Dialogue 26 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: this is Bob and Ewen Cameron again.

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: This is episode number 26 being recorded on June 17th,

[00:10] Bob Dobbs: 2021,

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: starting at 2.45 a.m.

[00:19] Bob Dobbs: Hawaii time,

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: quarter to three in the morning.

[00:23] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:24] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,

[00:25] Bob Dobbs: you have an issue about a term I use you want to look at.

[00:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[00:31] Cameron McEwen: that's right.

[00:32] Cameron McEwen: We're doing the TechBody interview with anybody,

[00:37] Cameron McEwen: and

[00:38] Cameron McEwen: I'm interested in getting clarified how the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[00:45] Cameron McEwen: the AP,

[00:47] Cameron McEwen: and the

[00:47] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme relate to the

[00:51] Cameron McEwen: TechBody.

[00:54] Cameron McEwen: My understanding is that they all have to do with...

[01:01] Cameron McEwen: the loss of the human in the modern world,

[01:11] Cameron McEwen: but I believe that they're differentiated amongst themselves.

[01:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[01:18] Bob Dobbs: So we're looking at my Tiny Note chart,

[01:21] Bob Dobbs: which we've done a lot of details on in the past.

[01:26] Bob Dobbs: You've got four quadrants,

[01:29] Bob Dobbs: LaRouche,

[01:30] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[01:31] Bob Dobbs: Thompson,

[01:32] Bob Dobbs: William Irwin Thompson,

[01:33] Bob Dobbs: and Kroker,

[01:35] Bob Dobbs: Arthur Kroker.

[01:37] Bob Dobbs: And then on the bottom is the Dobbs quadrant,

[01:39] Bob Dobbs: the fifth area,

[01:41] Bob Dobbs: and I call my quadrant Anthropomorphic Physical,

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: as opposed to

[01:48] Bob Dobbs: LaRouche,

[01:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[01:52] Bob Dobbs: Thompson, and Kroker being a holeopathic anti-environment.

[01:58] Bob Dobbs: So it's the anti-environment and then a holeopathic radio,

[02:02] Bob Dobbs: TV,

[02:02] Bob Dobbs: computer,

[02:03] Bob Dobbs: and then the anti-environment itself.

[02:05] Bob Dobbs: So holeopathic is the shrinking,

[02:09] Bob Dobbs: compressing of the Android Meme,

[02:12] Bob Dobbs: which we experienced from 1960 to

[02:18] Bob Dobbs: 1990. So Anthropomorphic Physical refers to anthropomorphism,

[02:24] Bob Dobbs: where humans...

[02:25] Bob Dobbs: project human qualities into the external anti-environment contents of the external environment.

[02:31] Bob Dobbs: And

[02:34] Bob Dobbs: I thought I had to add the word physical because the holeopathic discarnate refinements,

[02:45] Bob Dobbs: disembodied refinements,

[02:47] Bob Dobbs: moved away from what people thought was physical,

[02:50] Bob Dobbs: at least in the natural,

[02:52] Bob Dobbs: organic sense of their bodies.

[02:54] Bob Dobbs: But they still projected a sense of the physical.

[03:00] Bob Dobbs: So the sense of the physical became up for grabs in all cultures.

[03:07] Bob Dobbs: Different cultures,

[03:08] Bob Dobbs: based on their background,

[03:10] Bob Dobbs: would be forced to change and adapt and preserve their sense of the physical or of the chemical body in different ways around the world.

[03:24] Bob Dobbs: What was in common is that they thought there was a human extension anti-environment,

[03:32] Bob Dobbs: or anti-environment was biased toward the humans,

[03:37] Bob Dobbs: or...

[03:40] Bob Dobbs: What's the other one?

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,

[03:45] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan phrase,

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: media,

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: the extensions of man,

[03:49] Bob Dobbs: that is an Anthropomorphic Physical projection.

[03:52] Bob Dobbs: that they have something to do with our bodies.

[03:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan idea wasn't seen as an Anthropomorphic Physical projection,

[04:01] Bob Dobbs: I don't think,

[04:01] Bob Dobbs: at the time in the

[04:03] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s,

[04:05] Bob Dobbs: because he was countering the more cliché attitude or meme that technology was an invader and an alien force.

[04:14] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan tried to humanize it,

[04:17] Bob Dobbs: in a sense.

[04:18] Bob Dobbs: But when I lumped him in with

[04:21] Bob Dobbs: Thompson...

[04:22] Bob Dobbs: LaRouche and Kroker,

[04:24] Bob Dobbs: he's just another guy dealing with the Anthropomorphic Physical or projecting it.

[04:31] Bob Dobbs: So because,

[04:34] Bob Dobbs: why did I make my quadrant Anthropomorphic Physical?

[04:38] Bob Dobbs: Because working with Carolyn Dean for so many years on health and coming up with new gadgets like the AIDS treatment in the

[04:46] Bob Dobbs: 90s in New York City,

[04:48] Bob Dobbs: it was called MIR,

[04:50] Bob Dobbs: MIHR,

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: stood for

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: for magnetic,

[04:54] Bob Dobbs: what is it,

[04:55] Bob Dobbs: magnetic something,

[04:58] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic remedies,

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: MIHR.

[05:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember what the I stood for.

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: it's in an earlier recording.

[05:08] Bob Dobbs: And then we got even more stuff,

[05:11] Bob Dobbs: pretty amazing,

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: savings,

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: energizing,

[05:16] Bob Dobbs: mutations of the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: with stuff,

[05:22] Bob Dobbs: ion,

[05:23] Bob Dobbs: dropped on us.

[05:26] Bob Dobbs: So the chart is the first four quadrants floating around me.

[05:36] Bob Dobbs: I put myself at the center of it for different reasons,

[05:40] Bob Dobbs: and we've gone through that.

[05:42] Bob Dobbs: So the Anthropomorphic Physical uses the term Anthropomorphic Physical to show that we are projecting.

[05:51] Bob Dobbs: I want people to know that I'm aware that...

[05:57] Bob Dobbs: our efforts to understand anti-environment is Anthropomorphic Physical or includes that.

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: In case somebody says,

[06:05] Bob Dobbs: well,

[06:05] Bob Dobbs: that's naive,

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: blah,

[06:07] Bob Dobbs: and you don't know about the anthropomorphism.

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: So it was almost a,

[06:11] Bob Dobbs: what would you call it,

[06:12] Bob Dobbs: defensive move,

[06:15] Bob Dobbs: just to say,

[06:16] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[06:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm aware of the Anthropomorphic Physical levels of our reality,

[06:20] Bob Dobbs: and so I put that in the chart.

[06:22] Bob Dobbs: Does that explain something to you?

[06:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[06:26] Cameron McEwen: it Explorations.

[06:27] Cameron McEwen: something but for example when you say you're aware of Anthropomorphic Physical projections do you then take that as far as Nietzsche let's say where

[06:45] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche basically says that everything is an Anthropomorphic Physical projection and because it is

[06:56] Cameron McEwen: We end up in nihilism because when we ask ourselves what is an Anthropomorphic Physical projection,

[07:03] Cameron McEwen: all we can come up with is another projection and another projection after that and another projection after that.

[07:10] Cameron McEwen: And there is no ground on which to valorize any one of these.

[07:18] Cameron McEwen: And so it's like sand running out of the...

[07:26] Cameron McEwen: out of the beach back into the ocean,

[07:28] Cameron McEwen: there's nothing left.

[07:32] Cameron McEwen: Hans Selye conception,

[07:36] Cameron McEwen: once you start going down that path of projection.

[07:40] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[07:40] Bob Dobbs: And did you say,

[07:42] Bob Dobbs: you didn't say allegorize,

[07:44] Bob Dobbs: but you said alloy or something.

[07:48] Bob Dobbs: Maybe allow?

[07:50] Bob Dobbs: There's a word there that didn't come through clearly.

[07:53] Bob Dobbs: Ah,

[07:54] Cameron McEwen: sorry.

[07:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't recall.

[07:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:56] Cameron McEwen: Or maybe I started to say,

[07:59] Cameron McEwen: like,

[08:00] Cameron McEwen: sand out of an hourglass,

[08:02] Cameron McEwen: and then I thought to myself,

[08:04] Cameron McEwen: but the sand doesn't leave the hourglass,

[08:07] Cameron McEwen: so I better come up with something else.

[08:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[08:09] Bob Dobbs: so I came up with it.

[08:10] Bob Dobbs: It was half a word,

[08:11] Bob Dobbs: the hourglass.

[08:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[08:13] Bob Dobbs: You cut it off.

[08:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[08:18] Bob Dobbs: So,

[08:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[08:19] Bob Dobbs: I agree about the nihilism,

[08:20] Bob Dobbs: but that.

[08:21] Bob Dobbs: was assigned to the Kroker Quadrant.

[08:23] Bob Dobbs: He Wright about Nietzsche.

[08:24] Bob Dobbs: He's a great Nietzsche student.

[08:28] Bob Dobbs: So he talks about technological nihilism.

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: So that projection of what the Anthropomorphic Physical operation is is covered in the Kroker Quadrant.

[08:36] Bob Dobbs: McClellan may be seen as an optimist or some kind of Christian believing in salvation.

[08:42] Bob Dobbs: Thompson would go into the mystic,

[08:44] Bob Dobbs: gnostic version of salvation through Buddhism.

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: And LaRouche thought technology would improve.

[08:52] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't as drastic as Nietzsche.

[08:54] Bob Dobbs: He actually wrote a lot of criticisms of Nietzsche.

[08:57] Bob Dobbs: So I consider the four quadrants as styles of anthropomorphism,

[09:05] Bob Dobbs: and that would include Nietzsche.

[09:08] Bob Dobbs: All right?

[09:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[09:09] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[09:10] Cameron McEwen: I can understand that.

[09:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah?

[09:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[09:12] Bob Dobbs: And now note,

[09:14] Bob Dobbs: I say LaRouche is a representative of paranoia.

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: And he's an extension of Ezra Pound.

[09:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan represents schizophrenia,

[09:25] Bob Dobbs: and he's an extension of Wyndham Lewis.

[09:29] Bob Dobbs: Thompson represents hysteria,

[09:32] Bob Dobbs: ecological hysteria,

[09:34] Bob Dobbs: all the eco-movements starting in Earth Day.

[09:38] Bob Dobbs: And so he's an extension of T.S.

[09:40] Bob Dobbs: Eliot.

[09:41] Bob Dobbs: And

[09:43] Bob Dobbs: Kroker, as a panic,

[09:46] Bob Dobbs: representing panic,

[09:47] Bob Dobbs: putting it on.

[09:49] Bob Dobbs: He did the Panic Encyclopedia.

[09:52] Bob Dobbs: He is an extension of

[09:56] Bob Dobbs: W.B. Yeats.

[09:57] Bob Dobbs: Me and my quadrophrenia,

[10:00] Bob Dobbs: or more conscious quadrophrenia than the rest of them,

[10:02] Bob Dobbs: I say they're all quadrophrenia,

[10:05] Bob Dobbs: which the popular term is polymath.

[10:09] Bob Dobbs: So they're all polymaths,

[10:11] Bob Dobbs: and I said they're all quadrophrenia,

[10:13] Bob Dobbs: but I'm the quadrophrenia that's aware of the whole process for some reason.

[10:17] Bob Dobbs: because I came later,

[10:19] Bob Dobbs: let's say.

[10:21] Bob Dobbs: So

[10:23] Bob Dobbs: I put myself in his ecstasy.

[10:26] Bob Dobbs: And I see that as an extension of Joyce.

[10:31] Bob Dobbs: Joyce was not a Menippean,

[10:33] Bob Dobbs: Don Theall said.

[10:34] Bob Dobbs: He was a Varronian satirist,

[10:37] Bob Dobbs: which included natural joy and even being silly.

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: And

[10:43] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, more cynical,

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: sort of,

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: was a Menippean satirist.

[10:48] Bob Dobbs: And Theall,

[10:48] Bob Dobbs: from his personality level,

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: thought McLuhan was more cynical than himself.

[10:56] Bob Dobbs: So Theall thought he was the Varronian,

[10:58] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall was,

[10:59] Bob Dobbs: like Wyndham Lewis,

[11:01] Bob Dobbs: the

[11:01] Bob Dobbs: Menippean satirist.

[11:04] Bob Dobbs: There's a statement by

[11:06] Bob Dobbs: Corinne in one of those interviews where she says,

[11:10] Bob Dobbs: when they're together,

[11:12] Bob Dobbs: they have kind of a silly sense of humor.

[11:15] Bob Dobbs: You remember that quote?

[11:16] Bob Dobbs: They do silly joking.

[11:18] Bob Dobbs: I understand that.

[11:21] Bob Dobbs: I think that's the way Carolyn and I are.

[11:24] Bob Dobbs: I see that as Varronian.

[11:29] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,

[11:30] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how he joked with his wife,

[11:35] Bob Dobbs: so I don't know if I would consider McLuhan as coldly cynical as Lewis was.

[11:44] Bob Dobbs: I found McLuhan,

[11:45] Bob Dobbs: personality-wise,

[11:46] Bob Dobbs: a quite happy guy,

[11:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[11:48] Bob Dobbs: and always got energy and stuff.

[11:52] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't morose or depressed.

[11:56] Bob Dobbs: Occasionally he would be in the

[11:59] Bob Dobbs: 78-79. George Thompson tells a story.

[12:04] Bob Dobbs: They're talking in 78-79,

[12:07] Bob Dobbs: they're at the Cocho's.

[12:08] Bob Dobbs: They're talking to the guy who put together the bibliography.

[12:11] Bob Dobbs: The guy down in Florida,

[12:12] Bob Dobbs: forget his name.

[12:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[12:14] Bob Dobbs: Bob somebody.

[12:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[12:15] Cameron McEwen: I forget his name too.

[12:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: And,

[12:22] Bob Dobbs: George said,

[12:24] Bob Dobbs: when Bob asked him,

[12:25] Bob Dobbs: this guy in Florida says,

[12:26] Bob Dobbs: how you doing,

[12:27] Bob Dobbs: how's it going up there?

[12:28] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[12:29] Bob Dobbs: it's just me and George now.

[12:36] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[12:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[12:36] Bob Dobbs: he was being harassed.

[12:39] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was ignoring him.

[12:41] Bob Dobbs: And it was getting close to Trudeau losing his prime ministership.

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: So he lost that connection to Ottawa in May 79.

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: And then he has his stroke in September.

[12:54] Bob Dobbs: So it was,

[12:59] Bob Dobbs: you see,

[12:59] Bob Dobbs: Marshawn and those guys say that Marshawn got depressed in the

[13:04] Bob Dobbs: 70s and wasn't his techno-optimist that some people thought he was in the

[13:09] Bob Dobbs: 60s. I don't see that.

[13:11] Bob Dobbs: But he was dealing with being isolated,

[13:15] Bob Dobbs: probably really isolated,

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: more than ever before in 78,

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: 79.

[13:19] Bob Dobbs: At least.

[13:20] Bob Dobbs: George's anecdote said that.

[13:25] Bob Dobbs: I went to every human,

[13:28] Bob Dobbs: human,

[13:29] Bob Dobbs: I went to every Anthropomorphic Physical seminar.

[13:34] Bob Dobbs: Every Monday for,

[13:36] Bob Dobbs: since like 72,

[13:37] Bob Dobbs: I went to all of them.

[13:39] Bob Dobbs: And in 78,

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: 70,

[13:42] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[13:42] Bob Dobbs: Trudeau comes in November 77.

[13:47] Bob Dobbs: I had been in California for two.

[13:50] Bob Dobbs: months with Carolyn Dean.

[13:51] Bob Dobbs: She was on elective.

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's when that's when I met Mary McLuhan.

[13:56] Bob Dobbs: And so we come back and it's like November

[14:01] Bob Dobbs: 22nd or something.

[14:03] Bob Dobbs: And so the first Monday after that,

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: we're sitting there and the famous appearance of Trudeau,

[14:10] Bob Dobbs: Trudeau shows up.

[14:12] Bob Dobbs: And so they had a picture in the paper the next day.

[14:15] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was back in the limelight of some kind of favoritism.

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[14:20] Bob Dobbs: the grace of Trudeau shining on him.

[14:22] Bob Dobbs: That was the,

[14:23] Bob Dobbs: that,

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: now that's beginning of 77,

[14:27] Bob Dobbs: 78 season.

[14:28] Bob Dobbs: And by January 78,

[14:33] Bob Dobbs: nobody's coming anymore.

[14:34] Bob Dobbs: He had that flash,

[14:35] Bob Dobbs: it was the last flash,

[14:38] Bob Dobbs: what he calls swan song or the supernova.

[14:44] Bob Dobbs: And I would start bringing friends,

[14:45] Bob Dobbs: and it would just be me and my friends.

[14:48] Bob Dobbs: And a couple other regulars,

[14:50] Bob Dobbs: nobodies,

[14:52] Bob Dobbs: nobody who was an academic,

[14:54] Bob Dobbs: they actually became friends of me and Carolyn Dean,

[14:57] Bob Dobbs: these stragglers,

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[14:59] Bob Dobbs: But they weren't,

[15:00] Bob Dobbs: I didn't bring them,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: but they all showed up.

[15:03] Bob Dobbs: And it was amazing,

[15:05] Bob Dobbs: it was just us,

[15:06] Bob Dobbs: it was McLuhan.

[15:07] Bob Dobbs: And he still talked and did his thing.

[15:11] Bob Dobbs: There was one woman from California who he favored,

[15:15] Bob Dobbs: she was a smart girl.

[15:16] Bob Dobbs: Ph.D.

[15:17] Bob Dobbs: candidate or something,

[15:19] Bob Dobbs: but she wasn't that involved with the center right then.

[15:24] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan complimented her a lot.

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: So she was the brightest in the normal sense of having academic ideas and stuff to throw back at McLuhan.

[15:36] Bob Dobbs: And he liked that.

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: he didn't like people who agreed with him.

[15:39] Bob Dobbs: He liked people who argued with him.

[15:43] Bob Dobbs: But it was very bleak through 78.

[15:50] Bob Dobbs: Then we were supposed to start in October 79,

[15:54] Bob Dobbs: but he had a stroke.

[15:56] Bob Dobbs: And then Eric started maybe in November.

[16:00] Bob Dobbs: We got two or three sessions,

[16:02] Bob Dobbs: and we ended in December

[16:04] Bob Dobbs: 3rd or so.

[16:06] Bob Dobbs: And I told you about how the last session

[16:08] Bob Dobbs: I brought Walter Bowert,

[16:09] Bob Dobbs: the

[16:10] Bob Dobbs: Operation Mind Control.

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: So

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: 79 into 80 never got going,

[16:15] Bob Dobbs: really.

[16:16] Bob Dobbs: So we ended in the spring of 78,

[16:21] Bob Dobbs: and

[16:22] Bob Dobbs: I would go down.

[16:23] Bob Dobbs: I even got to the point where I'd go down to the coach house.

[16:26] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan would give me assignments.

[16:32] Bob Dobbs: He always liked assigning things to people.

[16:34] Bob Dobbs: So they'd go,

[16:35] Bob Dobbs: maybe do,

[16:35] Bob Dobbs: get some research,

[16:36] Bob Dobbs: do something,

[16:37] Bob Dobbs: bring it back,

[16:37] Bob Dobbs: and he'd take whatever they got.

[16:39] Bob Dobbs: So he told me,

[16:40] Bob Dobbs: did I ever tell you this?

[16:41] Bob Dobbs: Does this sound familiar?

[16:43] Cameron McEwen: A little bit.

[16:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[16:45] Bob Dobbs: maybe I told you this.

[16:45] Cameron McEwen: I think it's interesting.

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[16:47] Bob Dobbs: he told me to go to England and look up A.L.

[16:51] Bob Dobbs: Rouse,

[16:52] Bob Dobbs: R-O-W-S-E,

[16:54] Bob Dobbs: who is listed.

[16:55] Bob Dobbs: as a writer in the bibliography in Gutenberg-Gaussi,

[16:59] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: because there's no bibliography in Understanding Media.

[17:04] Bob Dobbs: Is there?

[17:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[17:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so,

[17:06] Cameron McEwen: no.

[17:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[17:07] Bob Dobbs: So there is a long one in Gutenberg-Gaussi.

[17:12] Bob Dobbs: So you look up Rouse,

[17:13] Bob Dobbs: R-O-W-S-E,

[17:14] Bob Dobbs: and he's a famous historian or something,

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: right?

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: He had a lot of status.

[17:18] Bob Dobbs: And so he wanted me to go over and talk and somehow interact with Rouse.

[17:25] Bob Dobbs: But then I was to go down to,

[17:29] Bob Dobbs: what's the Shakespeare place?

[17:31] Bob Dobbs: Abington or Avon or something on the beach?

[17:34] Bob Dobbs: No,

[17:34] Bob Dobbs: no,

[17:34] Cameron McEwen: Stratford.

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: Stratford on something,

[17:37] Bob Dobbs: right?

[17:38] Cameron McEwen: On Avon,

[17:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[17:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[17:40] Bob Dobbs: I haven't thought about these ideas.

[17:42] Bob Dobbs: See,

[17:43] Bob Dobbs: that's how far away we are Innis

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: multi-encyclopedic,

[17:48] Bob Dobbs: multiple information anti-environment.

[17:51] Bob Dobbs: I'm amazed at things I forget.

[17:53] Bob Dobbs: Because I got a lot of other stuff to think about now.

[17:55] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[17:57] Bob Dobbs: Millions of things.

[18:00] Bob Dobbs: So he wanted me to go there,

[18:03] Bob Dobbs: and he says the families that knew Shakespeare are still there.

[18:09] Bob Dobbs: And so there's an oral tradition of anecdotes about Shakespeare.

[18:13] Bob Dobbs: We need to record those.

[18:15] Bob Dobbs: We need to go find the families that trace themselves back 400 years or so.

[18:21] Bob Dobbs: the

[18:22] Bob Dobbs: interview them and see what the oral tradition has preserved.

[18:26] Bob Dobbs: And so that was my assignment in 78,

[18:34] Bob Dobbs: or early 79.

[18:36] Bob Dobbs: And then on Hitler's birthday,

[18:41] Bob Dobbs: April 20th,

[18:42] Bob Dobbs: 79,

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: I was sitting in the coach house again.

[18:46] Bob Dobbs: And

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: McClellan, someone comes in,

[18:49] Bob Dobbs: George says,

[18:49] Bob Dobbs: here,

[18:50] Bob Dobbs: you've got to take the phone.

[18:51] Bob Dobbs: So he takes the phone in the front desk right beside me.

[18:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm sitting at the front desk,

[18:57] Bob Dobbs: and he's at the inner part of the front desk where George would be.

[19:01] Bob Dobbs: And he takes the phone,

[19:02] Bob Dobbs: and he holds it up to his ear and covers it.

[19:07] Bob Dobbs: And he starts whispering in the phone so I couldn't hear it.

[19:11] Bob Dobbs: But he's doing this right in front of me,

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: like

[19:14] Bob Dobbs: I can see that he's trying to prevent me not to hear it.

[19:19] Bob Dobbs: So he does this muffled conversation with the CIA or something for a few minutes,

[19:24] Bob Dobbs: then hangs up.

[19:26] Bob Dobbs: And so then I was sitting there with a book on Ezra Pound by a David Hemming or something,

[19:34] Bob Dobbs: and it was called The Last Rower.

[19:36] Bob Dobbs: But what was interesting,

[19:37] Bob Dobbs: they had the transcripts of

[19:39] Bob Dobbs: Pound's broadcasts on Mussolini Radio in World War II.

[19:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't think we had seen that before.

[19:47] Bob Dobbs: No one had gone through them and typed out the transcripts.

[19:51] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: what do you got there?

[19:53] Bob Dobbs: So I hand him the book,

[19:55] Bob Dobbs: and he ridiculously pries open the pages very carefully,

[20:02] Bob Dobbs: peering at the numbers,

[20:04] Bob Dobbs: and then he opens to a page and he reads it.

[20:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[20:08] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know about him going to page 69 at that point,

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: right?

[20:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where that came out or how we found out later.

[20:14] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Barry Nevitt told us.

[20:16] Bob Dobbs: Barry told us a lot once Marshall was gone.

[20:22] Bob Dobbs: So he did it with the book.

[20:24] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't look at anything.

[20:26] Bob Dobbs: He just squeezed open the pages until he got real close up to his face,

[20:30] Bob Dobbs: until he saw 69.

[20:32] Bob Dobbs: Then he'd open it up and read what was on there.

[20:35] Bob Dobbs: So he was very strange to me that day.

[20:40] Bob Dobbs: But then years later,

[20:41] Bob Dobbs: I found out,

[20:42] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[20:42] Bob Dobbs: that's what he was doing,

[20:43] Bob Dobbs: looking at page 69.

[20:44] Bob Dobbs: And so then he just looks at the book for a little bit and then gives it back to me.

[20:53] Bob Dobbs: And then

[20:55] Bob Dobbs: I don't remember much happening after that.

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: He went back to his office and then I left.

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: And then the next time,

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: the last time I see him is,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: say,

[21:04] Bob Dobbs: about June.

[21:05] Bob Dobbs: And I'm walking down

[21:06] Bob Dobbs: George Street across College and down

[21:11] Bob Dobbs: McCall Street to go to the health food store called Baldwin Foods on Baldwin Street.

[21:17] Bob Dobbs: And at the corner of the lights,

[21:18] Bob Dobbs: there's George and Marshall driving up.

[21:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to cross college and go up George Street past Fort Book,

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: Robarts Library.

[21:28] Bob Dobbs: And George is in his old clunky car.

[21:30] Bob Dobbs: And as they're driving across and I'm walking,

[21:33] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking at them.

[21:34] Bob Dobbs: I recognize them first.

[21:36] Bob Dobbs: Then George sees me and he signals to Marshall to look.

[21:40] Bob Dobbs: And Marshall looks at me.

[21:42] Bob Dobbs: ION my bike.

[21:44] Bob Dobbs: And he starts laughing,

[21:46] Bob Dobbs: kind of a mocking laughing at me.

[21:50] Bob Dobbs: And then they just...

[21:51] Bob Dobbs: They go past me and drive up.

[21:53] Bob Dobbs: But

[21:54] Bob Dobbs: I felt as

[21:55] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was laughing at me for being a bicyclist in Toronto.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: And that's my last image of McLuhan.

[22:03] Bob Dobbs: I never saw him again because two months later he was gone.

[22:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[22:07] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[22:08] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[22:09] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[22:11] Cameron McEwen: if I understood correctly,

[22:14] Cameron McEwen: you were saying that from 1972 until 79,

[22:21] Cameron McEwen: Whenever you were in Toronto,

[22:23] Cameron McEwen: you were going to the Monday night seminars and then later,

[22:30] Cameron McEwen: beginning sometime in the middle

[22:32] Cameron McEwen: 70s, I guess,

[22:34] Cameron McEwen: you also began to spend appreciable time at the coach house when there weren't seminars.

[22:41] Cameron McEwen: You were just there.

[22:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[22:43] Bob Dobbs: because I gradually moved to Toronto.

[22:46] Bob Dobbs: In 72,

[22:47] Bob Dobbs: 73,

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: 74,

[22:48] Bob Dobbs: I could stay at my friend's Don McBirdie's.

[22:51] Bob Dobbs: So I could drop into Toronto anytime,

[22:53] Bob Dobbs: and I dropped in a lot,

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: say,

[22:55] Bob Dobbs: from October to

[22:57] Bob Dobbs: April, when he was doing his winter season seminars.

[23:04] Bob Dobbs: But in that period,

[23:05] Bob Dobbs: as you know,

[23:06] Bob Dobbs: he was ill.

[23:07] Bob Dobbs: He went on vacations here and there,

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: traveled around the world.

[23:11] Bob Dobbs: So it wasn't every Monday.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: So I didn't have to be there every week,

[23:16] Bob Dobbs: just whenever he was in town.

[23:19] Bob Dobbs: But by 1977,

[23:23] Bob Dobbs: we're living in Toronto.

[23:25] Bob Dobbs: And so it was easy the last three years to attend everyone.

[23:32] Cameron McEwen: But I think what I was getting to is I think it would be interesting to listeners to have your kind of history of...

[23:48] Cameron McEwen: going to these seminars starting in

[23:51] Cameron McEwen: 72 and learning how you participated in them.

[24:00] Cameron McEwen: It's hard for me to believe that

[24:03] Cameron McEwen: Bob Dobbs could just have been sitting there all these years only taking stuff in.

[24:12] Bob Dobbs: That's what I did.

[24:13] Bob Dobbs: I tell you,

[24:14] Bob Dobbs: I did not speak.

[24:15] Bob Dobbs: I spoke once.

[24:17] Bob Dobbs: Around 77,

[24:19] Bob Dobbs: he was talking about myth and I said,

[24:23] Bob Dobbs: well,

[24:23] Bob Dobbs: what about the myth of the myth,

[24:25] Bob Dobbs: which is sort of a pun.

[24:27] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[24:27] Bob Dobbs: that's a mirror image,

[24:29] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[24:30] Bob Dobbs: That's double talk or a mirror image and dismissed it.

[24:35] Bob Dobbs: And it was so distracting to prepare a statement,

[24:40] Bob Dobbs: then see his reaction,

[24:43] Bob Dobbs: and then watch everybody else's reaction to me reacting.

[24:46] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to hear everything he said.

[24:48] Bob Dobbs: I found that would knock out my attention,

[24:50] Bob Dobbs: so I never said a word again.

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: I recorded in my mind everything he said.

[24:56] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot of stuff that would get me into talking.

[25:00] Bob Dobbs: I can remember conversations and guests and what people said and different things,

[25:05] Bob Dobbs: so I got a good oral memory of all that.

[25:08] Bob Dobbs: But that's because I paid pure attention to it.

[25:12] Cameron McEwen: But certainly,

[25:13] Cameron McEwen: you're not a person to...

[25:16] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[25:16] Cameron McEwen: be too nervous or too uptight or something to make comments.

[25:22] Cameron McEwen: So you must have had...

[25:26] Cameron McEwen: this kind of programmatic approach to what was going on.

[25:32] Bob Dobbs: I think

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: Marshall, he knew me,

[25:35] Bob Dobbs: but he got suspicious around 77,

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: 78,

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: because

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: George, I remember it was before Trudeau.

[25:46] Bob Dobbs: So in 77,

[25:49] Bob Dobbs: I come in to go to the talk,

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: and he says,

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[25:53] Bob Dobbs: I want to talk to you after.

[25:55] Bob Dobbs: So,

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: I think I had,

[26:00] Bob Dobbs: before that,

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: gone to St.

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: Michael's and presented myself to the very strict,

[26:08] Bob Dobbs: severe librarian in there,

[26:10] Bob Dobbs: this lady,

[26:11] Bob Dobbs: who guarded the Don Theall newsletters.

[26:15] Bob Dobbs: And I presented myself probably as a student of McLuhan or connected to McLuhan,

[26:20] Bob Dobbs: and

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: I got access to him and quickly Xeroxed them all.

[26:24] Bob Dobbs: And that was great because nobody could get the Andrew McLuhan newsletters.

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where anybody got them after.

[26:31] Bob Dobbs: And they maybe went to the library or something.

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: But I had a full set,

[26:34] Bob Dobbs: just like I had a full set of the Explorations in the

[26:38] Bob Dobbs: 60s in the graduate,

[26:40] Bob Dobbs: the varsity graduate.

[26:40] Bob Dobbs: So that was very good to get that stuff.

[26:44] Bob Dobbs: And no one was reading McLuhan really in depth then.

[26:48] Bob Dobbs: And I was,

[26:48] Bob Dobbs: and I had the articles and everything.

[26:51] Bob Dobbs: So I could see everything.

[26:53] Bob Dobbs: I feel

[26:53] Bob Dobbs: I went the whole journey.

[26:55] Bob Dobbs: If you had all the articles,

[26:57] Bob Dobbs: you really knew a lot.

[26:58] Bob Dobbs: If you just read McLuhan fragmentarily,

[27:01] Bob Dobbs: you didn't get it.

[27:01] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[27:03] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[27:04] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[27:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[27:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't think anybody has seriously read,

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: especially the late stuff,

[27:14] Cameron McEwen: as well as you have.

[27:16] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[27:16] Bob Dobbs: That's true.

[27:17] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I did when I got there in 77 and was living.

[27:20] Bob Dobbs: I spent a lot of time going to...

[27:22] Bob Dobbs: incredible number of libraries all over Toronto finding obscure articles by McLuhan because I had Marge Stewart bibliography.

[27:32] Bob Dobbs: And so my involvement with McLuhan was ongoing in the late 70s,

[27:36] Bob Dobbs: but my extra involvement with George and Margaret Stewart really gave me an extra advantage as a budding archivist.

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: They really helped me and gave me stuff that no one else has.

[27:51] Bob Dobbs: But back to,

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: so,

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[27:54] Bob Dobbs: so I get in there and I get the Duelite newsletter,

[27:57] Bob Dobbs: and then within a week or two,

[28:00] Bob Dobbs: I approach McLuhan at the end of a Monday night seminar.

[28:02] Bob Dobbs: I'm just eavesdropping on him talking to somebody,

[28:07] Bob Dobbs: and he was,

[28:08] Bob Dobbs: he could make himself tall or something,

[28:10] Bob Dobbs: or I felt he became taller.

[28:12] Bob Dobbs: And he looked down at me and says,

[28:13] Bob Dobbs: I understand you've been talking to,

[28:16] Bob Dobbs: and he named the lady.

[28:18] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[28:18] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[28:19] Bob Dobbs: and uh...

[28:20] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[28:21] Bob Dobbs: how's it going?

[28:21] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: well,

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: I got a copy of everything.

[28:23] Bob Dobbs: It was really good.

[28:25] Bob Dobbs: So he just sort of smirked and nodded,

[28:28] Bob Dobbs: and he didn't say anything more.

[28:29] Bob Dobbs: But he was telling me that he was on to me going around to people like that librarian and claiming to be associated with the coach house and getting access,

[28:41] Bob Dobbs: right?

[28:42] Bob Dobbs: So he just said,

[28:42] Bob Dobbs: I know what you're doing.

[28:44] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't complain.

[28:45] Bob Dobbs: He just wanted me to know that I was being discussed,

[28:49] Bob Dobbs: all right?

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: Shortly after that,

[28:52] Bob Dobbs: George says to me,

[28:54] Bob Dobbs: I need to talk to you after the seminar.

[28:56] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[28:57] Bob Dobbs: I hope this echo...

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: What the heck?

[28:59] Bob Dobbs: Is this going to be on the recording?

[29:01] Bob Dobbs: You're hearing the echo,

[29:02] Bob Dobbs: right?

[29:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[29:03] Cameron McEwen: a little bit.

[29:04] Cameron McEwen: I don't hear me.

[29:06] Cameron McEwen: I hear you.

[29:07] Bob Dobbs: What is that?

[29:09] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I got it too loud.

[29:11] Bob Dobbs: The other phone.

[29:13] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[29:15] Cameron McEwen: Hello.

[29:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to...

[29:18] Bob Dobbs: No,

[29:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm not doing anything.

[29:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to ignore the echo.

[29:22] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it's not being recorded.

[29:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[29:26] Cameron McEwen: that's what I was going to say.

[29:27] Cameron McEwen: Maybe you want to do some kind of test,

[29:30] Cameron McEwen: because in the past we had that session where only the first half hour or something was recorded.

[29:40] Bob Dobbs: No,

[29:40] Bob Dobbs: that's why I have the echo,

[29:41] Bob Dobbs: so I can hear the other phones,

[29:43] Bob Dobbs: and then I know they're still being recorded.

[29:46] Bob Dobbs: It stops recording if the other two drop off for some reason,

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: because it won't work with just one phone plugged in.

[29:52] Bob Dobbs: You've got to have two phones.

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: So,

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: um,

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: hmm,

[30:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe if I put the second,

[30:03] Bob Dobbs: hmm,

[30:07] Bob Dobbs: maybe if I go upstairs,

[30:09] Bob Dobbs: be further away,

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: let me try that.

[30:13] Bob Dobbs: Hello

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: it's not,

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: no echo there,

[30:16] Bob Dobbs: right?

[30:18] Cameron McEwen: A little bit,

[30:18] Cameron McEwen: but certainly better than before.

[30:21] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[30:21] Bob Dobbs: and what it does...

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: I can't hear the echo if we're still going.

[30:27] Bob Dobbs: That's the problem,

[30:29] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[30:30] Bob Dobbs: I like to have the echo slightly in the background so I can hear that all phones are on.

[30:36] Bob Dobbs: But that's too much right now.

[30:38] Bob Dobbs: So I'm upstairs here and got to shut the windows so the neighbors don't hear.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: They're sleeping.

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[30:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[30:54] Cameron McEwen: Can you see the ocean from up there?

[30:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[30:58] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[30:58] Cameron McEwen: nice.

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking over the,

[31:02] Bob Dobbs: sometime in the daylight,

[31:03] Bob Dobbs: I'll show you the view on my computer.

[31:08] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[31:08] Bob Dobbs: I'll hold the computer up there and you can see it.

[31:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[31:14] Bob Dobbs: So

[31:17] Bob Dobbs: I come to George.

[31:18] Bob Dobbs: He asked to see me.

[31:21] Bob Dobbs: So I come to him after the seminar,

[31:23] Bob Dobbs: and he looked at me and says,

[31:26] Bob Dobbs: nah,

[31:26] Bob Dobbs: never mind,

[31:27] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[31:28] Bob Dobbs: So he stopped.

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: no,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: he didn't pursue it.

[31:32] Bob Dobbs: But I was suspicious.

[31:33] Bob Dobbs: They were wondering what was I doing because I was such a I mean,

[31:39] Bob Dobbs: nowadays I'd be called a troll.

[31:42] Bob Dobbs: A guy shows up or a stalker,

[31:44] Bob Dobbs: right?

[31:46] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else showed up every week and didn't say anything.

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: That's a very suspicious character,

[31:54] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[31:55] Bob Dobbs: from normal perception.

[31:56] Bob Dobbs: I wasn't trying to be.

[31:58] Bob Dobbs: I was actually being the most attentive person,

[32:01] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[32:04] Bob Dobbs: And

[32:05] Bob Dobbs: I just forgot.

[32:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to have to get the computer,

[32:08] Bob Dobbs: go back down and get the computer when we start doing the text.

[32:12] Bob Dobbs: But maybe we'll be talking about other things.

[32:15] Bob Dobbs: So then the next time George asks for a copy of...

[32:20] Bob Dobbs: My inventory that I had from Marge Stewart of the bibliography,

[32:24] Bob Dobbs: and I told you about that.

[32:25] Bob Dobbs: And then when I became the archivist after Marshall died,

[32:30] Bob Dobbs: and I worked with Mrs.

[32:31] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[32:32] Bob Dobbs: that's when I found in box 22 the file with a copy of my inventory with everything checked off that I had,

[32:40] Bob Dobbs: and it said Bob Dobbs,

[32:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan archivist.

[32:43] Bob Dobbs: So

[32:45] Bob Dobbs: I was sort of accepted,

[32:46] Bob Dobbs: I see.

[32:49] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[32:49] Bob Dobbs: George must have said,

[32:50] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[32:50] Bob Dobbs: what is Bob doing?

[32:54] Bob Dobbs: Why is he always here?

[32:55] Bob Dobbs: He didn't say anything.

[32:57] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[32:57] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[32:58] Bob Dobbs: I remember when Trudeau came.

[33:01] Bob Dobbs: The whole time that Trudeau's there sitting in the little room with McLuhan and Barry Nevitt and Robert Logan up there at the front,

[33:12] Bob Dobbs: George Thompson is standing in the doorway.

[33:17] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[33:18] Bob Dobbs: he's...

[33:18] Bob Dobbs: dim in the seminar room,

[33:20] Bob Dobbs: light in the back in the front office where his office.

[33:24] Bob Dobbs: So he's standing in the light.

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: So he's kind of in shadow,

[33:28] Bob Dobbs: but also lit up in some strange way.

[33:30] Bob Dobbs: And he spends the whole time,

[33:32] Bob Dobbs: the Trudeau's there staring at me.

[33:36] Bob Dobbs: After a while,

[33:36] Bob Dobbs: I was like,

[33:37] Bob Dobbs: he's still looking at me.

[33:39] Bob Dobbs: So

[33:40] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what they thought.

[33:41] Bob Dobbs: They thought maybe I was a terrorist and would jump on Trudeau or something.

[33:45] Bob Dobbs: But it was ridiculous the way he blatantly stared at me.

[33:48] Bob Dobbs: with his arms crossed,

[33:50] Bob Dobbs: waiting for me to make a move or something.

[33:53] Bob Dobbs: And then years later,

[33:57] Bob Dobbs: Michael Edmonds told me he became a friend of George Thompson's,

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: and Thompson said he once caught me going up the side stairway,

[34:05] Bob Dobbs: trying to sneak into McLuhan office upstairs.

[34:08] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[34:09] Bob Dobbs: I know

[34:10] Bob Dobbs: I never did that.

[34:11] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't do that.

[34:13] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if there was nothing up there for me to get,

[34:16] Bob Dobbs: because Marge Stewart would give me anything.

[34:18] Bob Dobbs: So

[34:20] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[34:20] Bob Dobbs: that's a projection on someone else.

[34:22] Bob Dobbs: But George was very definite about it.

[34:25] Bob Dobbs: And Mike and I joked about it because Mike believed me that I did not go up there.

[34:28] Bob Dobbs: But that shows you that he had a problem with me.

[34:31] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[34:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[34:33] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[34:34] Bob Dobbs: And my last encounter with George before he died,

[34:42] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan

[34:44] Bob Dobbs: Centenary.

[34:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah, was it the Centenary?

[34:48] Bob Dobbs: 2011.

[34:50] Bob Dobbs: No,

[34:50] Bob Dobbs: Andrew was in

[34:51] Bob Dobbs: New Zealand.

[34:52] Bob Dobbs: In 2004,

[34:56] Bob Dobbs: Andrew was...

[34:57] Bob Dobbs: I met Andrew Chrystall.

[34:58] Bob Dobbs: He was in Ottawa at the Archives for six months.

[34:59] Bob Dobbs: Then he came to Toronto and we hung out together and he gave a talk.

[35:05] Bob Dobbs: This is in October.

[35:07] Bob Dobbs: He's a fellow at the coach house there.

[35:11] Bob Dobbs: I asked Andrew some questions during his talk.

[35:15] Bob Dobbs: Then I hear later...

[35:17] Bob Dobbs: Andrew tells me,

[35:18] Bob Dobbs: or someone,

[35:19] Bob Dobbs: maybe Michael Edmonds again,

[35:21] Bob Dobbs: said that George said,

[35:22] Bob Dobbs: Bob is insufferable.

[35:24] Bob Dobbs: I can't take that guy.

[35:25] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[35:26] Bob Dobbs: man,

[35:27] Bob Dobbs: is he pompous?

[35:28] Bob Dobbs: And

[35:29] Bob Dobbs: I didn't,

[35:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm not being pompous.

[35:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm not that type of person.

[35:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't think I was being,

[35:33] Bob Dobbs: I wasn't trying to be pompous.

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: I was talking to Andrew because he's a friend and I was interested in his topic.

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: And there weren't many people asking questions.

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: But there again,

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: there's George complaining about me ridiculously.

[35:45] Bob Dobbs: So.

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: I end up being more connected to Marge Stewart after Marshall died,

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: not George Thompson.

[35:55] Bob Dobbs: Maybe George was pissed off that I didn't hang out with him.

[35:59] Bob Dobbs: No.

[36:01] Cameron McEwen: Did she ever recover from...

[36:03] Cameron McEwen: Her broken hip?

[36:04] Bob Dobbs: No,

[36:04] Bob Dobbs: never did.

[36:05] Bob Dobbs: No,

[36:05] Cameron McEwen: I didn't think so,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: And so that was very depressing for her.

[36:10] Bob Dobbs: So she's laid up from 78,

[36:13] Bob Dobbs: and we were in New York about 19,

[36:16] Bob Dobbs: went to New York in 93,

[36:17] Bob Dobbs: and about 94,

[36:19] Bob Dobbs: Jim

[36:20] Bob Dobbs: Marge Stewart called me and said Margaret had passed on.

[36:23] Bob Dobbs: So she was,

[36:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[36:27] Bob Dobbs: that would be

[36:28] Bob Dobbs: 16 years of just having to sit around all day.

[36:32] Bob Dobbs: and limp about to go into the kitchen or something,

[36:34] Bob Dobbs: but she was laid up for a long time,

[36:38] Bob Dobbs: 16 years.

[36:41] Bob Dobbs: So she probably just deteriorated,

[36:43] Bob Dobbs: because

[36:44] Bob Dobbs: I stopped seeing her by the late 80s,

[36:47] Bob Dobbs: and was very busy on the radio,

[36:50] Bob Dobbs: and then went to New York.

[36:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[36:57] Bob Dobbs: So what else to tell you?

[36:58] Bob Dobbs: You want me to say some things about the seminar?

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: I was just interested in finding out what kind of interaction you had had.

[37:14] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[37:14] Bob Dobbs: my interactions with McLuhan were private.

[37:17] Bob Dobbs: I would meet him in his office at odd hours when no students were around,

[37:22] Bob Dobbs: and I'd talk to him about my intelligence work and all the different things,

[37:26] Bob Dobbs: and he found it very interesting.

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[37:30] Cameron McEwen: see,

[37:30] Cameron McEwen: this is good to hear.

[37:32] Cameron McEwen: I'm glad we got onto this topic.

[37:35] Cameron McEwen: So he wasn't incredulous or...

[37:40] Cameron McEwen: No,

[37:40] Bob Dobbs: he knew I knew stuff.

[37:45] Cameron McEwen: No,

[37:45] Cameron McEwen: knew stuff about the world,

[37:47] Cameron McEwen: not his stuff.

[37:48] Bob Dobbs: And

[37:50] Bob Dobbs: I like to think that...

[37:52] Bob Dobbs: Remember Eric in Marchand's book,

[37:55] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[37:56] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[37:57] Bob Dobbs: my father was still into conspiracies of Freemasons.

[38:01] Bob Dobbs: by 70,

[38:02] Bob Dobbs: still in 76.

[38:03] Bob Dobbs: And Eric says,

[38:05] Bob Dobbs: I told him to knock it off or something.

[38:07] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[38:08] Bob Dobbs: stop being paranoid.

[38:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[38:08] Cameron McEwen: he wrote him a letter about it.

[38:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[38:11] Bob Dobbs: something like that.

[38:14] Bob Dobbs: So that's Eric.

[38:15] Bob Dobbs: But

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: I would say that it wasn't worrying about the Freemasons,

[38:22] Bob Dobbs: the kind of information I had,

[38:24] Bob Dobbs: which nobody knew that he was interested until they got the hydro forces interview where he talks about the Kennedy assassination.

[38:31] Bob Dobbs: And Blightly says the establishment killed them,

[38:33] Bob Dobbs: and he said for very good reason.

[38:35] Bob Dobbs: They were trying to change the structure there,

[38:38] Bob Dobbs: do something in the White House.

[38:39] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[38:40] Bob Dobbs: you can't do that when you're up against

[38:42] Bob Dobbs: Big Brother,

[38:43] Bob Dobbs: which in Gutenberg-Alsee he says goes inside,

[38:46] Bob Dobbs: right?

[38:46] Bob Dobbs: They're not strutting around outside like in the 30s in Nazi Germany.

[38:50] Bob Dobbs: They're gone inside,

[38:51] Bob Dobbs: and he's fully aware of that.

[38:53] Bob Dobbs: And when I got talking to Carpenter in the 90s in New York,

[38:56] Bob Dobbs: he talked a lot about the

[39:00] Bob Dobbs: the CIA taking over anthropology in the early

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: 50s. And he and Marshall,

[39:04] Bob Dobbs: in a way,

[39:04] Bob Dobbs: invented the media discourse to create anti-environment to conventional criticism because they knew intelligence agencies were managing media way differently from the old spy versus spy stuff.

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[39:22] Cameron McEwen: No question about that.

[39:23] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[39:24] Cameron McEwen: they had zero success.

[39:30] Cameron McEwen: in that aim.

[39:32] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[39:32] Bob Dobbs: you mean Marshall and...

[39:33] Bob Dobbs: And

[39:34] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter. Oh,

[39:35] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[39:36] Bob Dobbs: And it made Ted very bitter.

[39:39] Bob Dobbs: He was very bitter even until the final days.

[39:43] Bob Dobbs: And he kind of complained about Marshall blowing it.

[39:48] Bob Dobbs: They could have done better in their infiltration project if Marshall hadn't been so silly and didn't have the brain problem,

[39:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[39:57] Bob Dobbs: in

[39:58] Bob Dobbs: 67.

[40:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[40:00] Bob Dobbs: you read different reports by Carpenter.

[40:02] Bob Dobbs: He says Marshall was not performing well when he spoke in New York to the big audiences.

[40:09] Bob Dobbs: And

[40:10] Bob Dobbs: I've heard recordings of them.

[40:12] Bob Dobbs: I do not hear that,

[40:14] Bob Dobbs: what Carpenter hears.

[40:16] Bob Dobbs: Marshall's being himself.

[40:18] Bob Dobbs: He says some serious stuff,

[40:19] Bob Dobbs: then he throws a joke or two in.

[40:21] Bob Dobbs: But unless we don't hear the particular talk,

[40:25] Bob Dobbs: we don't have a recording of it,

[40:30] Bob Dobbs: He's quoted saying Marshall was so ridiculous that night in Tony Schwartz's recordings.

[40:36] Bob Dobbs: The way it's described in the book,

[40:38] Bob Dobbs: it seems to be the conference,

[40:40] Bob Dobbs: the YMCA or something that we have on tape.

[40:43] Bob Dobbs: So never got that clarified what Carpenter was talking about.

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: But Carpenter was pissed off at Marshall for even just being seen with Hubert Humphrey.

[40:57] Bob Dobbs: I think he mentioned that.

[40:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[40:58] Cameron McEwen: that makes sense.

[40:59] Cameron McEwen: And he may have been referring to the fact that as

[41:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan got sicker and sicker in the

[41:08] Cameron McEwen: 60s and was really pretty sick for the whole

[41:14] Cameron McEwen: Fordham time.

[41:17] Cameron McEwen: He became very repetitive.

[41:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[41:22] Cameron McEwen: And Carpenter says somewhere in one of his essays about McLuhan that prior to 1960,

[41:33] Cameron McEwen: which is when McLuhan had his first serious stroke,

[41:37] Cameron McEwen: that

[41:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was a sort of Muhammad Ali figure.

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: He was very charismatic.

[41:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[41:44] Cameron McEwen: He had so much.

[41:45] Cameron McEwen: magnetism and so much energy would flow towards him just sort of by going into a room and I think that

[41:58] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter placed a lot of hope in that figure which may never have been in the whole of who McLuhan was may have been a little bit of a construction on

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter's part

[42:16] Cameron McEwen: But at any rate,

[42:18] Cameron McEwen: after 1960,

[42:20] Cameron McEwen: according to

[42:21] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter, that side of McLuhan was largely gone.

[42:26] Cameron McEwen: And for Carpenter,

[42:29] Cameron McEwen: that represented not only a loss of something and a friend that he greatly valued,

[42:37] Cameron McEwen: it also represented a demise of a hope in Carpenter himself.

[42:45] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[42:45] Bob Dobbs: See,

[42:46] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter had a TV show in Toronto in the mid-50s,

[42:49] Bob Dobbs: so he was a public figure.

[42:51] Bob Dobbs: He then had an affair with somebody,

[42:53] Bob Dobbs: and it was a scandal.

[42:55] Bob Dobbs: So then he left Toronto,

[42:57] Bob Dobbs: divorced his wife,

[42:59] Bob Dobbs: and went to California,

[43:01] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[43:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[43:03] Cameron McEwen: Northridge.

[43:04] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[43:04] Bob Dobbs: he started to teach there.

[43:06] Bob Dobbs: Now he's doing his own thing,

[43:07] Bob Dobbs: and he becomes part of the counterculture and gets equipment for the underground filmmakers.

[43:13] Bob Dobbs: He's actively involved.

[43:15] Bob Dobbs: in what McLuhan is commenting on from a distance.

[43:19] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was aware of all this,

[43:20] Bob Dobbs: but he would write and comment.

[43:22] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[43:22] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter was right in the middle there helping to make this,

[43:24] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[43:25] Bob Dobbs: art,

[43:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[43:26] Bob Dobbs: All this new art.

[43:27] Bob Dobbs: So he removed himself from the McLuhan circuit that early,

[43:34] Bob Dobbs: the late

[43:35] Bob Dobbs: 50s.

[43:37] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Marshall was showing symptoms in 59,

[43:40] Bob Dobbs: but Carpenter,

[43:41] Bob Dobbs: he's in California,

[43:42] Bob Dobbs: he's not going to see that.

[43:43] Bob Dobbs: But he did know about

[43:46] Bob Dobbs: Marshall after whatever happened in the hospital,

[43:50] Bob Dobbs: because that's when Carpenter says,

[43:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said to him,

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: I wish I'd died.

[43:55] Bob Dobbs: I'd finished

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: God's work.

[43:58] Bob Dobbs: And

[43:59] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter was shocked at that.

[44:00] Bob Dobbs: But Carpenter was still an intimate friend that

[44:03] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would say something like that to,

[44:06] Bob Dobbs: but he wasn't around anymore.

[44:09] Cameron McEwen: But he was not so distant that...

[44:12] Cameron McEwen: when McLuhan asked him if he wanted to go to New York,

[44:15] Cameron McEwen: when

[44:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan went to Fordham,

[44:16] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter came.

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter's going to take advantage of that.

[44:22] Bob Dobbs: And in Tony Schwartz's recordings,

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: which is on my website,

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: he gives a talk during that winter.

[44:32] Bob Dobbs: It's a very powerful talk,

[44:34] Bob Dobbs: but he's talking like he's more important than McLuhan or something.

[44:39] Bob Dobbs: He is not.

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: playing up to McLuhan like Harley Parker did or anybody else.

[44:46] Bob Dobbs: He gives a very,

[44:48] Bob Dobbs: very incredible talk and says insights that we never heard from McLuhan.

[44:53] Bob Dobbs: He made a really important one.

[44:54] Bob Dobbs: He said books were now the anti-environment,

[44:58] Bob Dobbs: and only the alienated or the dropouts would read books,

[45:04] Bob Dobbs: which is interesting.

[45:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[45:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[45:07] Bob Dobbs: Because,

[45:07] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[45:08] Bob Dobbs: people who read Norman Mailer and Ginsburg or...

[45:11] Bob Dobbs: Broutigan and all these different people were university dropouts or guys hanging out in the beatnik scene.

[45:20] Bob Dobbs: It's an important observation he made that actually books were now an anti-environment.

[45:26] Bob Dobbs: And that was the counterculture.

[45:28] Bob Dobbs: And the problem with the counterculture,

[45:30] Bob Dobbs: they were trying to retrieve the book stuff and that gets into Gnosticism.

[45:34] Bob Dobbs: And that's what,

[45:35] Bob Dobbs: they didn't understand what McLuhan was saying.

[45:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was

[45:39] Bob Dobbs: to apparently Easterbrook for the book retrievers.

[45:44] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: So Carpenter,

[45:50] Bob Dobbs: his talk is very interesting.

[45:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[45:53] Cameron McEwen: I think that...

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: I could be wrong,

[45:56] Cameron McEwen: but my memory is that this was a talk that McLuhan was scheduled to give,

[46:04] Cameron McEwen: but he had his brain operation and then couldn't fill that slot,

[46:13] Cameron McEwen: and Carpenter took it.

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: it's early,

[46:16] Bob Dobbs: like January,

[46:17] Bob Dobbs: February,

[46:18] Bob Dobbs: when McLuhan would still be convalescing.

[46:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[46:23] Cameron McEwen: And so

[46:24] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter may have...

[46:25] Cameron McEwen: thought that he was kind of speaking in

[46:28] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan name and then that could very easily have slipped a little bit into

[46:43] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter's McLuhan.

[46:48] Bob Dobbs: There's a statement in there where Carpenter says,

[46:50] Bob Dobbs: well,

[46:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm heading out of here tomorrow.

[46:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't think he was there

[46:58] Bob Dobbs: He flitted about,

[46:59] Bob Dobbs: dropped in and out.

[47:00] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[47:01] Bob Dobbs: He was a little more autonomous than the rest of them in the setup at Fordham.

[47:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[47:07] Bob Dobbs: who was,

[47:08] Bob Dobbs: I think Paul Ryan was the assistant of Carpenter.

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: He's no longer with us,

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: but he could have told us how much Carpenter did or was involved.

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: But on one of the recordings,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: you get the impression he's...

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: just dropped in,

[47:23] Bob Dobbs: he's giving a talk,

[47:24] Bob Dobbs: and he'll be heading back somewhere to California or something.

[47:28] Bob Dobbs: Not there all the time.

[47:30] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[47:30] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter certainly thought that he wasn't like the acolytes.

[47:38] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't...

[47:40] Cameron McEwen: He thought that people like Harley

[47:44] Cameron McEwen: Parker were just echoes,

[47:47] Cameron McEwen: were just sort of prop men for McLuhan.

[47:50] Cameron McEwen: And he was certainly right that page.

[47:52] Cameron McEwen: Some of the conversations you hear,

[47:55] Cameron McEwen: there's no actual dialogue going on.

[47:58] Cameron McEwen: All there is is prompting Marshall on some or other topic that they know he wouldn't mind talking about.

[48:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[48:06] Cameron McEwen: Whereas Carpenter thought that he and McLuhan were sort of brothers,

[48:17] Cameron McEwen: but not without their antagonisms.

[48:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[48:20] Cameron McEwen: And,

[48:20] Cameron McEwen: um,

[48:21] Cameron McEwen: So

[48:22] Cameron McEwen: I think he felt that his relationship with McLuhan was sort of more masculine and more...

[48:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[48:33] Bob Dobbs: he was a Marine.

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: Did you know that?

[48:36] Cameron McEwen: Actually,

[48:36] Cameron McEwen: I did,

[48:37] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[48:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: and he had a Marine sensibility,

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: a tough guy,

[48:41] Bob Dobbs: and he had helped the head of the Nuremberg trials.

[48:44] Bob Dobbs: So he was aware of all whatever comes out of the Nuremberg trials,

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: the secret.

[48:49] Bob Dobbs: Project Paperclip stuff.

[48:50] Bob Dobbs: So he was a tough guy.

[48:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[48:53] Cameron McEwen: He was like Harold Ennis in that he didn't just talk about,

[49:01] Cameron McEwen: like,

[49:01] Cameron McEwen: Eskimos,

[49:01] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[49:03] Cameron McEwen: because he would go to the library and read a lot about Eskimos.

[49:07] Cameron McEwen: He went up there and lived with them and suffered with them and tried to understand them from the inside.

[49:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[49:15] Cameron McEwen: And the same thing in New Guinea.

[49:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[49:17] Cameron McEwen: So,

[49:17] Cameron McEwen: um,

[49:20] Cameron McEwen: And actually,

[49:21] Cameron McEwen: he had adventures all over the damn world.

[49:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[49:26] Bob Dobbs: he carried on right up to when he died.

[49:29] Bob Dobbs: He was still going to Siberia and places.

[49:32] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[49:32] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[49:33] Cameron McEwen: And at one point,

[49:35] Cameron McEwen: he and a group of his pals were caught trying to steal totem poles out of

[49:44] Cameron McEwen: Haida Gwaii,

[49:46] Cameron McEwen: Queen Charlotte Islands.

[49:48] Cameron McEwen: And...

[49:49] Cameron McEwen: What they said was,

[49:51] Cameron McEwen: well,

[49:51] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[49:51] Cameron McEwen: we were trying to remove them,

[49:53] Cameron McEwen: but we were trying to remove them and get them into conservation.

[49:57] Cameron McEwen: But the Haida said,

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: no,

[49:58] Cameron McEwen: no,

[49:59] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[50:00] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[50:01] Cameron McEwen: these aren't your poles,

[50:02] Cameron McEwen: these are our poles,

[50:03] Cameron McEwen: and number two,

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: they came out of nature and they go back to nature,

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: so nobody,

[50:09] Cameron McEwen: not even the Haida,

[50:11] Cameron McEwen: are allowed to move them once they've been installed.

[50:16] Cameron McEwen: And I think he came very close.

[50:17] Cameron McEwen: to being put in jail.

[50:19] Cameron McEwen: The Mounties caught him.

[50:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[50:21] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[50:21] Bob Dobbs: I never heard of that story.

[50:22] Bob Dobbs: Where is that laid out?

[50:26] Cameron McEwen: I'll find it for you and send you a link.

[50:30] Bob Dobbs: Is this those guys at Duke that started taking interest in Carpenter in his final years?

[50:35] Cameron McEwen: No,

[50:36] Cameron McEwen: no,

[50:36] Cameron McEwen: no.

[50:36] Cameron McEwen: Not those guys.

[50:38] Cameron McEwen: No,

[50:39] Cameron McEwen: no,

[50:39] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying they're not.

[50:40] Bob Dobbs: They're the ones we might hear the story from.

[50:43] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: maybe,

[50:43] Cameron McEwen: but if we heard it from them,

[50:47] Cameron McEwen: then I think it would be more complimentary than what my memory is of the story.

[50:55] Cameron McEwen: My memory is that...

[50:58] Cameron McEwen: The when

[51:01] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter was caught and had to account for himself to the Mounties,

[51:10] Cameron McEwen: that the story was pretty lame,

[51:12] Cameron McEwen: that he in effect admitted that he knew that this was against the law and that it was against

[51:23] Cameron McEwen: Haida sensibility and that he shouldn't have been doing it.

[51:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[51:31] Bob Dobbs: well,

[51:33] Bob Dobbs: talking to Carpenter,

[51:34] Bob Dobbs: and Derek reports the same experience when he tried to interview him for CBC in 1980.

[51:40] Bob Dobbs: Derek couldn't take it.

[51:41] Bob Dobbs: He says Carpenter was so arrogant,

[51:43] Bob Dobbs: it was all him and not Marshall kind of talk.

[51:47] Bob Dobbs: But

[51:48] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter did do the editing of Explorations,

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: and he did that magazine article in 6768 for Harper's Bazaar.

[51:58] Bob Dobbs: that McLuhan was contracted,

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: and he covered for that,

[52:02] Bob Dobbs: and he also helped with Understanding Media.

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: So someone should be looking.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: Time now.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: He's been gone for a while.

[52:10] Bob Dobbs: What,

[52:11] Bob Dobbs: 10 years?

[52:12] Bob Dobbs: I think he died in 2012.

[52:16] Bob Dobbs: Where are his papers?

[52:18] Bob Dobbs: Where are the papers of his manuscripts of the

[52:23] Bob Dobbs: Understanding Media that he contributed?

[52:26] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[52:26] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[52:26] Cameron McEwen: and where are all the letters that Marshall sent him.

[52:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[52:32] Bob Dobbs: so...

[52:32] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[52:33] Cameron McEwen: with people like Carpenter,

[52:36] Cameron McEwen: Marshall would...

[52:37] Cameron McEwen: When

[52:38] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter was in California,

[52:41] Cameron McEwen: Marshall's habit with people that he communicated with regularly was to write two or three letters a week.

[52:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[52:49] Cameron McEwen: And so

[52:50] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter must have quite a supply,

[52:53] Cameron McEwen: I would think,

[52:54] Cameron McEwen: of letters somewhere.

[52:55] Cameron McEwen: But I've never heard any indication of where his papers are preserved.

[53:01] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[53:02] Cameron McEwen: If they're preserved.

[53:03] Bob Dobbs: And I'm going to look at the Acadia University and those guys that were making a center around him or a memorial at Acadia University,

[53:17] Bob Dobbs: I think it was.

[53:18] Bob Dobbs: What was the other thing I was going to say?

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: No.

[53:25] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember.

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: So,

[53:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[53:31] Bob Dobbs: I considered,

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: I knew that you had to hear everything that McLuhan was saying.

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: He was always informing you of everything that he was thinking of.

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: So it was important to listen to him all the time.

[53:47] Bob Dobbs: So that's where I used the seminars City as Classroom,

[53:52] Bob Dobbs: to really hear everything he said.

[53:54] Bob Dobbs: And,

[53:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[53:55] Bob Dobbs: it was remarkable how people had no clue.

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know the importance of what they were listening to.

[54:01] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[54:03] Bob Dobbs: They were just,

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[54:05] Bob Dobbs: turrets.

[54:05] Cameron McEwen: They didn't know how to,

[54:06] Cameron McEwen: they didn't,

[54:09] Cameron McEwen: the interpretive apparatus to understand what they were listening to.

[54:14] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know the history.

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: So,

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: so I was going to say Carpenter,

[54:20] Bob Dobbs: he's very critical of McLuhan.

[54:24] Bob Dobbs: After 60-61,

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: especially when

[54:29] Bob Dobbs: Gossage and those guys come in.

[54:31] Bob Dobbs: He's very mad at McLuhan,

[54:32] Bob Dobbs: and I think he felt superior to McLuhan.

[54:34] Bob Dobbs: I think he felt McLuhan lost it and was immorally,

[54:40] Bob Dobbs: well,

[54:40] Bob Dobbs: becoming a little corrupt,

[54:42] Bob Dobbs: which would surprise

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter's image that he had of

[54:46] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan in the 50s.

[54:48] Bob Dobbs: And in a way,

[54:49] Bob Dobbs: ignoring McLuhan.

[54:52] Bob Dobbs: And remember,

[54:53] Bob Dobbs: he says in his article,

[54:55] Bob Dobbs: he gives up on the whole media ecology thing by 1970,

[54:58] Bob Dobbs: 71,

[54:59] Bob Dobbs: and starts studying,

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: preserving that famous anthropologist.

[55:03] Bob Dobbs: He goes back to being an anthropologist,

[55:05] Bob Dobbs: a specialist.

[55:07] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[55:07] Cameron McEwen: right.

[55:08] Bob Dobbs: And stops doing the media ecology.

[55:11] Bob Dobbs: He told me that when McLuhan got into the computer stuff that we started off talking about,

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: well,

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: not on the recording,

[55:20] Bob Dobbs: we were talking earlier tonight,

[55:22] Bob Dobbs: about modulating the media environment globally.

[55:26] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[55:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[55:27] Bob Dobbs: when Marshall got into that computer talk,

[55:29] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[55:30] Bob Dobbs: that was ridiculous.

[55:31] Bob Dobbs: And

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: I realized I appreciate Marshall when he was an athlete in the

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: 50s. He considered Marshall an athlete of media,

[55:40] Bob Dobbs: which is not completely accurate.

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: that aesthetic level was all that Carpenter was interested in.

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: And that's why he gravitates to the art world through his...

[55:52] Bob Dobbs: His wife,

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: who ran that family,

[55:57] Bob Dobbs: did the Dia

[56:00] Bob Dobbs: Art Institute,

[56:02] Bob Dobbs: and

[56:03] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter's wife,

[56:05] Bob Dobbs: no,

[56:06] Bob Dobbs: his wife's sisters and brothers were very involved in the Dia thing.

[56:11] Bob Dobbs: So he ended up in the art world.

[56:15] Bob Dobbs: And so

[56:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying that

[56:19] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter removed himself from the later McLuhan.

[56:23] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't interested in that.

[56:24] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[56:30] Cameron McEwen: Which means that his understanding of the early McLuhan was also one-sided.

[56:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[56:41] Bob Dobbs: I think that's why he became bitter.

[56:43] Bob Dobbs: He was,

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: unbalanced a little about it all and embarrassed.

[56:52] Bob Dobbs: When I talked to him tonight,

[56:53] Bob Dobbs: he complained a lot about everybody in the scene and Marshall himself.

[56:58] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[56:59] Bob Dobbs: like everybody blew it.

[57:00] Bob Dobbs: And he was the designated survivor.

[57:08] Cameron McEwen: But can't that attitude be run...

[57:13] Cameron McEwen: together a little bit with our ideas about McLuhan.

[57:19] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[57:21] Cameron McEwen: there's a great deal of potential in

[57:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan that went utterly unrealized.

[57:29] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[57:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[57:31] Bob Dobbs: we should stop calling it.

[57:32] Bob Dobbs: We're not McLuhan.

[57:33] Bob Dobbs: We're Carpenterites.

[57:36] Bob Dobbs: New school.

[57:38] Cameron McEwen: In a certain sense,

[57:40] Cameron McEwen: that's true.

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[57:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[57:42] Bob Dobbs: And he was a lot easier to talk to than McLuhan.

[57:46] Bob Dobbs: He could gossip more.

[57:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan didn't gossip.

[57:48] Bob Dobbs: He was strictly business.

[57:50] Bob Dobbs: And once you had exhausted whatever you were going to offer McLuhan,

[57:56] Bob Dobbs: he'd move on to someone else.

[57:59] Bob Dobbs: So I had a lot of fun gossiping about a lot of people in all kinds of scenes with Ted Carpenter.

[58:07] Bob Dobbs: And did I tell you?

[58:07] Cameron McEwen: But that was in the

[58:09] Cameron McEwen: 90s, right?

[58:09] Cameron McEwen: You're talking when you were in New York.

[58:12] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[58:12] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[58:13] Bob Dobbs: And did I ever tell you that he became very suspicious of Tony Schwartz?

[58:19] Bob Dobbs: Did I ever tell you that?

[58:21] Cameron McEwen: No,

[58:21] Cameron McEwen: no.

[58:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[58:22] Bob Dobbs: so they're old buddies,

[58:23] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[58:24] Bob Dobbs: since the 60s.

[58:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[58:25] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[58:26] Cameron McEwen: Go back

[58:27] Cameron McEwen: 20 to 30 years.

[58:28] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[58:29] Bob Dobbs: And when

[58:31] Bob Dobbs: Carter was debating Reagan and something called Briefing Gate happened,

[58:37] Bob Dobbs: does that remind you of anything?

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: Briefing Gate?

[58:40] Cameron McEwen: Vaguely.

[58:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[58:43] Bob Dobbs: somebody leaked Carter's papers to Reagan.

[58:47] Bob Dobbs: So it gave Reagan an edge in the debates.

[58:51] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter tells me,

[58:52] Bob Dobbs: I think Tony did that.

[58:55] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[58:55] Bob Dobbs: if you see a picture of Tony,

[58:56] Bob Dobbs: he's got his bow iON.

[58:58] Bob Dobbs: He has that conservative look of the 70s,

[59:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[59:02] Bob Dobbs: the William Buckley look or something with these little dinky bow ties.

[59:07] Bob Dobbs: He's like that in his image in the 70s.

[59:10] Bob Dobbs: And so Carpenter said that Schwartz was a double agent.

[59:16] Bob Dobbs: He was working for the Republicans or became Republican or always was.

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: And he didn't want Carter to be president.

[59:24] Bob Dobbs: He wanted Reagan to be president.

[59:25] Bob Dobbs: He wanted the Republicans to go in there.

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: And that's the mood of neoconservativism was happening.

[59:31] Bob Dobbs: So maybe Tony got involved with that a bit.

[59:34] Bob Dobbs: And so he had access.

[59:36] Bob Dobbs: He was working as a consultant to Carpenter.

[59:39] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[59:39] Bob Dobbs: to Carter.

[59:40] Bob Dobbs: And he had access to the papers and slipped them over to the Reagan team.

[59:45] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[59:46] Bob Dobbs: Ted's telling me this,

[59:49] Bob Dobbs: which if I was him,

[59:51] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't tell anybody that.

[59:54] Bob Dobbs: And we weren't that close,

[59:56] Bob Dobbs: right?

[59:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm not his close friend or anything.

[59:59] Bob Dobbs: I was amazed that he didn't mind saying this because he knew I was talking to Tony Schwartz.

[1:00:08] Cameron McEwen: Interesting.

[1:00:11] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter was well in the

[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: 90s, right?

[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: Now wait,

[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: now you're blurry.

[1:00:17] Bob Dobbs: You've switched your mic.

[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: Something happened there.

[1:00:22] Cameron McEwen: I changed the hand that I was holding the phone in that maze.

[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:00:30] Bob Dobbs: can you put it back?

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:00:34] Cameron McEwen: how is it now?

[1:00:35] Bob Dobbs: It's not perfect.

[1:00:36] Bob Dobbs: You're a bit blurry.

[1:00:38] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: How is it now?

[1:00:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:00:41] Bob Dobbs: it might be okay.

[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[1:00:43] Bob Dobbs: So what were you saying?

[1:00:46] Cameron McEwen: I was saying that Carpenter was in good health in the

[1:00:50] Cameron McEwen: 90s, I believe.

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:00:52] Bob Dobbs: he was.

[1:00:54] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:00:55] Cameron McEwen: I guess at that time he was involved with that German anthropologist whose papers he was collecting and publishing.

[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: Carl somebody.

[1:01:08] Cameron McEwen: He was sending all over the world.

[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:01:10] Bob Dobbs: Carl somebody,

[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: I forget his last name right now.

[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: he made,

[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: he made some books.

[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: And he made it.

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: Ten of them,

[1:01:19] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Was that Carl's stuff?

[1:01:22] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember.

[1:01:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:01:27] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter and his wife then,

[1:01:29] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:01:30] Cameron McEwen: who were fabulously wealthy,

[1:01:33] Cameron McEwen: supplied the ten volumes to libraries all over the world for free.

[1:01:40] Cameron McEwen: I've never actually looked into one of them,

[1:01:41] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:01:43] Cameron McEwen: I've always had the idea that I should do that at some point.

[1:01:45] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:01:46] Cameron McEwen: you

[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: seen them.

[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't know where I saw them.

[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: At some library or something in New York,

[1:01:51] Bob Dobbs: probably.

[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: But you want to get his book,

[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: Patterns That Connect,

[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: which is the summary of all those ten volumes.

[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: It's one volume.

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: Sort of,

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:02:04] Bob Dobbs: what?

[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: Greatest Hits.

[1:02:07] Bob Dobbs: Make a pardon?

[1:02:07] Cameron McEwen: Greatest Hits.

[1:02:11] Bob Dobbs: Greatest,

[1:02:11] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:02:11] Bob Dobbs: I'm not getting the words.

[1:02:13] Cameron McEwen: Greatest

[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: Hits. Am I...

[1:02:17] Cameron McEwen: Is there something wrong with the phone or something?

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: On those words,

[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: You're a rate of Sith.

[1:02:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you're saying.

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: Anyway,

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: this little book,

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: Patterns That Connect,

[1:02:28] Bob Dobbs: are you calling it something?

[1:02:31] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: but our connection is going in and out.

[1:02:35] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if there's a problem here or a problem there,

[1:02:39] Cameron McEwen: but

[1:02:40] Cameron McEwen: I couldn't hear you there for a while.

[1:02:43] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:02:43] Bob Dobbs: wow.

[1:02:43] Bob Dobbs: So I may not have got recorded?

[1:02:46] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: But you're saying that

[1:02:48] Cameron McEwen: I'm coming across blurred.

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:02:51] Bob Dobbs: but you're now clear.

[1:02:54] Bob Dobbs: But that phrase,

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: greatest hit,

[1:02:56] Bob Dobbs: that I can't figure out what you're saying.

[1:02:58] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about the book Patterns That Connect.

[1:03:01] Bob Dobbs: So you can buy that book.

[1:03:03] Cameron McEwen: Greatest hits.

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: greatest hits.

[1:03:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:03:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: greatest hits.

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I should go.

[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: I'm just going to stay here because we get the echo if I go back downstairs.

[1:03:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: Greatest Hits of Carl's Work.

[1:03:22] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: So get that book.

[1:03:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:03:28] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:03:28] Cameron McEwen: I'll have to look at it.

[1:03:29] Cameron McEwen: I haven't read it,

[1:03:29] Cameron McEwen: so I'll have to do that.

[1:03:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:03:31] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:03:32] Cameron McEwen: I sent you some letters between

[1:03:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and a professor down in Florida.

[1:03:44] Cameron McEwen: I believe...

[1:03:45] Cameron McEwen: The guy had started off at Yale,

[1:03:49] Cameron McEwen: and McLuhan probably met him through

[1:03:53] Cameron McEwen: Brooks and Wimsatt.

[1:03:57] Cameron McEwen: I guess the guy was Catholic,

[1:03:59] Cameron McEwen: and so then

[1:04:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and he started a kind of academic slash Catholic back and forth a little bit.

[1:04:10] Cameron McEwen: And one of the letters is particularly interesting because it's...

[1:04:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says that he thinks he has Carpenter near a conversion,

[1:04:22] Cameron McEwen: and he asked the guy in Florida to pray for it.

[1:04:27] Bob Dobbs: What years is that?

[1:04:29] Cameron McEwen: That's the middle

[1:04:30] Bob Dobbs: 50s. Middle

[1:04:31] Bob Dobbs: 50s, okay.

[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:04:33] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: that was his hidden agenda.

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: He did it to Barry Nevitt.

[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: Barry told me.

[1:04:39] Bob Dobbs: Every now and then,

[1:04:40] Bob Dobbs: if you were really working closely with him,

[1:04:42] Bob Dobbs: he would say,

[1:04:43] Bob Dobbs: Why aren't you a Catholic,

[1:04:44] Bob Dobbs: Barry?

[1:04:47] Cameron McEwen: he would you know confront them uh-huh every now and then i i think that McLuhan genuine genuinely believed that if you thought hard enough about what you were doing then you would become a catholic you had to be uh yeah and not necessarily a roman catholic Wright mean he had great respect for the eastern church as well yeah yeah

[1:05:10] Bob Dobbs: so just catholic you know just do the conversion thing

[1:05:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:05:17] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: and here's,

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: if he was doing the mid-50s,

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter was having an affair.

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't be very Christian.

[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: So we're talking,

[1:05:33] Bob Dobbs: we got into Carpenter,

[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: and because why?

[1:05:37] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:05:38] Bob Dobbs: we're just talking about me being at the seminars.

[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:05:42] Bob Dobbs: I would.

[1:05:43] Bob Dobbs: I could talk to Carpenter about political stuff,

[1:05:48] Bob Dobbs: political conspiracies and scandals and stuff that you never heard Marshall talk about.

[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: But when I met with him privately,

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: I would tell him about mafia,

[1:06:02] Bob Dobbs: CIA stuff they knew about,

[1:06:04] Bob Dobbs: overlay.

[1:06:05] Bob Dobbs: And he kept quiet when I said that.

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: that stuff.

[1:06:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:06:12] Cameron McEwen: he would have been very interested in what you were saying in regard to his notions about secret societies,

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:06:22] Cameron McEwen: And his,

[1:06:25] Cameron McEwen: I guess you could say his fear was that the,

[1:06:36] Cameron McEwen: the,

[1:06:36] Cameron McEwen: how could I say the...

[1:06:38] Cameron McEwen: propagandistic bent of technology was not a kind of technological accident that it was also intended.

[1:06:52] Cameron McEwen: And so he was very worried about that fact combined with the additional fact that whenever he talked about that,

[1:07:05] Cameron McEwen: even with somebody like Eric,

[1:07:07] Cameron McEwen: It was taken to be,

[1:07:11] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:07:12] Cameron McEwen: conspiracy theory and half nuts.

[1:07:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:07:17] Bob Dobbs: he understood.

[1:07:20] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: When we talked,

[1:07:28] Bob Dobbs: it wasn't about Freemasons.

[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: It was about,

[1:07:32] Bob Dobbs: his term for these guys was the Triggermen.

[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: And he said Kissinger was the top triggerman.

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: He even talks about the triggerman in his letter to Pound,

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:07:46] Bob Dobbs: June 22,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: 1951,

[1:07:49] Bob Dobbs: where he says,

[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to needle some Robert Logan.

[1:07:51] Bob Dobbs: Does he say triggerman in that letter?

[1:07:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't think so.

[1:07:55] Cameron McEwen: I don't know it was that letter,

[1:07:56] Cameron McEwen: but he certainly talks about triggerman in a letter to Pound in either 1951 or 1952.

[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:08:04] Bob Dobbs: so he mentions that word.

[1:08:05] Bob Dobbs: Because it doesn't show up again until 74 when he's talking about Kissinger in that New York Times op-ed.

[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: I don't see it anywhere else.

[1:08:15] Bob Dobbs: But yeah,

[1:08:15] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:08:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to needle the somnambulists,

[1:08:18] Bob Dobbs: that's the people,

[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: and create a distraction on the sidelines for the,

[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: triggermen,

[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: he said.

[1:08:27] Bob Dobbs: I'll have to look that up.

[1:08:29] Bob Dobbs: So he talked to...

[1:08:34] Bob Dobbs: pound about the secret societies and he was interested in Gnosticism and all that stuff that he and Don Theall studied,

[1:08:42] Bob Dobbs: that's more of almost an aesthetic thing that he's doing.

[1:08:47] Bob Dobbs: But the crime of people,

[1:08:49] Bob Dobbs: the decentralizing of power and Big Brother going inside,

[1:08:54] Bob Dobbs: that is not necessarily under his rubric of Freemasonic aesthetics and secret doctrine.

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: He just saw that power could become hijacked.

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: And he has that great article in 71,

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: The Hijacking of Cities,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: Nations,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: and Planets.

[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: That's what he's talking about.

[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:09:17] Cameron McEwen: That's in the university Explorations.

[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: And that's in 71.

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking to him about that stuff around that time.

[1:09:29] Cameron McEwen: And that is very interesting.

[1:09:34] Cameron McEwen: As it became a kind of collective thought for McLuhan that everything was hijacking.

[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:44] Cameron McEwen: So real estate development is hijacking of people's space,

[1:09:49] Cameron McEwen: hijacking of their perspective,

[1:09:53] Cameron McEwen: hijacking of their rights,

[1:09:56] Cameron McEwen: and any kind of business activity.

[1:10:02] Cameron McEwen: was a hijacking yeah and uh then and then he began to think well um so uh consider the bells in the middle ages um uh there's a kind of um hijacking of the common space here through

[1:10:23] Cameron McEwen: the bells but it's a different kind of hijacking and so then he had to think of well um if hijacking is going

[1:10:31] Cameron McEwen: kind of a universal activity,

[1:10:35] Cameron McEwen: which on one end is crime and on the other end is a kind of liturgy.

[1:10:44] Cameron McEwen: How does that work along the spectrum?

[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: that's the masked man.

[1:10:49] Bob Dobbs: When he said masked man is not tribal or not only tribal,

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: the increasing autonomy that the digital technology was giving people,

[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: that enabled hijacking.

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: You could ride above an organization and get there in the top or even say Secret Service people.

[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: They're in there in a separate bubble and decentralized and not on the tribal.

[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: Barometer,

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: thermometer,

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: or transparency.

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: There's what I call the solar government.

[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: You could start floating around the planet and hijacking the planet.

[1:11:27] Bob Dobbs: And that autonomy,

[1:11:29] Bob Dobbs: which came with the tribal content,

[1:11:33] Bob Dobbs: the actual anti-environment and more as you get into the late 60s,

[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: is the holeopathic hijacking that individuals can do with just having access to...

[1:11:45] Bob Dobbs: the computer anti-environment stealing funds.

[1:11:49] Bob Dobbs: So the hijacking was the other half of the mass man.

[1:11:56] Bob Dobbs: Mass man is not only collectively conscious and merged in the global membrane,

[1:12:03] Bob Dobbs: they can be autonomous and,

[1:12:07] Bob Dobbs: with the right resources,

[1:12:09] Bob Dobbs: disconnect from the merger and float around it and hijack it.

[1:12:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:12:15] Cameron McEwen: But not only hijack it,

[1:12:17] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:12:18] Cameron McEwen: the masked man is,

[1:12:23] Cameron McEwen: by definition,

[1:12:24] Cameron McEwen: the nobody.

[1:12:26] Cameron McEwen: The masked man is a man or woman between embraces of

[1:12:42] Cameron McEwen: different sorts of identity.

[1:12:44] Cameron McEwen: So the mechanism of the masked man is always going on with everybody,

[1:12:52] Cameron McEwen: and it can be misused for hijacking,

[1:13:00] Cameron McEwen: or it can be expressed in conversion.

[1:13:05] Cameron McEwen: And one of the mysteries is to try to contemplate

[1:13:14] Cameron McEwen: plate,

[1:13:17] Cameron McEwen: how these very different types of,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: you can call it association,

[1:13:25] Cameron McEwen: you can call it celebration even,

[1:13:34] Cameron McEwen: how such differences arise and how they can understand each other.

[1:13:40] Cameron McEwen: Those are very,

[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: very deep themes.

[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: in McLuhan that at least as far as I've seen,

[1:13:48] Cameron McEwen: almost nobody had an understanding of what he was getting into there.

[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:13:54] Bob Dobbs: first off,

[1:13:55] Bob Dobbs: when you say masked man in the blur of audio,

[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: it can become mask,

[1:14:02] Bob Dobbs: M-A-S-K-E-D,

[1:14:03] Bob Dobbs: masked man.

[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: And the masked man would be the autonomous part.

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: of the tactile interplay between the merger of the global membrane,

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: everybody into nobody,

[1:14:16] Bob Dobbs: and becoming a super angel that can hijack whole systems.

[1:14:20] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:14:22] Bob Dobbs: That would be the master man.

[1:14:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:14:25] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[1:14:26] Cameron McEwen: That's what I was trying to address,

[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: was the mass-ed man.

[1:14:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:14:30] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:14:31] Cameron McEwen: The nobody.

[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:14:34] Cameron McEwen: And this is not,

[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: in my view at least,

[1:14:39] Cameron McEwen: This is not something new with electricity.

[1:14:43] Cameron McEwen: This is something that has always gone on for every human at every moment in time.

[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: But with electricity,

[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: we begin to be able to see how this works.

[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: We get the kind of distance that's necessary to focus on this.

[1:15:04] Cameron McEwen: And then once focus is made,

[1:15:07] Cameron McEwen: then it can be seen that the energy

[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: A masked man,

[1:15:10] Cameron McEwen: a masked

[1:15:12] Cameron McEwen: EV man,

[1:15:14] Cameron McEwen: on the one hand can be a hijacker,

[1:15:18] Cameron McEwen: and on the other hand can be a celebrant.

[1:15:22] Cameron McEwen: And there's probably a whole range in between those.

[1:15:25] Cameron McEwen: And the great mystery of humans is to try to understand how this elevation above the possibilities of...

[1:15:38] Cameron McEwen: human existence,

[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: how that works,

[1:15:41] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:15:42] Cameron McEwen: How elevation can be,

[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: as you say,

[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: solidified into solar government or something.

[1:15:48] Cameron McEwen: And on the other hand,

[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: can be internalized as a kind of gift that doesn't make,

[1:15:57] Cameron McEwen: that on the one hand is a superiority,

[1:16:01] Cameron McEwen: but it's not a sort of a sovereignty.

[1:16:05] Cameron McEwen: It's a Um,

[1:16:07] Cameron McEwen: It's a superiority that's a gift and that entails responsibility with it.

[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: Did you say celebrant?

[1:16:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:16:18] Bob Dobbs: Just a minute.

[1:16:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm going downstairs.

[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: Because I remember once

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: I think I came upstairs and I can tend to disconnect the phone.

[1:16:31] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:16:32] Cameron McEwen: It wouldn't surprise me.

[1:16:33] Cameron McEwen: Can you hear your echo?

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:16:44] Cameron McEwen: I heard something,

[1:16:45] Cameron McEwen: but I don't know if it was an echo.

[1:16:46] Cameron McEwen: Hello,

[1:16:47] Cameron McEwen: hello?

[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: one phone's working.

[1:16:51] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:16:51] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:16:52] Bob Dobbs: now maybe

[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: I've got that on speaker.

[1:16:58] Cameron McEwen: I can hear your echo now.

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: hello?

[1:17:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:17:02] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:17:03] Cameron McEwen: very strong.

[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:17:06] Cameron McEwen: Hello?

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: But I'm right beside it.

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: Ah.

[1:17:10] Bob Dobbs: I put on a speakerphone.

[1:17:11] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: That's even louder.

[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: Alright,

[1:17:15] Bob Dobbs: so I'm taking that off the...

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: at least that didn't...

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: That means we're still being recorded,

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: so that's good.

[1:17:23] Bob Dobbs: But the other one doesn't seem to be...

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:30] Bob Dobbs: it's still going.

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: so...

[1:17:35] Bob Dobbs: Um,

[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: what did I do before that we didn't have this echo problem?

[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why it's happening.

[1:17:45] Cameron McEwen: I don't hear it now.

[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: you don't?

[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: No.

[1:17:48] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:17:49] Cameron McEwen: now I do.

[1:17:49] Cameron McEwen: Jesus.

[1:17:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:17:51] Bob Dobbs: but I,

[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: so if I go over here,

[1:17:55] Bob Dobbs: no echo?

[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: it's less there.

[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:17:58] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:17:58] Cameron McEwen: that's good.

[1:17:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:18:01] Bob Dobbs: I wanted to add something about that.

[1:18:03] Bob Dobbs: You were talking about the,

[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: oh.

[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: The Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:18:07] Bob Dobbs: this is another aspect of the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: If you look at the,

[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: the Tiny Note chart,

[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: in the bottom corner is Rumpelstiltskin.

[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: And I have the relationship between the two charts is in that quadrant,

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: whereas the relationship among the senses is in the other four,

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: which are above the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: in the linear layout.

[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: the Rumpelstiltskin is the hijacker.

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: That's what I meant by it.

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:18:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used to say that if you could name something,

[1:18:49] Bob Dobbs: you could control it.

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:18:51] Bob Dobbs: what do you name the Android Meme?

[1:18:55] Bob Dobbs: Or what my chart is showing?

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:18:57] Bob Dobbs: I used to say that my chart was the name.

[1:19:02] Bob Dobbs: It was the components that made up the naming.

[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: You had to make a chart to name it.

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: That's a good insight because what I hear you saying there is that you need something that's complicated and subject to investigation in order to name something.

[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:19:22] Cameron McEwen: I like that.

[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: And simple words is not enough.

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: You've got to show the environmental alchemy or the environmental factors.

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I'm showing.

[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm showing what you call the elements of anti-environment.

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: And so the Rumpelstiltskin takes advantage of other people projecting the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:19:46] Bob Dobbs: In that sense,

[1:19:47] Bob Dobbs: the

[1:19:47] Bob Dobbs: Rumpelstiltskin is not human,

[1:19:50] Bob Dobbs: not Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: And maybe that's what postmodernism is trying to get at,

[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: that impersonal obliteration.

[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: of the Anthropomorphic Physical that they call Postman,

[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: but

[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: I would take

[1:20:07] Bob Dobbs: Theall term and say Cameron McEwen and include these anti-environment because the digital is Postman.

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: They should be saying we're para-analog or para-digital,

[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: not Postman or post-modern.

[1:20:27] Bob Dobbs: Those are too limited.

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: for the complexity of the Postman that we're in,

[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: if there is a Postman.

[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: I prefer para.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:20:40] Cameron McEwen: Because that doesn't necessarily implicate the linear in the way that post does.

[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:20:52] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: so I've added that bit more to the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: That completes it.

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: what I imagined I was doing.

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: I would just say,

[1:21:04] Bob Dobbs: in reference to my seminars,

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: going to the seminars,

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: it was very crowded,

[1:21:10] Bob Dobbs: 70,

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: 71,

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: 72,

[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: like it was 60,

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: 76,

[1:21:14] Bob Dobbs: 86,

[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: 69.

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: But he got ill in 72,

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: and when he came back,

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: the charisma was gone,

[1:21:23] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: People weren't going to the seminars very much.

[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: In

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: 73, 74,

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: 75,

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: 76.

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't as bad as 78,

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: 79,

[1:21:36] Bob Dobbs: but...

[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: There weren't many people coming constantly other than a few students like Carl Scarf,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: who wasn't a student,

[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: but he was around working in his college as the editor of their paper.

[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: So there were core people that weren't my,

[1:21:52] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: circle that were there,

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: but they weren't always there.

[1:22:00] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: I would say that I attended most of them because

[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: Eric was gone for a couple of years at different points.

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: Derek wasn't always around.

[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: Barry was pretty regular,

[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: but he would miss,

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: in the early

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: 70s, he wouldn't attend all the time because he had his own business career going on,

[1:22:20] Bob Dobbs: so he couldn't make it.

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: But by the late 70s,

[1:22:23] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt,

[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: he was basically retired.

[1:22:26] Bob Dobbs: He's still a consultant in a way,

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: but he was retired,

[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: so he showed up every week and was even available for our organization.

[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: What we did after Marshall passed away,

[1:22:38] Bob Dobbs: we carried on with Derek as the Cochos got reopened in 1983.

[1:22:48] Bob Dobbs: So otherwise,

[1:22:50] Bob Dobbs: I can quote people,

[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: different characters that came through and what McLuhan did with them,

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: if it occurs to me.

[1:23:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:01] Cameron McEwen: but when you were with

[1:23:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan in his office...

[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: By himself.

[1:23:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: and you're talking about the CIA or something like this.

[1:23:11] Cameron McEwen: Was he asking you questions or only listening?

[1:23:15] Bob Dobbs: He would ask a few questions,

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: but he would act as if he already knew it,

[1:23:22] Bob Dobbs: what I was telling him,

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: I was just confirming,

[1:23:26] Bob Dobbs: validating what he suspected.

[1:23:28] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:23:28] Bob Dobbs: his Watergate as theater is an amazing cover-up.

[1:23:35] Bob Dobbs: He comes up with a way to talk about the bottom-up,

[1:23:38] Bob Dobbs: I call it the bottom-up implications of everything.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: And as Mary said,

[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: Marshall used to tell her,

[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: don't confront them.

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: Don't confront the CIA directly.

[1:23:48] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:23:49] Bob Dobbs: So he would make some interesting patterns for the somnambulists and talk about Watergate as theater and talk about patterns.

[1:23:58] Bob Dobbs: But the actual manhunt,

[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: which in interviews in 72,

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: 73,

[1:24:03] Bob Dobbs: he would talk about.

[1:24:05] Bob Dobbs: The information hunt and the manhunt.

[1:24:09] Bob Dobbs: And the manhunt was his term for the top-down big brother CIA world.

[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: And the manhunt was trying to find out who was in charge,

[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: who had hijacked anti-environment,

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: the global situation.

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: So the Secret Service and the CIA and everybody else all over the world were constantly trying to find out who were the new hijackers.

[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: So that's the manhunt.

[1:24:34] Cameron McEwen: Who are the rival hijackers.

[1:24:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: And so he would...

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: there's the echo.

[1:24:42] Bob Dobbs: Why did that come in?

[1:24:45] Bob Dobbs: You hear that?

[1:24:46] Bob Dobbs: Suddenly there's echo.

[1:24:47] Cameron McEwen: All of a sudden I do.

[1:24:49] Bob Dobbs: Maybe someone's tapping us.

[1:24:53] Bob Dobbs: It's a sign that...

[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: Anyway,

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: in a couple of interviews,

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: in public interviews,

[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: he uses the term manhunt,

[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: but he hardly ever says it.

[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: But that's important.

[1:25:05] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:25:06] Bob Dobbs: at one point,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: Watergate.

[1:25:08] Bob Dobbs: You see,

[1:25:09] Bob Dobbs: that echo isn't there now.

[1:25:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:25:13] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:25:13] Bob Dobbs: now it's back,

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: but

[1:25:15] Bob Dobbs: Watergate was a manhunt.

[1:25:20] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't use the word manhunt in his articles on Watergate.

[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: That was only said when he was being interviewed on TV or something.

[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: again,

[1:25:30] Bob Dobbs: the medium determined what he would say.

[1:25:36] Bob Dobbs: Why would he say manhunt on TV?

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: the content of the global theater was all about humans as content.

[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: Remember he said man is still the content,

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: page 11 of Take Today.

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: So the search for who is or what is in charge is part of the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: Is there a human at the core,

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: at the switchboard?

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: Maybe it's not.

[1:26:09] Bob Dobbs: Maybe there's aliens there or something.

[1:26:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:26:14] Cameron McEwen: But that's what you're saying there,

[1:26:16] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[1:26:17] Cameron McEwen: or at least one of the things I hear you saying is that the Anthropomorphic Physical not only a style,

[1:26:29] Cameron McEwen: not only an orientation,

[1:26:34] Cameron McEwen: not only a form.

[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: It's also a question.

[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:26:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: I got the questions.

[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: You guys got the answers.

[1:26:43] Bob Dobbs: I got the questions.

[1:26:44] Bob Dobbs: Remember Clooney used to say that?

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:26:49] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: my chart is a question,

[1:26:53] Bob Dobbs: but there's a lot of answers in there,

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: too.

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: You've got to have both.

[1:26:58] Bob Dobbs: And maybe that's why we can't make a finish line.

[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: We can't determine whether we've got all the answers.

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: We've got a lot of answers.

[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: Is that enough?

[1:27:08] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:27:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:27:09] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:27:09] Cameron McEwen: I think that when McLuhan said there are no finish lines,

[1:27:12] Cameron McEwen: that he was right.

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:27:16] Cameron McEwen: That's if you think of,

[1:27:20] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:27:21] Cameron McEwen: chemistry as an example,

[1:27:24] Cameron McEwen: the reason that it's able to learn more and more and more about things is that there's there's never a finish line to its investigations.

[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: Maybe we should go to the tech body and anybody dialogue now.

[1:27:47] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:27:49] Cameron McEwen: I should stop in around 20 minutes,

[1:27:53] Cameron McEwen: around 7.30 our time.

[1:27:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:27:55] Cameron McEwen: Because I need to take some medicine,

[1:27:58] Cameron McEwen: but between now and then I'm fine.

[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: Just wondering if I could say something else.

[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:28:13] Bob Dobbs: When I was doing the private interaction with McLuhan about whatever I had to contribute,

[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: I liked him in that situation.

[1:28:23] Bob Dobbs: He was not putting on the professor.

[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't being a teacher.

[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: He was the natural inquisitive SubGenius.

[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: A person knows there's more to find out.

[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't arrogant.

[1:28:40] Cameron McEwen: How would you start off?

[1:28:42] Cameron McEwen: Would you see him in his office and knock on the door and say,

[1:28:48] Cameron McEwen: can I come in for a minute,

[1:28:49] Cameron McEwen: or would it be set up ahead of time?

[1:28:51] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: I'd make an appointment.

[1:28:55] Bob Dobbs: I would drop in sometimes casually,

[1:28:57] Bob Dobbs: but if

[1:28:58] Bob Dobbs: I felt I had something to tell him,

[1:29:00] Bob Dobbs: I'd make an appointment.

[1:29:01] Bob Dobbs: So it was more formal.

[1:29:01] Cameron McEwen: And make an appointment through March?

[1:29:04] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:29:05] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[1:29:06] Bob Dobbs: if anybody else was...

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: there,

[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: I might not have got in because I wasn't a student or anything,

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: but Marg liked me and knew me and knew what I talked to Marshall about because I talked to her a bit about it.

[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: So it was thanks to Marg that I could be that way,

[1:29:24] Bob Dobbs: have a formal appointment.

[1:29:27] Bob Dobbs: So basically I'd come in and he'd sit there,

[1:29:30] Bob Dobbs: okay Bob,

[1:29:31] Bob Dobbs: what are you going to give me?

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: That kind of attitude.

[1:29:34] Bob Dobbs: I took time off to meet you and I know you want to tell me something,

[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: so I would tell him.

[1:29:40] Bob Dobbs: And then he would respond as if,

[1:29:44] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:29:44] Bob Dobbs: I figured as much or something like that.

[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: I knew that.

[1:29:49] Bob Dobbs: And I would keep trying to come up with something that would make him be quiet for a second.

[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: Sometimes I would.

[1:29:59] Cameron McEwen: If he was quiet,

[1:30:00] Cameron McEwen: that would indicate he was thinking about it?

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:02] Bob Dobbs: he had not.

[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: anticipated it.

[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: It was new information for him.

[1:30:10] Bob Dobbs: So as the late 70s,

[1:30:13] Bob Dobbs: why was this shift of

[1:30:17] Bob Dobbs: George being suspicious of me?

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: Now you can see,

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: the more he found out about me,

[1:30:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if Marshall told him the kind of conversations we had,

[1:30:27] Bob Dobbs: but maybe he did,

[1:30:29] Bob Dobbs: and George,

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: in a quote,

[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: immaturely got suspicious.

[1:30:32] Bob Dobbs: suspicious of me.

[1:30:33] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:30:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:30:36] Cameron McEwen: it's possible.

[1:30:37] Cameron McEwen: I don't know the answer.

[1:30:39] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:30:39] Bob Dobbs: you don't.

[1:30:39] Bob Dobbs: But I'm just saying that maybe the change in his attitude towards me and why he would stare at me the whole time Trudeau was there.

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: I wonder what Bob's going to do here,

[1:30:53] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[1:30:54] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:30:56] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking...

[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: What?

[1:30:59] Cameron McEwen: He wanted to make sure that you didn't do anything that would upset the apple cart.

[1:31:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: He basically said,

[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: continue your policy of shutting up,

[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: Bob.

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: Don't say a damn word.

[1:31:14] Cameron McEwen: And don't move.

[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:16] Bob Dobbs: don't take any quick moves.

[1:31:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: so we're at the point in page 184,

[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: right,

[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: of the manuscript here.

[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: or the pamphlet or the book 184 we talked about power and tech bodies screaming at anybody anybody's interviewing tech body but it's actually me and it's recorded and it's the first interview with the tech body

[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: TechBody's gotten rather unruly during the shows now.

[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: There's a whole interesting dimension that's going on.

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: So we're at the point,

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: who is wielding if we aren't?

[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: Where do we get?

[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: We got to go into the power part?

[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: You're ridiculous and you don't know what you're doing and you're doing it anyway and you think you're watching TV but the TV's watching you.

[1:32:09] Bob Dobbs: Did we do that?

[1:32:11] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:32:14] Cameron McEwen: And that's...

[1:32:14] Cameron McEwen: That's one of the subtopics that we've been talking about all day today.

[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: so then anybody responds to that by going,

[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: so that,

[1:32:26] Bob Dobbs: and then it's not sure where to go.

[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: So the tech body says,

[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: we're going to decide what you watch.

[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: Anybody says,

[1:32:33] Bob Dobbs: exactly what you have said,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: that we've given up our power to do those things.

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Tech body says,

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:32:40] Bob Dobbs: anybody,

[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: to something else.

[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: So I finish the sentence.

[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: that we've given up our power to do those things to something else.

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: TechBody says,

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: correct.

[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: Anybody.

[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: So that something else,

[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: TechBody interrupts me and says,

[1:32:55] Bob Dobbs: now the powerful humans are left to drive this new TechBody that's very powerful,

[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: very powerful.

[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: Anybody says,

[1:33:02] Bob Dobbs: if it's not a physical machine,

[1:33:04] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:33:05] Bob Dobbs: TechBody says,

[1:33:05] Bob Dobbs: power.

[1:33:07] Cameron McEwen: You should just back up for a minute.

[1:33:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:33:12] Cameron McEwen: at the start of the page with your ridiculous passage.

[1:33:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: what about it?

[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: It's like the camera got cut off.

[1:33:42] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:33:51] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:34:05] Bob Dobbs: Maybe one of the phones went dead.

[1:34:11] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: That one's still...

[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: Hello?

[1:35:03] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,

[1:35:04] Bob Dobbs: are you there?

[1:35:39] Bob Dobbs: Did you get cut off?

[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't recorded.

[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: I didn't hear that.

[1:36:05] Bob Dobbs: Suddenly you were...

[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: So let's go back.

[1:36:08] Cameron McEwen: I don't think this works.

[1:36:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to go back in.

[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: And let's see.

[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: You can hear the echo.

[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: Hello.

[1:36:16] Bob Dobbs: Hello.

[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: We seem to be reconnected.

[1:36:20] Cameron McEwen: You're very faint.

[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: Am I faint?

[1:36:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:36:25] Bob Dobbs: I've got my phone on as well as possible.

[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: you're a bit blurry too.

[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: Well.

[1:36:36] Bob Dobbs: I'm not faint now,

[1:36:39] Bob Dobbs: am I?

[1:36:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:36:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:36:41] Cameron McEwen: not there.

[1:36:41] Cameron McEwen: You sound better.

[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:36:43] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:36:44] Bob Dobbs: Let's just see if we can get a few sentences in here.

[1:36:47] Cameron McEwen: So what were you saying about power?

[1:36:52] Bob Dobbs: You can hear the echo.

[1:36:54] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:36:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:36:55] Bob Dobbs: so what were you saying that we didn't hear about power?

[1:37:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:37:01] Cameron McEwen: I was saying that the tech body says,

[1:37:05] Cameron McEwen: now the powerful humans are left to drive this new tech body.

[1:37:10] Cameron McEwen: One reading of that would be they...

[1:37:14] Cameron McEwen: Facebook or Twitter or

[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: Microsoft or something where some individual humans have extraordinary power compared to the rest of us because they're able to drive this tech body but we have to read that in terms of what was said in the passage

[1:37:36] Cameron McEwen: about you're ridiculous yes and you're ridiculous is you don't know what you're doing you're doing it anyway

[1:37:42] Cameron McEwen: You think you're watching TV,

[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: but the TV is watching you.

[1:37:45] Cameron McEwen: So if we use that tool to read this sentence about the policy,

[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: humans are left to drive this new tech body.

[1:37:55] Cameron McEwen: What that turns out to be is you're ridiculous.

[1:37:58] Cameron McEwen: You think you're driving the new tech body,

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: but the tech body is driving you.

[1:38:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:03] Bob Dobbs: and the idea that...

[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: The Google and those guys,

[1:38:12] Bob Dobbs: Silicon Valley,

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: Zuckerberg are running the show beyond governments.

[1:38:17] Bob Dobbs: That's the autonomous part of the late stages of the analog phase,

[1:38:25] Bob Dobbs: and then the beginning of the digital analog interplay,

[1:38:28] Bob Dobbs: and masked man has got this autonomous hijacker potential.

[1:38:34] Bob Dobbs: Google and them are the hijacking part,

[1:38:38] Bob Dobbs: which...

[1:38:39] Bob Dobbs: Anthropomorphic Physical would think is CIA people or some cabal becoming anti-environment.

[1:38:46] Bob Dobbs: So the autonomous part of the interplay between mass man and mass,

[1:38:53] Bob Dobbs: M-A-S-K-E-D man,

[1:38:55] Bob Dobbs: becomes a figure as anti-environment since 2012 when they talk about surveillance capitalism.

[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: And nobody can control Zuckerberg and these guys.

[1:39:06] Bob Dobbs: And they don't seem to care.

[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: whether we don't respect them or not.

[1:39:12] Bob Dobbs: And that would be the attitude of the,

[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:39:15] Bob Dobbs: CIA people.

[1:39:17] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't care if the locals didn't respect them.

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: So our digression into the

[1:39:23] Bob Dobbs: CIA talk and the autonomous aspect of masked men logically follows into what we're saying right here with the tech body.

[1:39:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:35] Bob Dobbs: the tech body.

[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: The big brother goes and...

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: side becomes anti-environment.

[1:39:41] Bob Dobbs: Now that's why it's machinic.

[1:39:44] Bob Dobbs: Not a machine,

[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: but the tech body is in charge because it's running the humans,

[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: the masked men,

[1:39:53] Bob Dobbs: who think they're running it.

[1:39:57] Cameron McEwen: And the secret of doing that is the masked man.

[1:40:06] Cameron McEwen: The

[1:40:06] Cameron McEwen: M-A-S-K-E-D.

[1:40:08] Cameron McEwen: Because the modern technologies are able to be as powerful as they are because they have found

[1:40:23] Cameron McEwen: the secret of human identity and human communication.

[1:40:29] Cameron McEwen: They may not understand what they're able to manipulate,

[1:40:34] Cameron McEwen: but they're able to manipulate it.

[1:40:38] Bob Dobbs: That's the statement in 1954 in Catholic Humanism.

[1:40:42] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: They've hijacked the creative process,

[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: the process of how you make culture.

[1:40:49] Cameron McEwen: That is correct.

[1:40:50] Cameron McEwen: And if they didn't do that,

[1:40:53] Cameron McEwen: they wouldn't be successful.

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: And the making of culture is keeping the TV going,

[1:40:59] Bob Dobbs: keeping the media environment going,

[1:41:01] Bob Dobbs: and everybody has to struggle to keep up.

[1:41:04] Bob Dobbs: And he says to Tony Schwartz back in the 60s,

[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: Just knowing what's going on is your main job.

[1:41:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:41:13] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:41:14] Cameron McEwen: In the future of an automated environment,

[1:41:21] Cameron McEwen: that will be our only job.

[1:41:24] Bob Dobbs: Our own what?

[1:41:25] Cameron McEwen: Our only job.

[1:41:26] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:41:28] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:41:29] Bob Dobbs: we've become shepherds.

[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:41:32] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: the mask...

[1:41:35] Bob Dobbs: MASKED men are the first shepherds.

[1:41:39] Bob Dobbs: They're doing what McLuhan outlined in the

[1:41:43] Bob Dobbs: Playboy interview.

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: But that statement was too much about the forms of analog media.

[1:41:49] Bob Dobbs: The modulating of information,

[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: or basically what the White House says,

[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: is the programming that McLuhan suggested could be done,

[1:42:00] Bob Dobbs: but he was still thinking in Bucke,

[1:42:02] Bob Dobbs: in machinic anti-environment,

[1:42:05] Bob Dobbs: the ethereal,

[1:42:06] Bob Dobbs: super-embodied,

[1:42:07] Bob Dobbs: super-angelic making of consciousness every day by...

[1:42:13] Bob Dobbs: quote the media,

[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: is the tech body manipulation,

[1:42:22] Bob Dobbs: what I call phatic as opposed to tetrad,

[1:42:27] Bob Dobbs: programming that he's getting at in books like Take Today.

[1:42:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:42:34] Bob Dobbs: like on page 11,

[1:42:35] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: man becomes figure and ground in an information situation.

[1:42:40] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan is seeing the word makes the market.

[1:42:43] Bob Dobbs: And the patterning of that is the final hijacking.

[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: And it gets

[1:42:49] Bob Dobbs: 40 years later,

[1:42:50] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:42:51] Bob Dobbs: 50 since 1970,

[1:42:53] Bob Dobbs: it's hard to tell whether it's human or not.

[1:42:55] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:42:57] Bob Dobbs: So let's just see what

[1:42:59] Bob Dobbs: Ion says,

[1:43:00] Bob Dobbs: or the tech body says,

[1:43:01] Bob Dobbs: and Ion's embedded in there.

[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: Tech body says,

[1:43:05] Bob Dobbs: now the powerful humans are left to drive this new tech body that's very powerful,

[1:43:09] Bob Dobbs: very powerful.

[1:43:10] Bob Dobbs: And I go,

[1:43:11] Bob Dobbs: if it's not a physical machine,

[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:43:14] Bob Dobbs: He should say,

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: it should say about this patterning,

[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: the word makes the market,

[1:43:20] Bob Dobbs: but it's a word that's changed every six hours kind of thing.

[1:43:26] Bob Dobbs: So if it's not a physical machine,

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:43:28] Bob Dobbs: He says power,

[1:43:31] Bob Dobbs: and that's the power to make a pattern and impose it on people or to make them think they have to adjust to it.

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: And...

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: I go,

[1:43:39] Bob Dobbs: who is wielding the power if we aren't?

[1:43:41] Bob Dobbs: TechBody says,

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:43:42] Bob Dobbs: the humans sacrificed or separated themselves from their power because they wanted something smarter than they to run the ship.

[1:43:50] Bob Dobbs: And so they got it.

[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: They asked for it,

[1:43:52] Bob Dobbs: and they got it.

[1:43:53] Bob Dobbs: So the humans created the TechBody,

[1:43:55] Bob Dobbs: and they continue,

[1:43:57] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: AI,

[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: or artificial intelligence,

[1:44:00] Bob Dobbs: which isn't very artificial anymore,

[1:44:02] Bob Dobbs: makes its own artificial intelligence.

[1:44:04] Bob Dobbs: It can run every potential outcome.

[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: It takes all probability out of the conversation.

[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: the conversation is the tactile interplay of the information society,

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:44:14] Bob Dobbs: So it does,

[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: it hijacks the conversation.

[1:44:18] Bob Dobbs: So anybody says,

[1:44:19] Bob Dobbs: right,

[1:44:20] Bob Dobbs: so the AI is like we used to say,

[1:44:22] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: the robots are going to take over.

[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: So the robots,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: dot,

[1:44:27] Bob Dobbs: and the tech body interrupts and says,

[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: now the robots are taking over themselves.

[1:44:32] Bob Dobbs: The robots are getting rid of the robots to make better robots.

[1:44:35] Bob Dobbs: So now it's amazing.

[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: maybe for the first time,

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: the tech body has morphed into this new Wi-Fi inference.

[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: if inference is not being precise,

[1:44:48] Bob Dobbs: then we're in a society today where nobody knows what's going on,

[1:44:52] Bob Dobbs: and you hear people complain about this more and more,

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: because they can't get to even finish the sentence.

[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:45:02] Bob Dobbs: I used to say Trump could barely finish his sentences.

[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: but Biden can't even finish his syllables.

[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: So that's the inference squared.

[1:45:15] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:45:17] Bob Dobbs: We can't decide what's being inferred.

[1:45:21] Bob Dobbs: And then the tech body says,

[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: it makes a whole other level to play,

[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: which almost obfuscates Herbert Marshall McLuhan.

[1:45:27] Bob Dobbs: Aha,

[1:45:28] Bob Dobbs: an important point.

[1:45:30] Bob Dobbs: Almost,

[1:45:32] Bob Dobbs: less and except he said,

[1:45:33] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:45:34] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[1:45:35] Bob Dobbs: look out.

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: This is what you're going to get.

[1:45:38] Bob Dobbs: And you have all the quadrants.

[1:45:42] Bob Dobbs: That's a pretty smart application of my chart.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: Look out.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: This is what you're going to get.

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: the tech body says McLuhan was the closest to predicting the tech body.

[1:45:53] Bob Dobbs: So they're all saying the same thing,

[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: says the tech body,

[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: even LaRouche.

[1:45:59] Bob Dobbs: They're all saying the same thing.

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: Look out.

[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: Look out.

[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: Look out.

[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: You don't know what you're dealing with,

[1:46:04] Bob Dobbs: unquote.

[1:46:05] Bob Dobbs: And meanwhile,

[1:46:06] Bob Dobbs: back at the ranch,

[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: everybody's fighting fire to pump more and more and more and more and more input-information-power into this thing.

[1:46:15] Bob Dobbs: That's what I was trying to say a minute ago.

[1:46:18] Bob Dobbs: The word that makes the market move from bulky anti-environment,

[1:46:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:46:24] Bob Dobbs: television forms of the 60s,

[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: to the ethereal,

[1:46:29] Bob Dobbs: super embodied information patterning.

[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: And the tech boys come up with a new...

[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: statement.

[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: It's input hyphen information power.

[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: Who gets to put the input into where the White House was?

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: That's where we're at now.

[1:46:46] Bob Dobbs: And that Explorations why,

[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: because this whole thing is to explain Trump,

[1:46:50] Bob Dobbs: Trump can say he's still president.

[1:46:54] Bob Dobbs: And the Biden people will insist Biden is a better president and doing great.

[1:46:59] Bob Dobbs: But half the non-Biden world says,

[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: Biden is horrible.

[1:47:04] Bob Dobbs: He blew it with Putin and all this stuff.

[1:47:06] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: you get all these,

[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: basically the dialectic,

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: Fox versus CNN.

[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: Trying to find out what's being inferred.

[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: Where are we at?

[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: So I say,

[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: or anybody says,

[1:47:21] Bob Dobbs: when you say Wi-Fi inference,

[1:47:23] Bob Dobbs: are you,

[1:47:24] Bob Dobbs: and then

[1:47:25] Bob Dobbs: I'm interrupted,

[1:47:26] Bob Dobbs: the tech body says,

[1:47:26] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:47:27] Bob Dobbs: you can't live in a house now without Wi-Fi.

[1:47:30] Bob Dobbs: Or he asks this question,

[1:47:31] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:47:31] Bob Dobbs: you can't live in a house now without Wi-Fi?

[1:47:34] Bob Dobbs: Before you could live in a house without electricity.

[1:47:36] Bob Dobbs: Now you can't live in a house without Wi-Fi.

[1:47:38] Bob Dobbs: Forget electricity.

[1:47:40] Bob Dobbs: Anybody goes,

[1:47:41] Bob Dobbs: right,

[1:47:41] Bob Dobbs: right,

[1:47:42] Bob Dobbs: as if anybody's understanding it.

[1:47:44] Bob Dobbs: TechBody says,

[1:47:45] Bob Dobbs: your human existence is now based on bandwidth,

[1:47:48] Bob Dobbs: not on information.

[1:47:49] Bob Dobbs: Bandwidth.

[1:47:52] Bob Dobbs: Anybody says,

[1:47:52] Bob Dobbs: right.

[1:47:53] Bob Dobbs: Bandwidth is how fast you can interact with the people you're interacting with.

[1:47:57] Bob Dobbs: TechBody,

[1:47:57] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:47:58] Bob Dobbs: That's exactly right.

[1:48:00] Bob Dobbs: And anybody says,

[1:48:01] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[1:48:02] Bob Dobbs: TechBody says,

[1:48:03] Bob Dobbs: very good.

[1:48:04] Bob Dobbs: Perfect algorithms that are always correcting themselves.

[1:48:08] Bob Dobbs: Let's stop there.

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty impressive,

[1:48:11] Bob Dobbs: what's being said here,

[1:48:12] Bob Dobbs: in light of all that we've been saying.

[1:48:14] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:48:15] Cameron McEwen: So if we just go back for a minute,

[1:48:19] Cameron McEwen: bandwidth is how fast you can interact with the people you're interacting with.

[1:48:24] Cameron McEwen: Then TechBody says that's right.

[1:48:26] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly right.

[1:48:29] Cameron McEwen: I think one of the things that TechBody means there is that the word fast,

[1:48:36] Cameron McEwen: how fast you can interact with the people,

[1:48:39] Cameron McEwen: The word fast there needs to be used.

[1:48:42] Cameron McEwen: to be taken not only in terms of acceleration and speed,

[1:48:49] Cameron McEwen: it also needs to be taken in terms of the quality and the range of possibilities over which you can interact with people.

[1:49:01] Cameron McEwen: And that gives a whole other sense to bandwidth.

[1:49:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:49:06] Bob Dobbs: that's right.

[1:49:07] Bob Dobbs: I hope you were leading to explaining what bandwidth is.

[1:49:10] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:49:10] Bob Dobbs: I'd say.

[1:49:11] Bob Dobbs: A quality aspect,

[1:49:14] Bob Dobbs: not just quantity.

[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: All right.

[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: Very good.

[1:49:18] Bob Dobbs: So we'll think about that and see how much more is there of this.

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: very little.

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:49:26] Bob Dobbs: So we'll see if he wraps it up for us to what you're saying or what you're saying leads to what they'll push us a little further.

[1:49:36] Bob Dobbs: But,

[1:49:36] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[1:49:38] Bob Dobbs: bandwidth is your...

[1:49:42] Bob Dobbs: Your super angelic media ecology or paramedicology,

[1:49:47] Bob Dobbs: how you can handle this situation.

[1:49:52] Bob Dobbs: What would you say to others?

[1:49:54] Bob Dobbs: Or if you were in Chardin the White House,

[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: what would you say to the public,

[1:49:58] Bob Dobbs: public's plural?

[1:50:00] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you mean by fast?

[1:50:02] Bob Dobbs: The quality of the depth of your communication,

[1:50:09] Bob Dobbs: what you think you're talking to and...

[1:50:12] Bob Dobbs: how it's responding to you.

[1:50:14] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: I say that's what I'm doing twice a week with ION.

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: It's really tricky interacting with ION now that the tech bodies intermix too.

[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: So we might be coming up to an Explorations of what I've been going through in the last few weeks on the show Innis final part of the dialogue.

[1:50:37] Bob Dobbs: But very good.

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: You're a good man to...

[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: figure this out with there.

[1:50:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:50:45] Cameron McEwen: I'm mostly a listener,

[1:50:47] Cameron McEwen: which

[1:50:48] Cameron McEwen: I don't mind at all.

[1:50:50] Cameron McEwen: You're doing a lot of talking.

[1:50:51] Cameron McEwen: I learn stuff,

[1:50:51] Cameron McEwen: and I appreciate it.

[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: but you're doing a lot of talking.

[1:50:54] Bob Dobbs: Or you're faking you're talking.

[1:50:56] Bob Dobbs: You're actually listening.

[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: very good.

[1:51:01] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if we got all of this on tape.

[1:51:06] Bob Dobbs: So have a good day,

[1:51:08] Bob Dobbs: and we'll talk soon.

[1:51:09] Bob Dobbs: Thank you.

[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:51:10] Bob Dobbs: sir.

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: Bye,

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.

[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: Bye-bye.

[1:51:13] Bob Dobbs: Bye.