drama of cognition as something you observed,
[09:06] Bob Dobbs: the processes of making thought and memory.
[09:09] Bob Dobbs: That's part of the esoteric world of spiritual quest.
[09:15] Bob Dobbs: I think of that.
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: But carry on.
[09:19] Cameron McEwen: No,
[09:19] Cameron McEwen: I think what you said there is also interesting.
[09:24] Cameron McEwen: It's not the case that people like
[09:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan were somehow out thinking people like Plato.
[09:35] Cameron McEwen: It's just that
[09:36] Cameron McEwen: Plato didn't have the imagery and didn't have the context in media.
[09:47] Cameron McEwen: to grasp what it was that he wanted to talk about.
[09:53] Cameron McEwen: And so
[09:53] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan talks all the time about Plato and Aristotle.
[09:58] Cameron McEwen: not reflecting on their media.
[10:02] Cameron McEwen: And it never really occurred to me before just now that what he was speaking about wasn't concrete media,
[10:13] Cameron McEwen: but the mirroring back to humans that's necessary for them at last to recognize what's going on.
[10:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[10:25] Bob Dobbs: and from Cliché to archetype,
[10:27] Bob Dobbs: around page 161,
[10:30] Bob Dobbs: he talks about the mirror is like the mind,
[10:33] Bob Dobbs: capable of recycling all experience.
[10:36] Bob Dobbs: Some kind of sentence like that.
[10:37] Bob Dobbs: If you have Cliché to archetype,
[10:38] Bob Dobbs: you could look it up right there.
[10:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[10:41] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[10:41] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that sentence?
[10:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[10:44] Cameron McEwen: for sure.
[10:44] Cameron McEwen: And that relates to
[10:46] Cameron McEwen: Alice and all of
[10:49] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan references to the need to...
[10:54] Cameron McEwen: be situated behind the looking glass.
[10:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[10:57] Bob Dobbs: so I always thought the title 1943 about of the essay,
[11:01] Bob Dobbs: Analogical Mirrors,
[11:03] Bob Dobbs: that means there's a mirror process in each sense.
[11:07] Bob Dobbs: Like he used to say,
[11:08] Bob Dobbs: each sense had a rationality.
[11:10] Bob Dobbs: So analogical mirrors,
[11:12] Bob Dobbs: because it's made plural,
[11:13] Bob Dobbs: I think he looked at,
[11:15] Bob Dobbs: he went beyond the normal idea of a mirror as visual.
[11:19] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[11:21] Cameron McEwen: you know I love plurals,
[11:22] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[11:23] Bob Dobbs: You like what?
[11:24] Cameron McEwen: Plurals.
[11:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[11:26] Bob Dobbs: good.
[11:28] Bob Dobbs: So the echo is a sound mirror.
[11:33] Bob Dobbs: Does that work?
[11:37] Bob Dobbs: And what would be a touch mirror?
[11:40] Bob Dobbs: A kinetic mirror?
[11:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.
[11:46] Cameron McEwen: Cognition itself.
[11:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[11:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[11:50] Bob Dobbs: movement.
[11:51] Bob Dobbs: Proprioception.
[11:55] Cameron McEwen: play,
[11:56] Cameron McEwen: all of those.
[11:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[11:58] Bob Dobbs: So I thought it was always original.
[12:00] Bob Dobbs: No one ever said ever put mirror in the mirrors and said analogical in front of them.
[12:06] Bob Dobbs: That's equal to global village.
[12:10] Bob Dobbs: Analogical mirrors.
[12:11] Bob Dobbs: It's a good phrase.
[12:13] Cameron McEwen: That's an important essay.
[12:14] Cameron McEwen: I've got a couple of posts on that at the blog.
[12:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[12:18] Bob Dobbs: No,
[12:18] Bob Dobbs: it's really good.
[12:19] Bob Dobbs: It's important.
[12:20] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.
[12:22] Bob Dobbs: So have we solved the cloud activity question?
[12:27] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[12:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if we've solved it,
[12:29] Cameron McEwen: but you introduced some interesting considerations,
[12:35] Cameron McEwen: and I'll have to give that some thought.
[12:39] Cameron McEwen: My question ends,
[12:40] Cameron McEwen: how do you fit them together?
[12:42] Cameron McEwen: And what you suggested is different ways of thinking about the question that suggests
[12:53] Cameron McEwen: their various fittings.
[12:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[12:55] Bob Dobbs: here's a thought.
[12:56] Bob Dobbs: The word makes a market,
[12:58] Bob Dobbs: said McLuhan around 1972,
[13:01] Bob Dobbs: or maybe it was that essay in 74,
[13:03] Bob Dobbs: a New York Times op-ed.
[13:04] Bob Dobbs: But the word makes a market,
[13:06] Bob Dobbs: so every day people get their global hologram distilled into some theme,
[13:12] Bob Dobbs: meme,
[13:13] Bob Dobbs: or incident.
[13:14] Bob Dobbs: And that's a phrase or a sentence.
[13:17] Bob Dobbs: So that's the word that makes the market.
[13:19] Bob Dobbs: So the interaction of...
[13:21] Bob Dobbs: All the other media responding to the word that makes the market,
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: so they take their particular craft and spin it into movies,
[13:29] Bob Dobbs: records,
[13:31] Bob Dobbs: newspapers,
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: whatever.
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: And I always see the White House as the word that makes the market.
[13:35] Bob Dobbs: They determine what finally is the facts,
[13:38] Bob Dobbs: supposedly.
[13:39] Bob Dobbs: They tell you whether the UFOs landed or not.
[13:42] Bob Dobbs: So the word making the market is the collective drama of cognition.
[13:46] Bob Dobbs: That certainly is.
[13:46] Bob Dobbs: And the whole world participates in it.
[13:50] Bob Dobbs: And this is what Finnegans Wake really shows beautifully.
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: All the languages,
[13:54] Bob Dobbs: all the people and cultures of the world making something in this pot,
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: on every page of the wake.
[14:02] Bob Dobbs: He is acting out the drama of cognition,
[14:04] Bob Dobbs: writing about it,
[14:05] Bob Dobbs: and all the time I keep remembering that McLuhan spent his life translating Finnegans Wake.
[14:12] Bob Dobbs: And you're not going to translate it by going into the semantic meanings of each little bunch of syllables.
[14:18] Bob Dobbs: Roland McHugh's Annotations does that.
[14:19] Bob Dobbs: He takes the top three scholars'
[14:23] Bob Dobbs: interpretations of a few words on a page,
[14:25] Bob Dobbs: so that you can go see all the semantic interpretation of possibilities.
[14:30] Bob Dobbs: So you wouldn't translate all that.
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty tedious.
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: So what you would do is start talking about form,
[14:36] Bob Dobbs: the form of language versus the form of books and all that.
[14:39] Bob Dobbs: And that's what Joyce does.
[14:41] Bob Dobbs: He's actually,
[14:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan came up with a way to translate Finnegans Wake.
[14:46] Bob Dobbs: Now...
[14:47] Bob Dobbs: It's also about society and beyond the book,
[14:50] Bob Dobbs: but it's incredible that all his writings are sentences justifying Finnegans Wake and the way it's done.
[15:00] Cameron McEwen: When you say all of his writings,
[15:02] Cameron McEwen: you mean after a certain date,
[15:05] Cameron McEwen: right?
[15:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that he even read
[15:09] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake before the late 1940s.
[15:13] Cameron McEwen: And when he did,
[15:16] Cameron McEwen: he wasn't very happy with it.
[15:19] Cameron McEwen: And then through talks,
[15:22] Cameron McEwen: especially with Hugh Kenner,
[15:24] Cameron McEwen: he came to appreciate it more.
[15:28] Cameron McEwen: by
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[15:29] Cameron McEwen: 1951 or something like that,
[15:32] Cameron McEwen: he was doing what you're talking about,
[15:36] Cameron McEwen: translating
[15:38] Cameron McEwen: Joyce's insights into something that people could chew on.
[15:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[15:45] Bob Dobbs: so in Marchand's book,
[15:46] Bob Dobbs: he says Bernard,
[15:48] Bob Dobbs: Muller,
[15:48] Bob Dobbs: Tim,
[15:48] Bob Dobbs: I guess in
[15:50] Bob Dobbs: St. Louis,
[15:51] Bob Dobbs: when the book came out in 1939,
[15:53] Bob Dobbs: they got a copy and they went to a bar.
[15:55] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that?
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: And they were looking through it for the first time together.
[15:59] Bob Dobbs: So he did start looking at it in 1939.
[16:01] Bob Dobbs: He certainly didn't write about it much,
[16:02] Bob Dobbs: but he did in his Ph.D.
[16:04] Bob Dobbs: and with Joyce.
[16:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[16:06] Bob Dobbs: he could have been talking about Ulysses.
[16:08] Bob Dobbs: I think Kenner says that he only talked about Ulysses with McLuhan.
[16:14] Bob Dobbs: It's Don Theall.
[16:15] Bob Dobbs: When Theall comes in 1950 and they start doing a
[16:18] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake reading group,
[16:20] Bob Dobbs: Don probably names them somewhere,
[16:23] Bob Dobbs: the people in it.
[16:24] Bob Dobbs: And...
[16:25] Bob Dobbs: That's 50 into 51,
[16:27] Bob Dobbs: and they made a lot of breakthroughs,
[16:30] Bob Dobbs: but that would agree with you that he was into the Finnegans Wake by 51,
[16:35] Bob Dobbs: and he says in 53 in
[16:39] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce Trivial and Quadrivial that Finnegans Wake is about media as art forms,
[16:45] Bob Dobbs: which is an incredible statement.
[16:46] Bob Dobbs: Nobody used the word media.
[16:48] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't even know what he was referring to,
[16:50] Bob Dobbs: the average person,
[16:51] Bob Dobbs: unless they were in advertising or something.
[16:53] Bob Dobbs: And then to say they're art forms,
[16:55] Bob Dobbs: what the heck is that?
[16:56] Bob Dobbs: But he knew.
[16:58] Bob Dobbs: He really cracked it pretty quickly on a general understanding that,
[17:03] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[17:03] Bob Dobbs: this has got many media.
[17:05] Bob Dobbs: And you brought up Murray Schafer.
[17:07] Bob Dobbs: Murray told me,
[17:08] Bob Dobbs: and he was in his class in 51,
[17:10] Bob Dobbs: 52 or so,
[17:11] Bob Dobbs: that Marshall insisted to them to understand that Finnegans Wake was not a book.
[17:15] Bob Dobbs: It was a radio program.
[17:18] Bob Dobbs: He was saying that in
[17:20] Bob Dobbs: 51, 52.
[17:21] Bob Dobbs: That's incredible.
[17:23] Bob Dobbs: Look at the nothing work done by other Joyce scholars,
[17:26] Bob Dobbs: just regular routine attempts to find a story or the narrative.
[17:32] Bob Dobbs: What's his name?
[17:33] Bob Dobbs: Joseph Campbell's book came out in 1944.
[17:36] Bob Dobbs: What a leap he did.
[17:38] Bob Dobbs: And
[17:40] Bob Dobbs: I talked to Joyce,
[17:41] Bob Dobbs: or something pretending it was James Joyce,
[17:43] Bob Dobbs: through the Evergreens channel of Michael Blake Read back in 1995,
[17:46] Bob Dobbs: and it's an excellent conversation.
[17:48] Bob Dobbs: But he said that of the...
[17:50] Bob Dobbs: Scholars that he could observe,
[17:52] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[17:52] Bob Dobbs: from wherever he was,
[17:55] Bob Dobbs: he preferred McLuhan because he said McLuhan didn't project a theory or ideology or anything into it.
[18:00] Bob Dobbs: He looked at the book in its own terms,
[18:03] Bob Dobbs: which is the phrase McLuhan used to say about looking at media,
[18:05] Bob Dobbs: look at them in their own terms.
[18:08] Bob Dobbs: So Joyce appreciated that.
[18:10] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan really was a genius in his approach to fitting his wake.
[18:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[18:17] Bob Dobbs: that was really quite an intellectual act that he did.
[18:20] Bob Dobbs: That created a drama of cognition for him because he had to deal with people who had no clue what insight he got from it.
[18:27] Bob Dobbs: And in 54,
[18:28] Bob Dobbs: he does that
[18:29] Bob Dobbs: Catholic humanism and modern letter speech that says incredible things about Finnegans Wake.
[18:34] Bob Dobbs: What an inspiriting vision of collective something.
[18:38] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember the words,
[18:39] Bob Dobbs: but he really raves about Finnegans Wake in 54.
[18:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[18:46] Cameron McEwen: I think that whole decade,
[18:49] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[18:49] Cameron McEwen: he was trying to chew and find himself in relation to Joyce.
[19:05] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[19:07] Bob Dobbs: He writes in the late 40s,
[19:09] Bob Dobbs: I think Andrew Chrystall found this in the archives,
[19:12] Bob Dobbs: he writes,
[19:13] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[19:13] Bob Dobbs: to Kenner saying,
[19:15] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[19:15] Bob Dobbs: I've been doing Eliot,
[19:18] Bob Dobbs: but...
[19:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to focus on Wyndham Lewis now.
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,
[19:21] Bob Dobbs: it's risky,
[19:22] Bob Dobbs: he says.
[19:22] Bob Dobbs: Risky to talk about Lewis.
[19:24] Bob Dobbs: This is in 48,
[19:25] Bob Dobbs: 49.
[19:26] Bob Dobbs: But I'm now going to focus on him.
[19:28] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[19:28] Bob Dobbs: he actually doesn't in terms of what he does.
[19:32] Bob Dobbs: And doesn't he do the poetic process in
[19:35] Bob Dobbs: Aquinas and the poetic process in 50,
[19:37] Bob Dobbs: 51?
[19:38] Bob Dobbs: And he moves into Joyce,
[19:40] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[19:41] Bob Dobbs: He kind of,
[19:42] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't write about
[19:43] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, but he does write a great essay in 53 on Lewis.
[19:47] Bob Dobbs: Same year he does Finnegans Wake.
[19:49] Bob Dobbs: But maybe Don Theall got him more into Finnegans Wake.
[19:55] Bob Dobbs: And,
[19:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[19:56] Bob Dobbs: Don,
[19:57] Bob Dobbs: Marshall was mad at him because he didn't include...
[20:00] Bob Dobbs: Wyndham Lewis in his PhD on communication theories of
[20:04] Bob Dobbs: Pound, Eliot,
[20:05] Bob Dobbs: Yates,
[20:05] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce.
[20:07] Bob Dobbs: And Don said that he couldn't do
[20:10] Bob Dobbs: Lewis because his paintings were locked up at the National Archives in Ottawa.
[20:15] Bob Dobbs: And he felt he couldn't do justice to Lewis unless you had access to his painting.
[20:20] Bob Dobbs: So
[20:21] Bob Dobbs: Marshall wanted him to do Lewis because,
[20:24] Bob Dobbs: in a way,
[20:25] Bob Dobbs: Lewis was what he was in favor of more than Joyce.
[20:28] Bob Dobbs: it
[20:29] Bob Dobbs: can then lead an endless discussion.
[20:31] Cameron McEwen: He has a letter to
[20:33] Cameron McEwen: Lewis, I think it's in 1954.
[20:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:37] Bob Dobbs: when the book comes out.
[20:38] Bob Dobbs: He gets back in touch when the novel comes out in 54.
[20:42] Bob Dobbs: Self-condemned.
[20:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[20:43] Cameron McEwen: well,
[20:44] Cameron McEwen: the reason that he had a flurry of letters in 53,
[20:48] Cameron McEwen: 54 to Lewis,
[20:50] Cameron McEwen: and the reason
[20:51] Cameron McEwen: I think that he did it was that he wrote the art and communication essay in Shenandoah.
[21:00] Cameron McEwen: But he says in one of those letters that he has changed his idea of what
[21:07] Cameron McEwen: Lewis is about.
[21:09] Cameron McEwen: And
[21:10] Cameron McEwen: I think what happened around that time is that he came to the idea that although Lewis was prescient about electronic media and the influence they
[21:26] Cameron McEwen: have on cosmic man.
[21:29] Cameron McEwen: that
[21:30] Cameron McEwen: Lewis did not understand the problems of how to situate humans in space and time,
[21:43] Cameron McEwen: that he simply took over a notion of space and time from the Gutenberg era and took the opposite side from what he took the moderns to be doing.
[21:58] Cameron McEwen: And for McLuhan,
[21:59] Cameron McEwen: taking the opposite side is already a sign of thoughtlessness.
[22:05] Bob Dobbs: Thoughtlessness.
[22:06] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you said?
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[22:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[22:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[22:12] Bob Dobbs: So what is it?
[22:15] Bob Dobbs: Do you think he was influenced by Joyce in coming to that reassessment?
[22:20] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[22:20] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[22:22] Cameron McEwen: But
[22:22] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that in the
[22:25] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, I don't think that McLuhan...
[22:28] Cameron McEwen: really came to any judgments or conclusions,
[22:33] Cameron McEwen: I think everything was up in the air.
[22:35] Cameron McEwen: And one of the interesting things about McLuhan is he always talks about,
[22:40] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[22:41] Cameron McEwen: I never had any problems.
[22:44] Cameron McEwen: I never had any needs.
[22:46] Cameron McEwen: I've always been happy as hell.
[22:48] Cameron McEwen: But then he'll write an essay like his prospect essay in
[22:55] Cameron McEwen: 62.
[22:57] Cameron McEwen: that you're familiar with.
[22:59] Cameron McEwen: And he talks about how it's inevitable that you panic in front of the challenges of modern times.
[23:11] Cameron McEwen: And these things,
[23:13] Cameron McEwen: if you looked at them directly,
[23:16] Cameron McEwen: would certainly drive you mad.
[23:18] Bob Dobbs: And
[23:20] Cameron McEwen: I think he's talking about himself for the whole decade of the
[23:25] Bob Dobbs: 1950s. Yes.
[23:27] Bob Dobbs: He,
[23:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: Clinton is seeing the stuff we haven't had access to,
[23:33] Bob Dobbs: Marshall's writings in the 40s.
[23:35] Bob Dobbs: And boy,
[23:35] Bob Dobbs: talk about an apparently angry guy.
[23:38] Bob Dobbs: He was bothered in the 40s by society,
[23:41] Bob Dobbs: according to Clinton,
[23:42] Bob Dobbs: and some of the stuff he's quoted to me.
[23:44] Bob Dobbs: He's,
[23:46] Bob Dobbs: beg your pardon?
[23:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[23:48] Cameron McEwen: I think
[23:49] Cameron McEwen: I've heard some of the stuff that he's talking about.
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: Personally,
[23:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't find it all that surprising.
[23:58] Cameron McEwen: I think that anybody who's familiar with his published writings in the
[24:07] Cameron McEwen: 1940s is not going to be too surprised with the stuff that was kind of a mechanical bride in progress.
[24:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[24:20] Bob Dobbs: So what's interesting in 57.
[24:24] Bob Dobbs: He does Verbi-Voco-Visual
[24:26] Bob Dobbs: Explorations,
[24:28] Bob Dobbs: Explorations number 8,
[24:30] Bob Dobbs: and there's a section,
[24:31] Bob Dobbs: a part two section with essays by a bunch of his arty friends.
[24:36] Bob Dobbs: I think they were teachers of art and stuff like that.
[24:39] Bob Dobbs: But he has one on Lewis called Third Program in the Human Age.
[24:43] Bob Dobbs: And he says,
[24:45] Bob Dobbs: it's only a few pages,
[24:46] Bob Dobbs: but I think it's on the last page,
[24:47] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[24:47] Bob Dobbs: Lewis is the first writer or person to deal with the media en bloc.
[24:53] Bob Dobbs: E-N-B-L-O-C.
[24:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[24:55] Bob Dobbs: I would think that Joyce did media en bloc.
[24:59] Bob Dobbs: If he did media as art forms,
[25:01] Bob Dobbs: as Marshall writes in 53.
[25:03] Bob Dobbs: So you may be right to say that Lewis is where he started to get,
[25:09] Bob Dobbs: started to look at the electric age through Lewis.
[25:13] Bob Dobbs: That would be,
[25:14] Bob Dobbs: if he said he was the first writer to do media on block,
[25:18] Bob Dobbs: doesn't mean he understood it the way Joyce did,
[25:22] Bob Dobbs: or
[25:22] Bob Dobbs: Joyce attempted to understand it,
[25:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[25:24] Bob Dobbs: differently.
[25:24] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,
[25:25] Bob Dobbs: I think it's pretty interesting how he comes back to Lewis.
[25:28] Bob Dobbs: It emphasizes him in that little essay or little article.
[25:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[25:34] Cameron McEwen: the words on block there are very interesting.
[25:37] Cameron McEwen: I'll have to look at that again.
[25:40] Cameron McEwen: But what he may be saying there is that the writings of
[25:46] Cameron McEwen: Lewis in the 20s,
[25:49] Cameron McEwen: that their media are already being contrasted.
[25:57] Cameron McEwen: the book.
[25:58] Cameron McEwen: as against radio and how the arts at the time were trying to deal with this.
[26:07] Cameron McEwen: So his notion may be that
[26:12] Cameron McEwen: Lewis, more or less behind his own back,
[26:16] Cameron McEwen: was identifying the central themes that we need to think about.
[26:23] Cameron McEwen: And noteworthy in this context is that McLuhan,
[26:27] Cameron McEwen: his whole life,
[26:28] Cameron McEwen: long,
[26:30] Cameron McEwen: always was very thankful to Lewis for,
[26:37] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[26:38] Cameron McEwen: illuminating the relationship between electronic media and modern history.
[26:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[26:49] Bob Dobbs: No,
[26:49] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[26:49] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[26:50] Bob Dobbs: look what he says about the art of being ruled.
[26:52] Bob Dobbs: He said it to Innis,
[26:53] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[26:53] Bob Dobbs: in 1951 that But...
[26:57] Bob Dobbs: It was a monumental achievement that got us out of the muck of
[27:00] Bob Dobbs: Machiavelli's The Prince and was trying to show the human shape in technology.
[27:06] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[27:07] Bob Dobbs: this gargantuan,
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: huge stuff that was coming in the 19th century.
[27:12] Bob Dobbs: He wanted to put a human scale to it,
[27:14] Bob Dobbs: which is quite an achievement.
[27:16] Bob Dobbs: How do you do that?
[27:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[27:17] Bob Dobbs: for most people,
[27:19] Bob Dobbs: it's big armies,
[27:20] Bob Dobbs: big everything in the first half of the 20th century.
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: What did...
[27:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I can say what...
[27:26] Bob Dobbs: How Lewis did that,
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: put the human shape in media?
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.
[27:32] Bob Dobbs: Marshall did it,
[27:33] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know about Lewis,
[27:35] Bob Dobbs: but I haven't read Lewis in a few years.
[27:37] Bob Dobbs: So maybe if I went back to it,
[27:38] Bob Dobbs: I'd find something.
[27:39] Bob Dobbs: But do you have an idea on that?
[27:41] Bob Dobbs: How did he put?
[27:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[27:43] Cameron McEwen: I would simply say that this is getting towards some of the questions that you were addressing earlier about the interplay between.
[27:56] Cameron McEwen: The drama of cognition,
[27:58] Cameron McEwen: which traditionally was thought to be individual,
[28:02] Cameron McEwen: but becomes in the 20th century something that's recognized as more than individual.
[28:10] Cameron McEwen: And it gets recognized primarily in the sciences where it's simply used.
[28:19] Cameron McEwen: And so then the question becomes,
[28:21] Cameron McEwen: well,
[28:22] Cameron McEwen: if it's being used.
[28:25] Cameron McEwen: and used in ways that are extremely harmful to civilization and to individual rights and identity,
[28:34] Cameron McEwen: how are we to try to combat that?
[28:40] Cameron McEwen: And combating that unthoughtful influence might be called humanizing.
[28:49] Bob Dobbs: Combating the unthoughtful,
[28:50] Bob Dobbs: somnambulism.
[28:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[28:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[28:54] Cameron McEwen: But it's active.
[28:56] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[28:57] Cameron McEwen: in cybernetics and in the use of the drama of cognition in computers and then especially in military equipment is it's
[29:12] Cameron McEwen: more than sleepwalking.
[29:16] Cameron McEwen: It's actively aggressive sleepwalking,
[29:21] Cameron McEwen: which is scary stuff.
[29:23] Cameron McEwen: It's going on as we speak.
[29:28] Bob Dobbs: I was just thinking about the phrase drama of cognition,
[29:31] Bob Dobbs: such a great phrase,
[29:33] Bob Dobbs: and that implies something alive,
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: the drama of cognition.
[29:39] Bob Dobbs: I guess the mechanists,
[29:40] Bob Dobbs: they see cognition as materialistic or sensory stimulus response stuff.
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: They might have missed out on the drama of it.
[29:49] Bob Dobbs: which is the province maybe of the poet,
[29:51] Bob Dobbs: and that's why the engineers and the cliche stereotype level are the nerds.
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: They don't pick up on the alive drama that electric media was getting closer to.
[30:01] Bob Dobbs: But it's a great phrase,
[30:03] Bob Dobbs: the drama of cognition.
[30:04] Bob Dobbs: Who thinks of the act of seeing as a drama?
[30:09] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[30:11] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[30:11] Cameron McEwen: certainly Plato did and Aristotle.
[30:13] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[30:13] Cameron McEwen: the great minds have always understood the problem because when they went to try to teach what they were thinking about,
[30:26] Cameron McEwen: they ran up against some kind of wall.
[30:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[30:29] Cameron McEwen: And so then they had to try to figure out,
[30:31] Cameron McEwen: well,
[30:32] Cameron McEwen: how do I deal with that wall?
[30:34] Cameron McEwen: And dealing with that wall involves the drama of cognition.
[30:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[30:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking up something.
[30:43] Bob Dobbs: I did an article called The Cloning of ESP.
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: And I just remembered this might be what I was trying to say.
[30:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[30:53] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going to try to bring it up here in my website.
[30:58] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.
[31:01] Bob Dobbs: Cloning ESP.
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: you just said reminded me of this.
[31:10] Cameron McEwen: I've read your essay,
[31:12] Cameron McEwen: but not for years.
[31:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[31:14] Bob Dobbs: So I start off saying there's no problem understanding another if we speak the same verbal language.
[31:22] Bob Dobbs: It's what my next move is going to be,
[31:24] Bob Dobbs: whether verbal,
[31:25] Bob Dobbs: gestural,
[31:26] Bob Dobbs: or indifferent,
[31:27] Bob Dobbs: that is of interest to the other who just spoke to me.
[31:30] Bob Dobbs: And therein is the drama,
[31:32] Bob Dobbs: dot,
[31:32] Bob Dobbs: dot,
[31:33] Bob Dobbs: dot,
[31:33] Bob Dobbs: of cognition.
[31:36] Bob Dobbs: I forgot that I started the essay with this.
[31:38] Bob Dobbs: For both of us,
[31:40] Bob Dobbs: that's what I have next sentence,
[31:41] Bob Dobbs: for both of us,
[31:42] Bob Dobbs: because I have to expect a response to my response from the other.
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: and therein is the drama of cognition.
[31:49] Bob Dobbs: And then I'm saying it's a drama for both of us,
[31:51] Bob Dobbs: because I have to expect...
[31:52] Bob Dobbs: expect a response to my response from the other.
[31:54] Bob Dobbs: Even if we don't...
[31:57] Bob Dobbs: Let me just finish this point.
[31:58] Bob Dobbs: No,
[31:58] Bob Dobbs: no,
[31:58] Cameron McEwen: that's fine.
[31:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[32:00] Bob Dobbs: Even if we don't speak the same language,
[32:02] Bob Dobbs: there will still be this drama of response,
[32:05] Bob Dobbs: and my response may satisfy what the other's foreign words requested.
[32:09] Bob Dobbs: Later,
[32:10] Bob Dobbs: circumstances unfold that reveal a problem in what we thought we communicated.
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: In either case,
[32:15] Bob Dobbs: in retrospect,
[32:16] Bob Dobbs: we will wonder how the previous exchange failed to declare the unforeseen problem.
[32:20] Bob Dobbs: This is the first rhythm of consciousness,
[32:23] Bob Dobbs: of thought,
[32:23] Bob Dobbs: of memory,
[32:24] Bob Dobbs: of the subliminal,
[32:25] Bob Dobbs: of the consequences of extrasensory perception.
[32:29] Bob Dobbs: This is the drama enacted in the Mutt and Jute section of Finnegans Wake,
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: pages 16 to 18,
[32:34] Bob Dobbs: the first dialogue in the book,
[32:35] Bob Dobbs: and I have book in quotes.
[32:37] Bob Dobbs: Then shortly after,
[32:38] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce writes,
[32:40] Bob Dobbs: on page 18,
[32:41] Bob Dobbs: in the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge,
[32:44] Bob Dobbs: that finds the name form,
[32:45] Bob Dobbs: that wets the wits,
[32:46] Bob Dobbs: that convey context,
[32:48] Bob Dobbs: that sweetened sensation that drives desire,
[32:50] Bob Dobbs: that adheres to attachment,
[32:51] Bob Dobbs: that dog's death,
[32:52] Bob Dobbs: that bitch's birth,
[32:53] Bob Dobbs: that entails the Sanderson of existentiality.
[32:56] Bob Dobbs: How's that for the drama of cognition?
[32:59] Bob Dobbs: And then I go,
[33:00] Bob Dobbs: the implied impression,
[33:02] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[33:02] Bob Dobbs: in the ignorance that implies impression,
[33:04] Bob Dobbs: that's the first six words,
[33:06] Bob Dobbs: I then say,
[33:07] Bob Dobbs: the implied impression is ESP,
[33:09] Bob Dobbs: is it not?
[33:10] Bob Dobbs: And the ignorance,
[33:11] Bob Dobbs: in the ignorance that implies impression,
[33:13] Bob Dobbs: is the assumption that a connection has been made.
[33:16] Bob Dobbs: The next ten clauses or stages are the automatic archetypal consequences of anti-environment of perception.
[33:22] Bob Dobbs: All of subsequent cultural production and residue proceeds from that original drama of cognition,
[33:31] Bob Dobbs: however rudimentary the utterance.
[33:33] Bob Dobbs: So,
[33:34] Bob Dobbs: is that comprehensive enough?
[33:37] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[33:37] Cameron McEwen: but
[33:38] Cameron McEwen: I would raise a couple problems.
[33:41] Cameron McEwen: First,
[33:42] Cameron McEwen: just an observation.
[33:44] Cameron McEwen: What you're talking about.
[33:45] Cameron McEwen: throughout there is what McLuhan calls making.
[33:50] Cameron McEwen: You have to make something out.
[33:53] Cameron McEwen: I have to make something of what you are saying.
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: So from the very first word of the very first language that was ever spoken by humans,
[34:04] Cameron McEwen: there was a making going on.
[34:07] Cameron McEwen: Then the other thing that I think we need to think about is at the very start,
[34:14] Cameron McEwen: you said,
[34:15] Cameron McEwen: If we're speaking the same language,
[34:17] Cameron McEwen: there's no problem in understanding one another.
[34:21] Cameron McEwen: But of course,
[34:21] Cameron McEwen: that's not true at all.
[34:23] Cameron McEwen: And the difficulty of understanding the other person gets heightened when we're trying to teach something,
[34:38] Cameron McEwen: right?
[34:40] Cameron McEwen: If the other person not only has to make out what we're saying,
[34:44] Cameron McEwen: but has to remake or recognize what's going on in their own head,
[34:54] Cameron McEwen: then that drama of cognition becomes very involuted and very difficult.
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting.
[35:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[35:02] Bob Dobbs: maybe this is not a good sentence.
[35:04] Bob Dobbs: There's no problem understanding another who speaks the same verbal language.
[35:08] Bob Dobbs: But that's a vague understanding.
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[35:12] Bob Dobbs: It's what my next move is going to be.
[35:14] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[35:15] Bob Dobbs: so then if you interact with somebody,
[35:17] Bob Dobbs: then it gets more focused and the vagueness then becomes important,
[35:21] Bob Dobbs: whether it's vague or not.
[35:23] Bob Dobbs: And that's the drama.
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: So
[35:25] Bob Dobbs: I would say the first sentence is the vagueness,
[35:28] Bob Dobbs: but then the subsequent.
[35:30] Bob Dobbs: Sentences are about it getting more problematic about what's happening.
[35:37] Bob Dobbs: So you see the Dramacognition is really important.
[35:39] Bob Dobbs: It's the archetype.
[35:41] Bob Dobbs: And,
[35:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[35:43] Bob Dobbs: and
[35:43] Bob Dobbs: Joyce starts with that on page 16,
[35:46] Bob Dobbs: the Mutt and Jute dialogue.
[35:48] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[35:48] Cameron McEwen: And what I like about what you're suggesting,
[35:50] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[35:51] Cameron McEwen: is that it's not correct.
[35:55] Cameron McEwen: or it's not interesting,
[35:56] Cameron McEwen: put it that way,
[35:58] Cameron McEwen: to think about the drama of cognition as happening within people or within machines or even between people or between people and machines.
[36:11] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[36:12] Cameron McEwen: you have to start with the drama of cognition and then ask,
[36:17] Cameron McEwen: on the basis of that,
[36:19] Cameron McEwen: what is a person,
[36:20] Cameron McEwen: what is a machine?
[36:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[36:23] Bob Dobbs: The...
[36:27] Bob Dobbs: If you understand what we're saying about the,
[36:29] Bob Dobbs: if one understands about the drama of cognition,
[36:32] Bob Dobbs: it's easy then to see what writing in books did.
[36:35] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[36:35] Bob Dobbs: it moved it into a matching chance,
[36:39] Bob Dobbs: a matching opportunity.
[36:40] Bob Dobbs: And before that,
[36:42] Bob Dobbs: nobody had any reference point.
[36:45] Bob Dobbs: And this is what Julian Jaynes was trying to get at.
[36:48] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't talk about it in media terms.
[36:51] Bob Dobbs: I think he just talked about brain chemistry or something.
[36:54] Bob Dobbs: But the...
[36:57] Bob Dobbs: The incredible hallucination and maybe access to other kinds of consciousness,
[37:05] Bob Dobbs: not just hallucination.
[37:08] Bob Dobbs: So my friend
[37:10] Bob Dobbs: Ion says that the fall of man was the printed book.
[37:15] Bob Dobbs: We got too caught up in the matching and,
[37:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[37:20] Bob Dobbs: praised reality for creating the electric quantum leap into rebalancing with making.
[37:27] Bob Dobbs: So the drama now really is,
[37:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[37:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has that quote,
[37:31] Bob Dobbs: great quote,
[37:34] Bob Dobbs: in,
[37:35] Bob Dobbs: what is it,
[37:38] Bob Dobbs: in the 20th century we have access to all kinds of cultures and we can appreciate the genius of each culture,
[37:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[37:45] Bob Dobbs: in several levels of context I guess,
[37:49] Bob Dobbs: but he says,
[37:51] Bob Dobbs: we recognize the claims each culture makes for itself,
[37:54] Bob Dobbs: for its bias or preference or genius.
[37:57] Bob Dobbs: But reconciling that to move to a new kind of consensus or even to tolerate the endless boasting and revenge for the boasting you don't like,
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: what a drama that is.
[38:14] Bob Dobbs: So that sentence is a really good one about the drama we got ourselves into,
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: recognizing the claims of everybody,
[38:22] Bob Dobbs: yet we're in this tactile electric extension.
[38:26] Bob Dobbs: that no culture really ever had to deal with.
[38:28] Bob Dobbs: So there's a new drama of what's going on beyond any cultural wisdom reservoir.
[38:38] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that I would say that last phrase.
[38:43] Cameron McEwen: The reservoir possibility makes possible the electric age as it does any other.
[38:51] Cameron McEwen: But in what you said before,
[38:53] Cameron McEwen: you were certainly right.
[38:54] Cameron McEwen: What happens in the electric age is that we become conscious of the claims of all ages.
[39:03] Cameron McEwen: And there's great potential in that for wisdom and for harmony.
[39:08] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,
[39:11] Cameron McEwen: the basis of those kinds of insights,
[39:17] Cameron McEwen: let's say in psychology or anthropology or literature,
[39:21] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[39:22] Cameron McEwen: at the same time.
[39:25] Cameron McEwen: The basis of those insights is being transplanted into the economy and into warfare.
[39:34] Cameron McEwen: And so you have great possibility on the one hand and on the other,
[39:40] Cameron McEwen: great danger.
[39:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[39:42] Cameron McEwen: And what I see McLuhan trying to do is figure out a way to bring those together in such a way as to ameliorate the danger.
[39:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[39:53] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake is a Tower of Babel on the content level,
[39:56] Bob Dobbs: and then he translates the wake,
[39:59] Bob Dobbs: whether Joyce meant it or not,
[40:00] Bob Dobbs: he translates the wake into a new kind of multi-sensory
[40:05] Bob Dobbs: Esperanto.
[40:06] Bob Dobbs: which is quite an achievement.
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: he's saying we could use
[40:10] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake as an esperado,
[40:15] Bob Dobbs: if you translate on the level of forms.
[40:18] Bob Dobbs: Then he recognized that,
[40:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[40:21] Bob Dobbs: he had recognized that jazz united the world on the content world of radio and Louis Armstrong,
[40:28] Bob Dobbs: but the tactility of the global theater,
[40:30] Bob Dobbs: which is all the massive anti-environment in the 50s,
[40:33] Bob Dobbs: 60s,
[40:33] Bob Dobbs: and 70s,
[40:34] Bob Dobbs: having a drama among themselves.
[40:37] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[40:38] Bob Dobbs: let's find a city.
[40:40] Bob Dobbs: We need to get a city to organize these spaces of the global village.
[40:46] Bob Dobbs: And so the city was,
[40:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[40:48] Bob Dobbs: his big plan in the '60s to use the computer to measure the sensory thresholds of populations.
[40:56] Bob Dobbs: What a great performance,
[41:00] Bob Dobbs: which is really a question to people.
[41:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[41:03] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to do this.
[41:04] Bob Dobbs: And they'll say,
[41:04] Bob Dobbs: that's crazy.
[41:05] Bob Dobbs: You can't impose your sensory-threshold computer nonsense on my culture.
[41:09] Bob Dobbs: That's fascism.
[41:11] Bob Dobbs: But
[41:12] Bob Dobbs: I think that was the greatest question in philosophy,
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: at least in the 20th century,
[41:19] Bob Dobbs: him acting it out.
[41:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to do this.
[41:22] Bob Dobbs: We have the means through computers to modulate all these claims and differences and preferences and biases.
[41:29] Bob Dobbs: What an amazing idea.
[41:31] Bob Dobbs: And then he actually tried to do it.
[41:32] Bob Dobbs: And Daniel Capone and them,
[41:34] Bob Dobbs: they blew it.
[41:35] Bob Dobbs: According to the Marshall McLuhan biography,
[41:38] Bob Dobbs: they made mistakes.
[41:40] Bob Dobbs: They never had an opportunity to do it again.
[41:42] Bob Dobbs: But then we're now in a world where Facebook kind of does that,
[41:46] Bob Dobbs: right?
[41:47] Bob Dobbs: Facebook or
[41:48] Bob Dobbs: Google or something,
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: this social media,
[41:52] Bob Dobbs: is the orchestrator of consciousness that McLuhan was thinking more in analog media.
[41:59] Bob Dobbs: We could say that digital media obsolesced his...
[42:01] Bob Dobbs: plan but then it came back to facebook what if anybody's ever said that i call it management yeah but they uh this becomes subject to exactly the uh
[42:17] Cameron McEwen: promise versus danger dialectic that we were talking about before yeah right they um consciousness certainly is organized in a certain way by facebook and twitter and uh
[42:31] Cameron McEwen: such things,
[42:32] Cameron McEwen: but it's doing so ever more dangerously.
[42:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[42:39] Bob Dobbs: they really need a crash course on McLuhan.
[42:44] Bob Dobbs: I think one of the daughters of Eric is married to an employee of Facebook or Google.
[42:52] Bob Dobbs: That guy should get in there.
[42:53] Bob Dobbs: I think he's known.
[42:54] Bob Dobbs: I think he's talked about McLuhan.
[42:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[42:55] Cameron McEwen: I tried to get in touch with him.
[42:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm not,
[43:00] Cameron McEwen: I can't quite.
[43:01] Cameron McEwen: remember which company,
[43:05] Cameron McEwen: but he lives in Menlo Park,
[43:07] Cameron McEwen: I think.
[43:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[43:08] Cameron McEwen: And he certainly is high enough up that he could raise some interesting questions.
[43:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[43:20] Cameron McEwen: But he just doesn't seem interested in doing so.
[43:23] Cameron McEwen: I think I even wrote him twice,
[43:26] Cameron McEwen: but he didn't write back at all.
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: Must do bad.
[43:29] Bob Dobbs: Have you tried
[43:32] Bob Dobbs: Andrew, who could then get in touch with Emily?
[43:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[43:38] Cameron McEwen: that's an idea.
[43:39] Cameron McEwen: It was years ago when I tried to get in touch with this guy before I knew anything about Andrew at all.
[43:46] Bob Dobbs: I see.
[43:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: So let's go on to your next point.
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: How does any age envelop everybody?
[43:55] Bob Dobbs: How does it penetrate so broadly so that super accurate predictions may be made?
[44:01] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[44:01] Bob Dobbs: you mean by an age,
[44:02] Bob Dobbs: a medium?
[44:05] Bob Dobbs: How does a medium envelop everybody?
[44:07] Bob Dobbs: How does the medium penetrate so broadly?
[44:10] Cameron McEwen: So what I meant was the electric age.
[44:15] Cameron McEwen: You see,
[44:16] Cameron McEwen: what prompted these questions was our previous conversation where we were each saying,
[44:21] Cameron McEwen: well,
[44:22] Cameron McEwen: you're not paying attention to ground.
[44:24] Cameron McEwen: You were saying that to me and I was saying that to you.
[44:27] Cameron McEwen: So then when I thought about this,
[44:30] Cameron McEwen: I thought,
[44:31] Cameron McEwen: well,
[44:34] Cameron McEwen: what
[44:34] Cameron McEwen: Bob is talking about is very interesting and is certainly true about McLuhan.
[44:43] Cameron McEwen: But there are things about what he's saying that I really don't understand.
[44:50] Cameron McEwen: And so instead of...
[44:52] Cameron McEwen: trying to contradict you,
[44:55] Cameron McEwen: as I may have done in the past,
[44:58] Cameron McEwen: what I wanted to do was sort of think through where my confusions or...
[45:07] Cameron McEwen: ignorance lay.
[45:09] Cameron McEwen: So all of these questions have to do with what the relationship is between a medium that comes to,
[45:24] Cameron McEwen: that explodes on the world and then creates the conditions for prediction that are very powerful.
[45:36] Cameron McEwen: And yet it doesn't have anything to do with individuals.
[45:42] Cameron McEwen: It happens to everybody,
[45:43] Cameron McEwen: regardless of their training,
[45:46] Cameron McEwen: regardless of their location.
[45:49] Cameron McEwen: So then the question I have is,
[45:52] Cameron McEwen: well,
[45:52] Cameron McEwen: how is this happening?
[45:56] Cameron McEwen: It seems to me that if we want to ameliorate the danger of how these things happen,
[46:02] Cameron McEwen: we have to understand.
[46:05] Cameron McEwen: how it is unfolding,
[46:07] Cameron McEwen: how the collective process is working.
[46:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[46:14] Bob Dobbs: now let me read your great email to me.
[46:17] Bob Dobbs: October 14th,
[46:18] Bob Dobbs: you said,
[46:19] Bob Dobbs: It is dawn on me,
[46:20] Bob Dobbs: now,
[46:21] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[46:21] Bob Dobbs: did you were thinking about me because you listened to our interview,
[46:24] Bob Dobbs: our dialogue before?
[46:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[46:26] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[46:27] Cameron McEwen: I listened a couple months ago to it,
[46:29] Cameron McEwen: and then the questions kind of percolated around in my brain.
[46:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[46:34] Bob Dobbs: because
[46:35] Bob Dobbs: I had just been saying to someone a week or so ago that
[46:39] Bob Dobbs: Cameron and I don't talk.
[46:41] Bob Dobbs: We respect each other's knowledge,
[46:43] Bob Dobbs: but there is an impasse.
[46:45] Bob Dobbs: We are actually quite different in what we're emphasizing.
[46:49] Bob Dobbs: So
[46:51] Bob Dobbs: I said I don't engage Cameron much on,
[46:56] Bob Dobbs: say,
[46:56] Bob Dobbs: attempting to match.
[46:58] Bob Dobbs: But then now this email shows up,
[47:00] Bob Dobbs: which is really good.
[47:01] Bob Dobbs: You say.
[47:02] Bob Dobbs: It has dawned on me that when I do chemistry,
[47:04] Bob Dobbs: you do meteorology.
[47:06] Bob Dobbs: And I always tell everybody when I met you with Mark Stahlman in 98 at his loft in New York City,
[47:12] Bob Dobbs: you went on about this nutty idea about chemistry.
[47:14] Bob Dobbs: It was a radical change.
[47:16] Bob Dobbs: And then,
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[47:17] Bob Dobbs: through the years as I've read your blog,
[47:20] Bob Dobbs: I get the chemistry point,
[47:21] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't know what you were on about really in 98.
[47:27] Bob Dobbs: I know more...
[47:28] Bob Dobbs: I know more about science now because of our products,
[47:30] Bob Dobbs: but back then I was weak on science.
[47:32] Bob Dobbs: So maybe,
[47:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[47:33] Bob Dobbs: I didn't even know enough to understand your point.
[47:35] Bob Dobbs: Did you want to say something?
[47:37] Cameron McEwen: No,
[47:37] Cameron McEwen: no,
[47:38] Cameron McEwen: no.
[47:38] Cameron McEwen: I was just agreeing with you.
[47:39] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[47:41] Bob Dobbs: You were agreeing that I didn't know anything about chemistry.
[47:45] Cameron McEwen: Not necessarily.
[47:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[47:47] Cameron McEwen: Tell me,
[47:48] Cameron McEwen: I was just looking up October 14th and I didn't see anything.
[47:52] Cameron McEwen: What was the,
[47:53] Cameron McEwen: what's the email you're talking about?
[47:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[47:55] Bob Dobbs: we should talk.
[47:58] Cameron McEwen: That's the subject?
[47:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[47:59] Bob Dobbs: you sent to me,
[48:00] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[48:03] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[48:03] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[48:05] Bob Dobbs: so you say,
[48:08] Bob Dobbs: what?
[48:09] Bob Dobbs: You got it?
[48:10] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[48:10] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[48:11] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[48:11] Bob Dobbs: so then you start off with a quote from the hot and cool
[48:15] Bob Dobbs: Gerald Stearn interview of McLuhan.
[48:18] Bob Dobbs: You say,
[48:19] Bob Dobbs: or McLuhan is saying,
[48:21] Bob Dobbs: and the massage,
[48:22] Bob Dobbs: the shaping,
[48:23] Bob Dobbs: the twisting,
[48:23] Bob Dobbs: the bending of the whole human anti-environment the technology.
[48:26] Bob Dobbs: The reconditioning of the entire human anti-environment this technology is a violent process,
[48:31] Bob Dobbs: and like all new technologies,
[48:33] Bob Dobbs: often revolting as well as revolutionary.
[48:35] Bob Dobbs: That is why Joyce calls them thunders.
[48:39] Bob Dobbs: So you say that.
[48:40] Bob Dobbs: Then you say,
[48:41] Bob Dobbs: when the weather gets intense enough,
[48:43] Bob Dobbs: the chemist sitting in his lab gets swept away along with everybody else.
[48:47] Bob Dobbs: He's a tiny figure on an overpowering ground.
[48:51] Bob Dobbs: You are right.
[48:52] Bob Dobbs: You're addressing me.
[48:53] Bob Dobbs: You are right that this is a sizable part of McLuhan massage.
[48:57] Bob Dobbs: Then you say,
[48:58] Bob Dobbs: but if everyone were swept away in the same way,
[49:01] Bob Dobbs: how could there be recognition and possible survival?
[49:03] Bob Dobbs: How could there be the Maritain brother who was saved?
[49:08] Bob Dobbs: Within the whirlpool,
[49:10] Bob Dobbs: there are some who evaluate the possibilities at hand.
[49:14] Bob Dobbs: Within the whirlpool,
[49:16] Bob Dobbs: world,
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: W-O-R-L-D-P-O-O-L.
[49:20] Bob Dobbs: So within the whirlpool...
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: there are some who evaluate the possibilities at hand.
[49:25] Bob Dobbs: These possibilities are the elements of human consciousness.
[49:28] Bob Dobbs: The chemistry of human consciousness is the demonstration and application of these elements.
[49:33] Bob Dobbs: It is ground to all the figures of human perception,
[49:36] Bob Dobbs: including those of meteorology.
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: This is another sizable part of McLuhan Massage.
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: We should dialogue on the resonance of chemistry and meteorology.
[49:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[49:48] Bob Dobbs: the way I answered your drama of cognition question is...
[49:52] Bob Dobbs: dealing with this.
[49:53] Bob Dobbs: I talked about the biological or psychological process of making consciousness,
[50:00] Bob Dobbs: and then I said it was in the machine.
[50:01] Bob Dobbs: So I went from chemistry to meteorology,
[50:05] Bob Dobbs: right?
[50:07] Cameron McEwen: No,
[50:07] Cameron McEwen: I would say that what you did was you resituated the question of consciousness from individual people to beings in general.
[50:23] Cameron McEwen: And that you then said that difficulties can be encountered if you try to think of drama of cognition located only within people.
[50:37] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[50:38] Cameron McEwen: it's much more broad than people,
[50:42] Cameron McEwen: and that you need to think of,
[50:44] Cameron McEwen: instead of thinking of the drama of cognition through people,
[50:48] Cameron McEwen: you have to think of people through the drama of cognition.
[50:52] Cameron McEwen: And the same thing applies to machines.
[50:54] Cameron McEwen: So that jump is not the jump from chemistry to meteorology.
[50:59] Cameron McEwen: What that is,
[50:59] Cameron McEwen: is the re-situating of the question of chemistry more broadly.
[51:06] Cameron McEwen: than what I was doing.
[51:09] Cameron McEwen: So
[51:09] Cameron McEwen: I take your point and I'm grateful for it.
[51:12] Cameron McEwen: Meteorology,
[51:13] Cameron McEwen: in my sense,
[51:15] Cameron McEwen: is the vast changes of media anti-environment happen in history.
[51:26] Cameron McEwen: And
[51:27] Cameron McEwen: I'm really interested in the question of the relationship between these vast changes and
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: the drama of cognition,
[51:38] Cameron McEwen: however it's conceived in regard to people and machines.
[51:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[51:46] Bob Dobbs: so
[51:50] Bob Dobbs: Nelson Thall once,
[51:52] Bob Dobbs: just blatantly when I first met him in 83,
[51:56] Bob Dobbs: 84,
[51:56] Bob Dobbs: and we,
[51:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[51:57] Bob Dobbs: we shared McLuhan,
[51:59] Bob Dobbs: so he found someone that,
[52:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[52:01] Bob Dobbs: was interesting to talk.
[52:02] Bob Dobbs: too about it.
[52:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[52:04] Bob Dobbs: I knew a lot about the writings of McLuhan more than anybody he had met before,
[52:08] Bob Dobbs: and he had pretty good knowledge of it.
[52:10] Bob Dobbs: So he says,
[52:11] Bob Dobbs: so what did McLuhan mean by the medium is the message?
[52:15] Bob Dobbs: And I said this,
[52:20] Bob Dobbs: the incarnation mimed the stages of apprehension,
[52:25] Bob Dobbs: something like that.
[52:26] Bob Dobbs: And that would be the drama of cognition.
[52:29] Bob Dobbs: So the capital I in
[52:31] Bob Dobbs: capital I of incarnation,
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: so Christ.
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: The incarnation mimed the drama of cognition.
[52:36] Bob Dobbs: That blew him away,
[52:37] Bob Dobbs: because he was Jewish,
[52:39] Bob Dobbs: but he was just starting to study and become a Catholic,
[52:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[52:43] Bob Dobbs: under the influence of McLuhan.
[52:45] Bob Dobbs: And he had an identity crisis when McLuhan died,
[52:50] Bob Dobbs: and a kind of a breakdown.
[52:51] Bob Dobbs: And then remaking himself,
[52:54] Bob Dobbs: he became a Catholic.
[52:56] Bob Dobbs: So
[52:58] Bob Dobbs: So I said this Catholic thing,
[53:00] Bob Dobbs: not knowing that about him at the time.
[53:03] Bob Dobbs: And,
[53:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[53:04] Bob Dobbs: it was an amazing punch to his brain.
[53:06] Bob Dobbs: Wow
[53:07] Bob Dobbs: So
[53:08] Bob Dobbs: I think of that,
[53:09] Bob Dobbs: and I think I got that idea from the Catholic
[53:12] Bob Dobbs: Humanism of Modern Letters,
[53:13] Bob Dobbs: the 54 thing,
[53:14] Bob Dobbs: 1954.
[53:17] Bob Dobbs: So then I looked at understanding media.
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[53:20] Bob Dobbs: media,
[53:20] Bob Dobbs: hot and cool.
[53:22] Bob Dobbs: There's the obvious weather aspect.
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: But there's a comment on weathermen.
[53:29] Bob Dobbs: In understanding media,
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: I think it is.
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: The weatherman,
[53:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[53:31] Bob Dobbs: people are watching
[53:33] Bob Dobbs: TV news in the
[53:34] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s,
[53:35] Bob Dobbs: the evening local news,
[53:36] Bob Dobbs: and they always had the weatherman was always a local character.
[53:42] Bob Dobbs: So the weatherman was doing pattern recognition.
[53:45] Bob Dobbs: It's almost phatic communication.
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: So
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was a weatherman.
[53:52] Bob Dobbs: And so he was miming that role in the community.
[53:57] Bob Dobbs: by calling media hot and cool or hot and cold.
[54:01] Bob Dobbs: So there was that part.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: So
[54:03] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was neat that you brought up the meteorology thing because I always thought about that.
[54:07] Bob Dobbs: If you get a chance,
[54:08] Bob Dobbs: if you can search,
[54:09] Bob Dobbs: look what he says about Weatherman in Understanding Media.
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: It's an interesting role.
[54:14] Bob Dobbs: It's almost like fatty communication because he can't...
[54:20] Bob Dobbs: You see,
[54:20] Bob Dobbs: the whole thing about news is they're warning people about what's coming,
[54:23] Bob Dobbs: but you can't panic the people,
[54:25] Bob Dobbs: right?
[54:26] Bob Dobbs: You can't hate me.
[54:28] Bob Dobbs: It can't.
[54:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[54:30] Cameron McEwen: weren't the Weathermen a terrorist group too?
[54:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[54:34] Bob Dobbs: The SDS guys,
[54:35] Bob Dobbs: 69-70,
[54:36] Bob Dobbs: became Weathermen.
[54:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.
[54:39] Bob Dobbs: Did they get that from a Dylan song or something?
[54:41] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember where they got the term from.
[54:46] Cameron McEwen: Wouldn't surprise me if that were them.
[54:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:49] Bob Dobbs: So,
[54:50] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[54:50] Bob Dobbs: So meteorology is great.
[54:52] Bob Dobbs: But what I was saying to you at the beginning is there's,
[54:56] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[54:57] Bob Dobbs: Ernst,
[54:57] Bob Dobbs: what's his name,
[54:58] Bob Dobbs: Ernst Mach,
[54:59] Bob Dobbs: no,
[55:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe it's Ernst,
[55:01] Bob Dobbs: some name like that,
[55:02] Bob Dobbs: end of the 19th century,
[55:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[55:05] Bob Dobbs: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
[55:09] Cameron McEwen: Remember that sentence?
[55:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[55:13] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember the guy's name either.
[55:15] Cameron McEwen: He definitely was a German,
[55:17] Cameron McEwen: and he was a materialist.
[55:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[55:24] Cameron McEwen: But anyway,
[55:24] Cameron McEwen: yes,
[55:25] Cameron McEwen: I know what you're talking about,
[55:26] Cameron McEwen: and I use that phrase sometimes myself.
[55:29] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[55:30] Bob Dobbs: So there you have the parallel tracks of the individual growth and the society growth.
[55:37] Bob Dobbs: So.
[55:40] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[55:40] Bob Dobbs: you're saying chemistry is private consciousness?
[55:45] Cameron McEwen: No,
[55:46] Cameron McEwen: chemistry is the study and application of the elements of consciousness.
[55:55] Cameron McEwen: Chemistry in my sense.
[55:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[55:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[55:59] Cameron McEwen: Study and application of the elements of consciousness.
[56:03] Cameron McEwen: So let me just go back a little ways.
[56:06] Cameron McEwen: You started off.
[56:08] Cameron McEwen: talking about an encounter you had with
[56:14] Cameron McEwen: Don Theall.
[56:15] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[56:16] Cameron McEwen: And you said that your very first part of that was that the medium is the message.
[56:23] Cameron McEwen: And then,
[56:24] Cameron McEwen: at least in my understanding,
[56:26] Cameron McEwen: you didn't really come back to that same thought.
[56:32] Cameron McEwen: You went from medium as the message to...
[56:36] Cameron McEwen: the 1954 St.
[56:38] Cameron McEwen: Joseph's lecture,
[56:40] Cameron McEwen: and you said that the
[56:44] Cameron McEwen: Incarnation was the replay of the drama of cognition.
[56:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[56:50] Cameron McEwen: But I think that the
[56:54] Cameron McEwen: Incarnation is not the replay of the drama of cognition.
[57:00] Cameron McEwen: The drama of cognition is the replay of Incarnation.
[57:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[57:06] Cameron McEwen: That's an important difference between the two because the incarnation gives a kind of ontological basis to the drama of cognition.
[57:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[57:25] Bob Dobbs: now he also,
[57:26] Bob Dobbs: the other mystery he used to talk about was the fact that our individual consciousness through the eye flipped.
[57:35] Bob Dobbs: the world.
[57:37] Bob Dobbs: And
[57:38] Bob Dobbs: I've thought about that in different ways,
[57:40] Bob Dobbs: like the basic stubbornness of the individual.
[57:43] Bob Dobbs: Are you using
[57:47] Cameron McEwen: I in the sense of
[57:50] Cameron McEwen: E-Y-E? Yeah,
[57:51] Bob Dobbs: do you know,
[57:52] Bob Dobbs: he talks about why does,
[57:54] Bob Dobbs: no one could explain,
[57:55] Bob Dobbs: he said,
[57:56] Bob Dobbs: why through the back of the eye and the retina,
[58:00] Bob Dobbs: it flips the world upside down.
[58:03] Bob Dobbs: And so that's the first act of making,
[58:06] Bob Dobbs: of altering the world.
[58:08] Bob Dobbs: He also said that you couldn't know anything outside in the world,
[58:12] Bob Dobbs: but maybe he meant artifacts,
[58:13] Bob Dobbs: but you couldn't know things out there unless they were part of you.
[58:18] Bob Dobbs: You remember him saying that?
[58:20] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[58:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[58:21] Cameron McEwen: That's a very
[58:23] Cameron McEwen: Aristotelian,
[58:25] Cameron McEwen: Thomistic idea.
[58:27] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[58:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[58:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[58:29] Bob Dobbs: so...
[58:33] Bob Dobbs: A metaphor of the flipping of the world,
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: the individual as their own sovereign making ability are going to mess with the world.
[58:43] Bob Dobbs: So they flip it.
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: So our psychological process of establishing our sovereignty is mined physiologically by flipping the world.
[58:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[58:55] Bob Dobbs: we're going to make it ours.
[58:57] Bob Dobbs: So
[58:58] Bob Dobbs: I always thought that was interesting how...
[59:00] Bob Dobbs: the basic willfulness of human stubbornness and that uh the making the will uh is reflected in in physiology right and this comes this comes this comes back bob to the tower of babel yeah uh that you were speaking about before um and um it's very important in
[59:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and presumably enjoys to understand
[59:31] Cameron McEwen: how the Tower of Babel worked.
[59:34] Cameron McEwen: You were bringing it into connection with Esperanto,
[59:37] Cameron McEwen: but I believe both Joyce and McLuhan were very suspicious of
[59:43] Cameron McEwen: Esperanto and Volapük and all of these constructed languages.
[59:51] Cameron McEwen: The way the Tower of Babel worked is that all humans got together and...
[59:59] Cameron McEwen: decided that they were going to storm heaven on the basis of their...
[1:00:07] Cameron McEwen: communal understanding,
[1:00:08] Cameron McEwen: their communal wisdom,
[1:00:10] Cameron McEwen: their communal abilities.
[1:00:12] Cameron McEwen: And so they began putting the tower together.
[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: And then
[1:00:16] Cameron McEwen: God said,
[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: to hell with this,
[1:00:19] Cameron McEwen: and scattered not only the tower,
[1:00:21] Cameron McEwen: but all of the peoples of the earth into separate ignorances,
[1:00:27] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:00:27] Cameron McEwen: So for Joyce and McLuhan both,
[1:00:31] Cameron McEwen: the attempt
[1:00:34] Cameron McEwen: to establish a common language is associated with exactly what you were talking about now,
[1:00:43] Cameron McEwen: this reign of the eye,
[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: this willful assertion,
[1:00:48] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:00:48] Cameron McEwen: And so for both Joyce and McLuhan,
[1:00:51] Cameron McEwen: remembering our ignorance,
[1:00:54] Cameron McEwen: remembering our smell,
[1:00:56] Cameron McEwen: remembering our stupidity is a very important part of making.
[1:01:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:01:04] Bob Dobbs: Do you have something else to say?
[1:01:08] Bob Dobbs: Because I had a thought,
[1:01:10] Bob Dobbs: but I slipped away.
[1:01:12] Bob Dobbs: So we're talking about
[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: Tower of Babel.
[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:01:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan, on the private consciousness level,
[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: saw the world in harmony.
[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: And I think he said that Alexander Pope's
[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: essay on man which ends with whatever is is right some people most people take it coming of Cayce universal night no i don't think the poem ends with that i know the the section it ends with whatever is is right and most people take that as satirical ironic um but McLuhan
[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: was seeing that there was a balance among the machines often in society you
[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: Among the technologies,
[1:02:02] Bob Dobbs: he would say the medieval and the Chinese societies were balanced.
[1:02:08] Bob Dobbs: But,
[1:02:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:02:08] Bob Dobbs: the printing press had opera to balance it off.
[1:02:12] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:02:14] Bob Dobbs: I sometimes see McLuhan as a really up-to-date modern mega poet,
[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: is seeing the vision of harmony,
[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: that's the poetic cliché to archetype,
[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: that he was actually pointing out that there was a balance.
[1:02:31] Bob Dobbs: equilibrium or something going on in society,
[1:02:33] Bob Dobbs: but everybody willfully messed it up,
[1:02:37] Bob Dobbs: misinterpreted it.
[1:02:39] Bob Dobbs: You ever thought about his work that way?
[1:02:42] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:02:42] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:02:44] Cameron McEwen: In the blog,
[1:02:45] Cameron McEwen: I call that the main question,
[1:02:48] Cameron McEwen: and
[1:02:49] Cameron McEwen: I have a lot of posts about that.
[1:02:54] Cameron McEwen: We need to look at what you're talking about there in a whole bunch of different ways.
[1:02:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:58] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:02:59] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about balance.
[1:03:01] Cameron McEwen: That's a resonance that is a form of play.
[1:03:06] Cameron McEwen: It's not something that's stable and is fixed.
[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: it's not visual.
[1:03:12] Cameron McEwen: It's something dynamic.
[1:03:14] Cameron McEwen: But ultimately,
[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan,
[1:03:17] Cameron McEwen: it's not something that is in the world or of the world.
[1:03:21] Cameron McEwen: It's something that is at the foundations of the world.
[1:03:29] Cameron McEwen: is something divine.
[1:03:32] Cameron McEwen: And as can be seen in the death of Christ on the cross,
[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: the world is not protected by this resonating balance.
[1:03:48] Cameron McEwen: The world is exposed to extreme danger at all times,
[1:03:55] Cameron McEwen: but especially after...
[1:03:58] Cameron McEwen: the development of electronic machines.
[1:04:03] Cameron McEwen: And we're,
[1:04:06] Cameron McEwen: in our times following the Second World War,
[1:04:10] Cameron McEwen: we're living out the drama of how all of this is going to play out.
[1:04:16] Cameron McEwen: Is it going to play out into the extreme of no survival?
[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: Or are we going to find the means of survival?
[1:04:26] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan certainly...
[1:04:28] Cameron McEwen: situated his thought in regards to survival.
[1:04:33] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.
[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: So we did,
[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: how does any agent develop everybody?
[1:04:39] Bob Dobbs: How does it penetrate so broadly so that super accurate predictions may be made?
[1:04:47] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:04:47] Bob Dobbs: a medium,
[1:04:48] Bob Dobbs: I was talking to someone the other day about what is...
[1:04:53] Bob Dobbs: How does the society become visually biased once you have the printing press?
[1:04:58] Bob Dobbs: Where is the communication among individuals where they all start to get the same preference?
[1:05:04] Bob Dobbs: Is it in the realm of mind or memes or the hundredth monkey effect?
[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: It's a strange place where media effects,
[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: if they are real,
[1:05:13] Bob Dobbs: if they do happen...
[1:05:16] Bob Dobbs: Where does it get communicated?
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: it's like,
[1:05:21] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.
[1:05:21] Bob Dobbs: That's what?
[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: Another great question.
[1:05:23] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly the sorts of questions I was trying to raise with you.
[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: This is the relationship between individual cognition and these vast media means.
[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: Is it?
[1:05:41] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:05:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:05:42] Bob Dobbs: So is this where?
[1:05:44] Bob Dobbs: It's important how people look.
[1:05:46] Bob Dobbs: They must look within a range of familiarity.
[1:05:50] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: take tribes.
[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: They got to have their clothing or decorations,
[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: whatever they wear.
[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: There's a range of it.
[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: you take,
[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: say,
[1:06:02] Bob Dobbs: Native American,
[1:06:03] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: Native Americans with their loincloth and not much clothing,
[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: the way they were presented in movies.
[1:06:12] Bob Dobbs: Then they meet a Chinaman.
[1:06:14] Bob Dobbs: who has this crazy hat on and square stuff,
[1:06:19] Bob Dobbs: that's alienating maybe to people.
[1:06:23] Bob Dobbs: That's a shock to see someone wearing a anti-environment.
[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: So what made the people in China sort of have this preference for that kind of costuming?
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it's the weather.
[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: but made the
[1:06:41] Bob Dobbs: Eskimos or Inuit have way different costumes.
[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: So it always hovers between obvious practical common sense and yet a mystery part in it.
[1:06:55] Bob Dobbs: So the mystery may oscillate back and forth between meteorology and chemistry or the private individual and the collective.
[1:07:03] Bob Dobbs: And that would be the drama.
[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: Back to the drama of cognition again.
[1:07:07] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:07:08] Cameron McEwen: So that's...
[1:07:09] Cameron McEwen: Exactly the example you bring out is one that McLuhan takes from Joyce in
[1:07:20] Bob Dobbs: Portrait?
[1:07:21] Cameron McEwen: No, before Portrait.
[1:07:24] Bob Dobbs: Stephen Hero.
[1:07:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:07:26] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:07:26] Cameron McEwen: Sorry.
[1:07:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:07:30] Cameron McEwen: I think it's in his 1951 Joyce essay,
[1:07:33] Cameron McEwen: or it could be in the
[1:07:35] Cameron McEwen: 53 Joyce essay.
[1:07:38] Cameron McEwen: He quotes Joyce saying that the
[1:07:41] Cameron McEwen: Chinaman may prefer,
[1:07:44] Cameron McEwen: I forget what it is.
[1:07:45] Cameron McEwen: The digestive system.
[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: But everybody has the same digestive system,
[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:07:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:07:50] Cameron McEwen: And that's the drama of cognition,
[1:07:51] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:07:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: And they have that great quote by McLuhan in the review of Burroughs in 64.
[1:07:59] Bob Dobbs: And he talks about we're all inside each other.
[1:08:02] Bob Dobbs: We're all digesting each other now,
[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: electrically.
[1:08:06] Bob Dobbs: Remember that part?
[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:08:08] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:08:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:09] Bob Dobbs: Great statement.
[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: And so,
[1:08:11] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:08:12] Cameron McEwen: And so that that relates to this dialectic or this overpowering weather system where you have danger and potential survival wrestling
[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: with each other and creating vast weather fronts through this wrestling.
[1:08:35] Cameron McEwen: The...
[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: I've lost my chain.
[1:08:40] Cameron McEwen: Go back to what you were just talking about so I can reconnect my.
[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: Why?
[1:08:45] Bob Dobbs: How do we go from common sense?
[1:08:47] Bob Dobbs: And obviously people prefer people who look like each other.
[1:08:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:08:52] Cameron McEwen: you were talking about the Burroughs.
[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: Digestion.
[1:08:57] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:08:58] Cameron McEwen: And so what has happened is that in the anti-environment,
[1:09:06] Cameron McEwen: as both cause and effect.
[1:09:08] Cameron McEwen: We have come to understand all of the different possibilities of being human.
[1:09:14] Cameron McEwen: And on the one hand,
[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: that gives us insight into supposedly primitive societies and gives us new opportunities in literature and stuff,
[1:09:26] Cameron McEwen: but it also gives all sorts of new possibilities for weaponry and computers that can be used.
[1:09:37] Cameron McEwen: either benignly or disastrously,
[1:09:40] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.
[1:09:41] Cameron McEwen: So when you talk about everybody being inside and eviscerating each other,
[1:09:49] Cameron McEwen: then what's going on there is that we've become conscious of the possibilities,
[1:09:56] Cameron McEwen: but we don't know how to relate to them in a way that enables us
[1:10:07] Cameron McEwen: to find peace,
[1:10:09] Cameron McEwen: to find a balance that works.
[1:10:13] Cameron McEwen: And that goes back to the Tower of Babel again.
[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: How do we get...
[1:10:18] Cameron McEwen: How do we get a possibility for peace that isn't the imposition of some form of human wisdom?
[1:10:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:10:31] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: I'll go to your second point.
[1:10:36] Bob Dobbs: The problem of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
[1:10:40] Bob Dobbs: But that's,
[1:10:42] Bob Dobbs: is it Alexander
[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: Whitehead?
[1:10:45] Cameron McEwen: No, that's Alfred North.
[1:10:48] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:10:48] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: Alfred North Whitehead.
[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: So he says...
[1:10:53] Cameron McEwen: Science from the modern world.
[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: So he has the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: And then with McLuhan,
[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: it is the opposite of Whitehead.
[1:11:02] Bob Dobbs: Whitehead saw abstractions misplaced as particulars.
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: But with McLuhan,
[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: it's particulars misplaced as abstractions.
[1:11:10] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: for example,
[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: hearing from all sides or gaps in TV points of light.
[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: Both of these are particulars which do the work of fundamental specification.
[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: The ear which tunes into TV or is tuned by TV is not the ear that hears noises.
[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: The gaps in TV images are not the gaps between figure and ground.
[1:11:32] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:11:32] Bob Dobbs: that's a messy,
[1:11:34] Bob Dobbs: mixed-up thing.
[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: Misplaced as abstractions.
[1:11:44] Cameron McEwen: What I'm going to,
[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: here...
[1:11:46] Cameron McEwen: is what I take to be ways of mistaking or misunderstanding
[1:11:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that are practically universal.
[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:11:59] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:11:59] Cameron McEwen: he'll say something about
[1:12:01] Cameron McEwen: TV causes,
[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: Or the book did this,
[1:12:06] Cameron McEwen: or the alphabet did this,
[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:12:10] Cameron McEwen: And so then people think,
[1:12:12] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: I know what a book is.
[1:12:14] Cameron McEwen: I know what the alphabet is.
[1:12:16] Cameron McEwen: I know what a TV is,
[1:12:18] Cameron McEwen: and so McLuhan is talking about that.
[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: But no,
[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: he is talking about what makes these things possible.
[1:12:31] Cameron McEwen: And if...
[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: What makes the TV possible?
[1:12:38] Cameron McEwen: What makes...
[1:12:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:12:39] Cameron McEwen: what makes...
[1:12:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:12:42] Cameron McEwen: how is it possible?
[1:12:44] Cameron McEwen: that we can have something like an alphabet.
[1:12:46] Cameron McEwen: What is required for that to be the case?
[1:12:50] Cameron McEwen: Similarly with a book,
[1:12:51] Cameron McEwen: similarly with TVs,
[1:12:53] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:12:54] Cameron McEwen: And so there's not only a huge physical environment that's necessary for these things,
[1:13:02] Cameron McEwen: there's also anti-environment that's necessary for these things.
[1:13:07] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan is always talking about these very complex
[1:13:13] Cameron McEwen: three suppositions.
[1:13:15] Cameron McEwen: So when he says the medium is the message,
[1:13:18] Cameron McEwen: what he's talking about is the medium in these very complex ways.
[1:13:25] Cameron McEwen: And it's very,
[1:13:27] Cameron McEwen: very common in
[1:13:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan quote unquote scholarship for people to mistake what he's talking about is something particular.
[1:13:40] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: the television,
[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: The book.
[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: The alphabet,
[1:13:44] Cameron McEwen: on and on.
[1:13:46] Bob Dobbs: Those are particulars,
[1:13:48] Bob Dobbs: and they're abstracted?
[1:13:51] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:13:52] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:13:53] Cameron McEwen: when I use abstraction here,
[1:13:56] Cameron McEwen: what I mean is that
[1:13:59] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is using these images,
[1:14:03] Cameron McEwen: or these particulars,
[1:14:05] Cameron McEwen: to suggest something that is not particular.
[1:14:08] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:14:08] Cameron McEwen: I call that abstraction.
[1:14:11] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:14:12] Cameron McEwen: I know that the word abstraction is a bad word that upsets people and stuff,
[1:14:18] Cameron McEwen: and I sort of used it because of that upsetting.
[1:14:21] Cameron McEwen: I simply,
[1:14:23] Cameron McEwen: I was trying to indicate that for McLuhan,
[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: the medium is never something particular.
[1:14:32] Cameron McEwen: It's something that enables particulars,
[1:14:35] Cameron McEwen: and that although McLuhan often spoke in terms of particulars,
[1:14:40] Cameron McEwen: That was just because he had to use words,
[1:14:44] Cameron McEwen: number one.
[1:14:44] Cameron McEwen: And number two,
[1:14:45] Cameron McEwen: teaching anybody anything is a dicey process.
[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:14:51] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting.
[1:14:52] Bob Dobbs: As you talk,
[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: I start to veer towards,
[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: we're saying the same thing,
[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:15:01] Bob Dobbs: Plato said with different words.
[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: Then I veer,
[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: there's something different going on.
[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: But that's the obvious difference.
[1:15:09] Bob Dobbs: Plato didn't live in our society.
[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: Way different.
[1:15:13] Bob Dobbs: So I veer back and forth.
[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:15:16] Bob Dobbs: I read once,
[1:15:17] Bob Dobbs: I think it was in the Whole Earth Catalog in 1970,
[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: they would review books.
[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: And so they were writing about,
[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: Stuart Brand was probably writing it and commenting on his book.
[1:15:29] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: humans have meaning.
[1:15:36] Bob Dobbs: There's two functions in the brain,
[1:15:37] Bob Dobbs: two aspects of knowing.
[1:15:40] Bob Dobbs: The bigger picture,
[1:15:41] Bob Dobbs: which is meaning and focusing on particulars.
[1:15:44] Bob Dobbs: So we're always juggling back and forth between meaning and particulars.
[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:15:52] Bob Dobbs: the bird's eye view is a literate bias.
[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: So there's a literate version of the meaning,
[1:15:58] Bob Dobbs: the big view,
[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: the big picture,
[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: versus,
[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: I guess,
[1:16:02] Bob Dobbs: other cultures use the ear.
[1:16:05] Bob Dobbs: But,
[1:16:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:16:06] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting how we're a dialectic,
[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: but then other factors move it beyond the control by dialectic or those terms.
[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: And so I guess you would see that in Finnegans Wake.
[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: millions of dialectics all through the book,
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: but he's scattering them.
[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: So that's going from meaning to particulars.
[1:16:27] Bob Dobbs: And so you seem to be doing that here,
[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: going from particulars to abstractions.
[1:16:33] Bob Dobbs: And we come back to the question of how the heck do people get on the same page of things?
[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: And you can get into obscure esoteric psychology where effects precede causes or people have a knowing.
[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: always anyways.
[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: An interesting ESP going on between people just sitting on a bus driving somewhere.
[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot of communication going on on the intangible level,
[1:17:02] Bob Dobbs: the feeling level,
[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:17:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:17:05] Cameron McEwen: what you're talking about here is the question of what goes on when language is first used by humans,
[1:17:14] Cameron McEwen: or similarly,
[1:17:14] Cameron McEwen: what goes on when a child learns language.
[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:17:20] Cameron McEwen: They are always relating to a particular noise,
[1:17:26] Cameron McEwen: but that noise is suddenly more than a noise.
[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:17:32] Bob Dobbs: now,
[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: do you know,
[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: are psychologists coming to a big wrapping up and understanding anything?
[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: Or do they admit there's so many new questions?
[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: Has anybody announced an ending point?
[1:17:47] Cameron McEwen: in our great knowledge quest well not that i know of yeah anyway the ending won't be a point yeah so um okay so then the next point i
[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: mean all but all these questions you know could go on for a long time sticking to one sentence but just to show your realm your range here point three theme three acoustic space the odd out
[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes said to be a space in play with the visual?
[1:18:20] Bob Dobbs: Does that mean a space in itself?
[1:18:23] Bob Dobbs: Why do you underline that?
[1:18:24] Cameron McEwen: I go on to illustrate it.
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes said to be the space of spaces.
[1:18:32] Cameron McEwen: So before we give the examples,
[1:18:36] Cameron McEwen: the point is that
[1:18:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan sometimes says that acoustic space is the basic anti-environment...
[1:18:45] Cameron McEwen: human beings.
[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: And that's important to say sometimes.
[1:18:50] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:18:51] Cameron McEwen: exactly.
[1:18:52] Cameron McEwen: So he's not consistent.
[1:18:55] Cameron McEwen: But what I have found with
[1:18:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is that oftentimes,
[1:19:04] Cameron McEwen: instead of dismissing or criticizing an inconsistency,
[1:19:09] Cameron McEwen: you should think about it and try and figure out why he was being
[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: inconsistent because that's often a signpost of something to be thought about.
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:19:22] Bob Dobbs: the discontinuity of speech.
[1:19:26] Bob Dobbs: I saw a lecture by
[1:19:28] Bob Dobbs: Richard Cavell recently,
[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: and he talked about his deep appreciation of the discontinuity of acoustic space,
[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: and that's why he could accept and understood McLuhan would talk that way.
[1:19:45] Bob Dobbs: contradict or shift or abrupt or change.
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: And then there's that interview with
[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: Tom Snyder,
[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: that New York TV talk show guy,
[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: where he says,
[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:19:57] Bob Dobbs: Marshall,
[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: do people ever tell you that they sometimes don't follow you?
[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen that?
[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: Does it ring a bell?
[1:20:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:20:08] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:20:08] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:20:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:20:09] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says,
[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: he quickly has an answer.
[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: that's because they try to connect what I'm saying now with what I said before.
[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: And that's,
[1:20:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what an average uninformed mind would think of that statement.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: What do you mean?
[1:20:24] Bob Dobbs: Of course you have to connect what you said before.
[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: You can't be discontinuous.
[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan was pointing out,
[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: we are discontinuity more and more in our lives.
[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: And this is what Cavell was pointing out.
[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: So somehow that relates to what we were talking about.
[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: The.
[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: What did you say that makes me think of this discontinuity?
[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: You said,
[1:20:48] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:20:48] Bob Dobbs: the ground.
[1:20:49] Cameron McEwen: I was talking about how he's consistent or not.
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: that's it.
[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: And so he would do that.
[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: so if you want to emphasize the acoustic gang,
[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: he does what he said to Snyder.
[1:21:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't connect what I said before.
[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: with him saying now,
[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: but we know in his talks and essays,
[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: he does make a sequence of connections,
[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: a layout,
[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: an argument.
[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: So yeah,
[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: the situation determines whether he's going to be discontinuous or not.
[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: And this shows where humans got in communication.
[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: 100 years,
[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: 200 years ago,
[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: you couldn't go around playing games like that with people.
[1:21:29] Bob Dobbs: As they used to back in the schools of comps day,
[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: they'd wear their swords to school,
[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:21:36] Bob Dobbs: You get into a serious argument,
[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: you're going to have to have a duel about it,
[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: you might die.
[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: we're incredibly soft today,
[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: is my discontinuous conclusion.
[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: I didn't help you with that one,
[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: eh?
[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: I didn't get any worse?
[1:21:55] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:21:57] Cameron McEwen: I would say you got off on a bit of a tangent.
[1:22:02] Cameron McEwen: You're a person who likes...
[1:22:04] Cameron McEwen: to go off on tangents.
[1:22:06] Cameron McEwen: It's interesting to follow you when you do so.
[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: good.
[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: so what are you trying to show here?
[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes said to be a space and play with the visual.
[1:22:16] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,
[1:22:17] Bob Dobbs: then to be the space,
[1:22:18] Bob Dobbs: the ground.
[1:22:20] Bob Dobbs: And he does,
[1:22:20] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan does say sound is the ground in some cases,
[1:22:23] Bob Dobbs: but not,
[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: then he might say tactility is the ground,
[1:22:26] Bob Dobbs: which would be the emptiness,
[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:22:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:22:30] Cameron McEwen: that's actually,
[1:22:31] Cameron McEwen: that's another whole example.
[1:22:33] Cameron McEwen: that we could get into,
[1:22:34] Cameron McEwen: but why don't you read the two examples I give of him talking about the space and a space.
[1:22:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:22:43] Bob Dobbs: the first is from Laws of Media,
[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: page 77.
[1:22:46] Bob Dobbs: The interval between the wheel and the axle has long served as an example not only of touch,
[1:22:51] Bob Dobbs: but of play.
[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: Touch is in quotes,
[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: play is in quotes.
[1:22:55] Bob Dobbs: Without play,
[1:22:56] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: without that figure and ground interval,
[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: there's neither wheel nor axle.
[1:23:01] Bob Dobbs: The space between the wheel and the axle,
[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: which defines both,
[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: is where the action is.
[1:23:05] Bob Dobbs: And that's in quotes,
[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: where the action is.
[1:23:08] Bob Dobbs: And this space is both odd-out and tactile.
[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: He's trying to describe the mind thing that I brought up at the beginning.
[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: This space between objects.
[1:23:18] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:23:22] Bob Dobbs: so that's the space.
[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: Then you have from
[1:23:27] Bob Dobbs: Bruce Powers and McLuhan book.
[1:23:31] Bob Dobbs: the global village.
[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: A space.
[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: So this is page four.
[1:23:36] Bob Dobbs: The same may be said for the left and right brain.
[1:23:39] Bob Dobbs: We must once again accept and harmonize the perceptual biases of both.
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: Dot dot dot.
[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: The book of nature contains innumerable borderlines and interfaces.
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: The resonant interval may be considered an invisible borderline between visual and acoustic space.
[1:23:57] Bob Dobbs: You must once again accept and harmonize the perceptual biases of both.
[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: Is simple self-awareness,
[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: does this cover simple reflection on oneself?
[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: What are you doing when you're thinking about yourself?
[1:24:16] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:24:20] Bob Dobbs: the original meaning of repenting is retracing.
[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: So you retrace the events of your day before you fall asleep.
[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: Retracing is natural,
[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan talks about tracing and retracing on that page,
[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: 32 of Interior landscape,
[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: the Dram of Cognition.
[1:24:39] Bob Dobbs: So this thinking thing that goes on,
[1:24:46] Bob Dobbs: this self-awareness,
[1:24:48] Bob Dobbs: and it spreads to other people.
[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: Other people know you're doing it.
[1:24:56] Cameron McEwen: Is that a question?
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure.
[1:24:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:25:01] Cameron McEwen: You're getting back here to the sorts of questions that
[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: I was raising earlier.
[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:25:08] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: everybody raised these questions all through history.
[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: I'm not claiming any originality here.
[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:25:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm not,
[1:25:17] Bob Dobbs: but I'm being ironic or funny that our questions.
[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: Anything to be said,
[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: taken seriously.
[1:25:30] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,
[1:25:31] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[1:25:32] Cameron McEwen: In fact,
[1:25:36] Cameron McEwen: for seriousness does not exclude humor.
[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:25:40] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:25:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:25:41] Cameron McEwen: Something can be ultra serious and ultra funny at the at the same time.
[1:25:48] Cameron McEwen: But maybe questions are the very heart of what needs to be taken most seriously.
[1:26:00] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:26:01] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:26:03] Cameron McEwen: if at the.
[1:26:07] Cameron McEwen: deepest ground of human being is maybe questions,
[1:26:12] Cameron McEwen: questions about the real,
[1:26:13] Cameron McEwen: questions about meaning,
[1:26:17] Cameron McEwen: questions about death.
[1:26:19] Cameron McEwen: And those questions are unanswerable because they're so deep.
[1:26:29] Cameron McEwen: But the interesting thing about those questions is that even though they're unanswerable,
[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: they might provide foundation,
[1:26:38] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:26:38] Cameron McEwen: So one way of thinking about Finnegans Wake,
[1:26:41] Cameron McEwen: or,
[1:26:41] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:26:42] Cameron McEwen: I'm completely ignorant about Finnegans Wake compared to you and others,
[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:26:47] Cameron McEwen: I would suggest that one of the points of Finnegans Wake is that the complete undecidability of everything is foundation.
[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: And that's only if you're around someone who thinks they know it all and are imposing their will too much.
[1:27:10] Bob Dobbs: If I'm with a reasonable person who's not going to interrupt me too much,
[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: then there's a harmony and it's natural.
[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: But then a third person comes in,
[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: that upsets the balance,
[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: which is a metaphor for a new technology comes in.
[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: upsets the relationships between people.
[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: So then questions come.
[1:27:39] Cameron McEwen: What you're doing is you're making questions subsequent,
[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: secondary.
[1:27:47] Cameron McEwen: But if you have a thunder in Finnegans Wake,
[1:27:53] Cameron McEwen: and the result of the thunder is to completely annihilate
[1:27:59] Cameron McEwen: a way of life,
[1:28:05] Cameron McEwen: that sort of tactility isn't because some moron arrived on the scene,
[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: it's because it's built into the very nature of things.
[1:28:18] Bob Dobbs: So what would you say to Donald Theall Trump if you had a chance,
[1:28:24] Bob Dobbs: a private conversation with him?
[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: And you thought that he was interested in your thinking and your possibility of giving him an angle that he hadn't thought of,
[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: that you noticed.
[1:28:38] Bob Dobbs: And I'm saying Trump because he's a person in responsibility.
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: He has to respond to the world more than I have to on the collective level.
[1:28:50] Bob Dobbs: So is that too out of the park about what you would say to Trump?
[1:28:54] Cameron McEwen: Well.
[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: Did you see that essay by some anonymous guy who compared Trump and McLuhan?
[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: He had a good bunch of scattering of McLuhan quotes illustrated.
[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: I know where it is.
[1:29:11] Cameron McEwen: It's on the New Explorations website,
[1:29:14] Cameron McEwen: I believe.
[1:29:15] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:29:17] Cameron McEwen: Clinton,
[1:29:19] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[1:29:20] Cameron McEwen: did some work with it.
[1:29:21] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:29:22] Cameron McEwen: I never pay any attention to stuff like that because I always think that that's...
[1:29:28] Cameron McEwen: an attempt to sort of use McLuhan as opposed to trying to understand,
[1:29:35] Cameron McEwen: to interrogate McLuhan.
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: it's an interrogation,
[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: but you have standards or something.
[1:29:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:29:47] Cameron McEwen: You can't read everything.
[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:29:51] Bob Dobbs: you pick your time.
[1:29:53] Bob Dobbs: I've got more time than you.
[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: I can read everything.
[1:29:56] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:29:56] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: Did you read Richard Cavell book,
[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Remediating?
[1:30:04] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:30:05] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:30:05] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read that,
[1:30:06] Cameron McEwen: actually.
[1:30:08] Cameron McEwen: Just before
[1:30:09] Cameron McEwen: COVID hit,
[1:30:11] Cameron McEwen: I asked for the book through interlibrary loan.
[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: It didn't make it.
[1:30:16] Cameron McEwen: Then the library shut down.
[1:30:18] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:30:19] Cameron McEwen: I want to read it.
[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: I must tell you,
[1:30:22] Cameron McEwen: I'm not a great fan of Cavell.
[1:30:24] Cameron McEwen: You don't,
[1:30:25] Cameron McEwen: I think his...
[1:30:29] Cameron McEwen: understanding of the depths of McLuhan is off.
[1:30:34] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[1:30:35] Cameron McEwen: He often brings...
[1:30:36] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche into play and he has a certain interpretation of Nietzsche that
[1:30:43] Cameron McEwen: I don't agree with and then to apply that to McLuhan is difficult.
[1:30:52] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: so he it's called
[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: The Geography of Space or something?
[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: His book,
[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Geography or something.
[1:31:04] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,
[1:31:05] Bob Dobbs: I read it.
[1:31:07] Cameron McEwen: Are you talking about his earlier book?
[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:31:10] Cameron McEwen: I think that's called McLuhan in Space or something like that.
[1:31:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:31:13] Bob Dobbs: so I read it and I called him up.
[1:31:16] Bob Dobbs: And he said he spent two weeks in the archives.
[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: I think in the book it comes up,
[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: or he said to me personally,
[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: but he was trying to figure out acoustic space and tactile space.
[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: And to me,
[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: in a way,
[1:31:33] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't get it.
[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: And so...
[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: That's what I thought when I read it.
[1:31:37] Bob Dobbs: And then when I talked to him and he said he spent two weeks,
[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: I immediately thought to myself,
[1:31:43] Bob Dobbs: that's not long enough.
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: Two weeks?
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:31:46] Cameron McEwen: Christ,
[1:31:46] Cameron McEwen: no.
[1:31:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: so I think maybe that's why we're irritated by the book.
[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: He actually doesn't go as deep as he thought he did.
[1:31:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:31:58] Cameron McEwen: this is sort of his persona,
[1:32:00] Cameron McEwen: right,
[1:32:01] Cameron McEwen: that he's a deep and complicated thinker.
[1:32:05] Cameron McEwen: And if you don't find his thought deep and complicated,
[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: then it's not going to be that interesting.
[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:32:12] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: his new book,
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: which I read,
[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: I tell Alex Kouskis that
[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: I told him for a few years that,
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: he asked me,
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: who's a good McLuhan scholar?
[1:32:23] Bob Dobbs: I say Cameron McEwen.
[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: So he says,
[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: he says.
[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: On his own,
[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: I just saw him,
[1:32:31] Bob Dobbs: he made a little blurb about whatever Cavell was doing,
[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: and he said,
[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: I consider him the top McLuhan scholar today.
[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: And he does tackle the virtual postmodern guys.
[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: You haven't read the book,
[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: but he takes on the postmodern virtual thinkers,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: and he tries to make the point that,
[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: in the end,
[1:32:53] Bob Dobbs: technology is us.
[1:32:54] Bob Dobbs: He tries to do what McLuhan said Lewis does,
[1:32:56] Bob Dobbs: which is human shape.
[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: in technology,
[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: but it's more,
[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,
[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: philosophical abstract.
[1:33:03] Bob Dobbs: So he's just stating technologies are human.
[1:33:07] Bob Dobbs: There's not many particulars to illustrate it other than abstract talk about post-humanism or something.
[1:33:18] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:33:20] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was good that someone ran McLuhan through those guys,
[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: or women,
[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: but another guy,
[1:33:27] Bob Dobbs: young guy,
[1:33:28] Bob Dobbs: He's young.
[1:33:29] Bob Dobbs: He's just got his
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: PhD. He said he thought the book was horrible.
[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: I don't know much about this guy who said that,
[1:33:38] Bob Dobbs: but I've got two opinions.
[1:33:39] Bob Dobbs: I've got Alice Cusick saying this guy is a top scholar,
[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: and the other guy is saying,
[1:33:45] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:33:45] Bob Dobbs: what a horrible book.
[1:33:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm in between,
[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure
[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: Richard has done enough reading of McLuhan.
[1:33:54] Bob Dobbs: He's certainly done a lot more than two weeks'
[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: worth.
[1:33:57] Bob Dobbs: He's put together a couple of books,
[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: a collection of essays,
[1:34:00] Bob Dobbs: and they're a good collection,
[1:34:01] Bob Dobbs: one of them.
[1:34:03] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:34:06] Bob Dobbs: I think I prefer your writing than his.
[1:34:09] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:34:10] Bob Dobbs: I can't even say that.
[1:34:11] Bob Dobbs: You're so far apart from each other,
[1:34:13] Bob Dobbs: I guess is what it is.
[1:34:14] Bob Dobbs: So you're both useful.
[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,
[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: I was curious before I called you if you had read Cavell,
[1:34:21] Bob Dobbs: but you haven't.
[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: So you might want to take a look at that.
[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:34:24] Cameron McEwen: I read his first book,
[1:34:25] Cameron McEwen: but not remediated.
[1:34:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:34:26] Bob Dobbs: this is very different,
[1:34:28] Bob Dobbs: a very different book.
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: Because,
[1:34:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:34:31] Bob Dobbs: he's talking 60s McLuhan in the first book,
[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: and that book is like 25 years old.
[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: Now here it is 50 more years later,
[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: and you can run McLuhan by,
[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: all the developments that have happened in sociological thinking or metaphysics,
[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: and that hasn't been done too much,
[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: updated of McLuhan,
[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: updating of him.
[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: so...
[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: We got this endless,
[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: I'm just wondering about how much can one ignore one's thoughts?
[1:35:05] Bob Dobbs: When do you interrupt people?
[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: When do you let them interrupt you?
[1:35:13] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn just walked,
[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: just got out.
[1:35:15] Bob Dobbs: She heard that sentence.
[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: Did you hear her?
[1:35:17] Bob Dobbs: She laughed.
[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: Are you there?
[1:35:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:35:22] Bob Dobbs: She laughed because she interrupted me.
[1:35:27] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:35:28] Cameron McEwen: I also laughed because we got a bunch of dogs running around.
[1:35:32] Bob Dobbs: A bunch of what?
[1:35:33] Bob Dobbs: Dogs,
[1:35:33] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: Dogs,
[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:35:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: so maybe we should stop.
[1:35:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:35:41] Cameron McEwen: that's fine.
[1:35:41] Bob Dobbs: Because I have to go somewhere in a few hours.
[1:35:46] Bob Dobbs: So definitely we need a part two.
[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure where we got.
[1:35:54] Bob Dobbs: Your questions are great.
[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: I think it's interesting to other
[1:35:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan scholars to hear what we say because nobody talks about McLuhan in an interesting way,
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: it seems.
[1:36:06] Bob Dobbs: They just rehash,
[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,
[1:36:08] Bob Dobbs: this guy said this,
[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: oh he said that.
[1:36:11] Bob Dobbs: They don't go into the whole history of thought and where he is in that.
[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,
[1:36:20] Bob Dobbs: what was,
[1:36:23] Bob Dobbs: so what is your,
[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: let's end on this point.
[1:36:25] Bob Dobbs: What was the point you were telling me about chemistry?
[1:36:27] Bob Dobbs: Why was it such a breakthrough in 1800?
[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: Run that by me again.
[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:36:32] Bob Dobbs: here we are
[1:36:34] Bob Dobbs: 22 years later.
[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: Let's end with that because that was important to you,
[1:36:40] Bob Dobbs: that insight,
[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: Absolutely.
[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: And where did you get it from?
[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: Where did you get it from?
[1:36:43] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[1:36:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:36:45] Cameron McEwen: that's interesting.
[1:36:47] Cameron McEwen: I know exactly where and when it occurred to me.
[1:36:52] Cameron McEwen: I could go there right now.
[1:36:56] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:36:57] Cameron McEwen: If I had an hour to spare and the freeways weren't too bad.
[1:37:02] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: we'll do that next time.
[1:37:05] Cameron McEwen: all right but can you sum up what's the point well the point the point of what we are doing um is that uh we're we're bouncing um off each other um
[1:37:22] Cameron McEwen: ideas derived from uh fairly substantial readings and and of McLuhan and thinking about McLuhan for many years and at least
[1:37:35] Cameron McEwen: for me,
[1:37:36] Cameron McEwen: I learn stuff.
[1:37:38] Cameron McEwen: And if it's interesting to anybody else,
[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: I think it's because they also learn stuff.
[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: So what about the chemistry point?
[1:37:51] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: you want me to go into that?
[1:37:53] Bob Dobbs: Not the hour long,
[1:37:54] Bob Dobbs: just one sentence.
[1:37:56] Bob Dobbs: What does state the significance of 1800 in human knowledge?
[1:38:02] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[1:38:03] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:38:04] Cameron McEwen: I
[1:38:04] Cameron McEwen: Humans have been dealing with physical materials for hundreds of thousands of years.
[1:38:12] Cameron McEwen: And whenever they dealt with physical materials,
[1:38:16] Cameron McEwen: they were doing pattern recognition.
[1:38:18] Cameron McEwen: So in 1800,
[1:38:20] Cameron McEwen: what happened was that there was pattern recognition of the pattern recognition.
[1:38:25] Cameron McEwen: And that's the elements of chemistry.
[1:38:28] Cameron McEwen: And when McLuhan says the medium is the message,
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: he's saying that
[1:38:34] Cameron McEwen: The pattern recognition of the drama of cognition needs to be subject to pattern recognition.
[1:38:43] Cameron McEwen: And if we can achieve that,
[1:38:45] Cameron McEwen: then we can achieve survival.
[1:38:49] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: That's something good to think about.
[1:38:53] Bob Dobbs: So that's great.
[1:38:54] Bob Dobbs: 22 years later to have the thought that I didn't know what you were meaning back then.
[1:38:58] Bob Dobbs: It makes more sense now what you said.
[1:39:01] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:39:02] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:39:04] Cameron McEwen: cook that together with what I was talking about at the same time in the mail website that was
[1:39:19] Cameron McEwen: Media Ecology somewhere,
[1:39:22] Cameron McEwen: Johns Hopkins maybe,
[1:39:24] Cameron McEwen: where I was always talking about time and times.
[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: that was the
[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: Peter Montgomery site that he got from George
[1:39:32] Bob Dobbs: Sanderson at St.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: of X.
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: Yep,
[1:39:35] Cameron McEwen: yep,
[1:39:35] Cameron McEwen: yep.
[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: And you grew up in Winnipeg?
[1:39:39] Cameron McEwen: I didn't grow up in Winnipeg.
[1:39:40] Cameron McEwen: I grew up in Regina.
[1:39:42] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:39:43] Cameron McEwen: I went to high school in Winnipeg.
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: Why?
[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: You moved?
[1:39:48] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:39:49] Cameron McEwen: I went to,
[1:39:49] Cameron McEwen: there's a boarding school in Winnipeg and I went there.
[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: Your parents sent you there?
[1:39:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:39:56] Bob Dobbs: And you wanted to go there?
[1:39:59] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:39:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[1:40:01] Cameron McEwen: I had some good friends.
[1:40:02] Cameron McEwen: in Regina that went there and that were good athletes.
[1:40:06] Cameron McEwen: And Ravenscourt had always had a very good hockey program so that a few years after I was there,
[1:40:14] Cameron McEwen: the
[1:40:15] Cameron McEwen: Canadian national team was based there.
[1:40:18] Cameron McEwen: So it wasn't like being sent to detention school or anything.
[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: It was to enhance your skills,
[1:40:25] Bob Dobbs: get to a better city,
[1:40:26] Bob Dobbs: a better environment.
[1:40:31] Cameron McEwen: It was,
[1:40:32] Cameron McEwen: I guess,
[1:40:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't know what my parents were thinking.
[1:40:37] Cameron McEwen: It seemed like the socially acceptable thing to do,
[1:40:41] Cameron McEwen: so I went.
[1:40:43] Bob Dobbs: It was a fad in Regina.
[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: Everybody said,
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: we've got to send our boys to Winnipeg.
[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to be there.
[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: There must be some after residue there.
[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: That would have been in the '60s or
[1:40:59] Bob Dobbs: 70s.
[1:41:00] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:41:00] Cameron McEwen: no.
[1:41:02] Cameron McEwen: I went there in 1958,
[1:41:04] Cameron McEwen: graduated in 62.
[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:41:08] Bob Dobbs: 72.
[1:41:08] Cameron McEwen: 72.
[1:41:09] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:41:10] Cameron McEwen: 62.
[1:41:11] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:41:11] Bob Dobbs: I thought you said you went there in 68.
[1:41:13] Bob Dobbs: You went there in 58?
[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:41:14] Cameron McEwen: 58.
[1:41:15] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:41:15] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: that's before the McLuhan fad,
[1:41:20] Bob Dobbs: so can't blame it on McLuhan.
[1:41:23] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:41:24] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:41:26] Cameron McEwen: I never...
[1:41:27] Cameron McEwen: I tried to blame it on McLuhan.
[1:41:29] Cameron McEwen: But over the next few years after that,
[1:41:34] Cameron McEwen: I remember my dad telling me sometime around 1964,
[1:41:40] Cameron McEwen: maybe,
[1:41:42] Cameron McEwen: that he had read a few things by McLuhan and thought that I'd be interested in it.
[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: And so then I started to read a bit of McLuhan myself.
[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: What was he,
[1:41:53] Bob Dobbs: his profession?
[1:41:55] Cameron McEwen: He was a physician.
[1:41:57] Bob Dobbs: A doctor.
[1:41:57] Bob Dobbs: So he was learned or,
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: educated.
[1:42:00] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:42:00] Cameron McEwen: not really.
[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: I don't.
[1:42:02] Cameron McEwen: My dad would suggest things like this.
[1:42:05] Cameron McEwen: And then later I would find out that he'd never read anything of McLuhan.
[1:42:11] Cameron McEwen: That he just sort of picked it out of the air and thought it might be something that I'd be interested in.
[1:42:16] Bob Dobbs: And he was right.
[1:42:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: absolutely.
[1:42:20] Cameron McEwen: And he often did stuff like that.
[1:42:22] Cameron McEwen: He often found stuff that was interesting to me.
[1:42:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:42:26] Bob Dobbs: so he was not learned.
[1:42:28] Bob Dobbs: He was cagey.
[1:42:31] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.
[1:42:31] Cameron McEwen: He was a graduate of University of Wright Manitoba,
[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: just like McLuhan.
[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: there are characters that come out of that school,
[1:42:38] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:42:39] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[1:42:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:42:43] Bob Dobbs: Great talking to Cameron.
[1:42:44] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:42:44] Bob Dobbs: same here,
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: Bob.
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: In a week or so,
[1:42:46] Bob Dobbs: we'll do part two.
[1:42:48] Cameron McEwen: Good.
[1:42:49] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: thank you.
[1:42:50] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:42:51] Cameron McEwen: Ciao,
[1:42:51] Cameron McEwen: ciao.
[1:42:51] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.
[1:42:52] Bob Dobbs: Yep,
[1:42:52] Bob Dobbs: talk to you later.