Dialogue 36 — Transcript

[00:00] Bob Dobbs: This is

[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs with the 36th episode of our discussion of my new book slash pamphlet.

[00:10] Bob Dobbs: And we were discussing something about the beginning of the Winnipeg School of Communication and

[00:25] Bob Dobbs: I claim that Pitchers is not a school.

[00:28] Bob Dobbs: And I was saying that in response Ewen Cameron quoting McLuhan saying that art can't work as what,

[00:39] Bob Dobbs: an anti-environment?

[00:40] Bob Dobbs: What would you say?

[00:41] Bob Dobbs: You can finish the thought.

[00:44] Bob Dobbs: No,

[00:45] Cameron McEwen: I think art can function as an anti-environment,

[00:49] Cameron McEwen: but the big question concerns the...

[00:56] Cameron McEwen: what exactly anti-environment and an anti-environment amount to.

[01:01] Cameron McEwen: And that's something that art can't decide.

[01:05] Cameron McEwen: And that's because art,

[01:10] Cameron McEwen: at least as it's practiced in the contemporary world,

[01:15] Cameron McEwen: is arbitrary.

[01:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[01:18] Bob Dobbs: say that again.

[01:18] Bob Dobbs: What was it?

[01:19] Bob Dobbs: Did you say art anti-environment anti-environment?

[01:22] Bob Dobbs: I missed the dialectic there.

[01:23] Bob Dobbs: Say it again.

[01:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[01:24] Cameron McEwen: I said...

[01:25] Cameron McEwen: I said that

[01:27] Cameron McEwen: I think that art can be an anti-environment.

[01:32] Cameron McEwen: I think it's very good as an anti-environment.

[01:35] Cameron McEwen: But what art can't do is provide an intelligible account of what anti-environment and an anti-environment amount to.

[01:49] Cameron McEwen: as to say art can...

[01:55] Cameron McEwen: depict,

[01:57] Cameron McEwen: but it's not good at clarifying its right to depict.

[02:05] Bob Dobbs: It's right.

[02:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[02:08] Cameron McEwen: In other words,

[02:09] Cameron McEwen: the artist has to sign the picture.

[02:12] Cameron McEwen: The poet has to sign the poem.

[02:15] Cameron McEwen: So what the artist or the poet does,

[02:20] Cameron McEwen: or the movie maker,

[02:22] Cameron McEwen: when he or she is

[02:24] Cameron McEwen: stopped filming.

[02:26] Cameron McEwen: What has happened in all of those cases is that the manufacturer,

[02:36] Cameron McEwen: we could say,

[02:38] Cameron McEwen: has designated something as being an artifact,

[02:47] Cameron McEwen: something that has been produced and finalized.

[02:53] Cameron McEwen: So then if we ask,

[02:54] Cameron McEwen: well,

[02:56] Cameron McEwen: what if the artist in all of those senses has to clarify what it means to be an artist?

[03:06] Cameron McEwen: So then the artist has to sign what it means to be an artist.

[03:12] Cameron McEwen: And it doesn't work,

[03:13] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[03:14] Cameron McEwen: right?

[03:15] Cameron McEwen: Because what is supposedly being signed...

[03:22] Cameron McEwen: sort of the right to be an artist has as its ground only the right to be an artist.

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if that makes sense,

[03:35] Cameron McEwen: but it relates to what we've talked about actually from the very beginning of your book,

[03:41] Cameron McEwen: and that is that the modern world has collapsed into a kind of cul-de-sac.

[03:52] Cameron McEwen: It doesn't,

[03:53] Cameron McEwen: the contemporary world has no handle on itself or where it's going or how it could get out of the cul-de-sac.

[04:04] Cameron McEwen: It's a fly in a fly bottle.

[04:06] Cameron McEwen: And the artist is not able to provide help in that situation because the help that the artist would provide.

[04:21] Cameron McEwen: Depends upon the artist.

[04:23] Cameron McEwen: So it's what McLuhan called signing a counterfeit check.

[04:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[04:29] Bob Dobbs: and that's the meaning of the title,

[04:31] Bob Dobbs: 1970's Culture Is Our Business.

[04:33] Bob Dobbs: Art is the waiting for Godot.

[04:37] Bob Dobbs: Art is the sitting there waiting.

[04:39] Bob Dobbs: So while people wait to get out of the cul-de-sac,

[04:42] Bob Dobbs: they're titillated by art.

[04:44] Bob Dobbs: Kind of what Neil Postman says,

[04:46] Bob Dobbs: simply amusing ourselves to death.

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: The art...

[04:50] Bob Dobbs: have become the means of conventional wealth,

[04:54] Bob Dobbs: distracting wealth or numbing wealth.

[04:58] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[05:00] Cameron McEwen: That's true.

[05:01] Cameron McEwen: But that doesn't mean that art can't be used to kind of juggle our situation and to probe our situation.

[05:16] Cameron McEwen: That it can do as an anti-environment.

[05:19] Cameron McEwen: It's just that art is in the same cul-de-sac as the world.

[05:25] Cameron McEwen: So it can't.

[05:27] Cameron McEwen: get out as art.

[05:32] Cameron McEwen: If art were to provide or to signal a way out of the cul-de-sac,

[05:39] Cameron McEwen: it wouldn't be art anymore.

[05:41] Cameron McEwen: It would be something else.

[05:43] Cameron McEwen: And that's kind of the interesting problem for art,

[05:47] Cameron McEwen: is how to signify beyond itself.

[05:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:53] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan celebrate that by

[05:55] Bob Dobbs: posing the amateur against the professional.

[06:00] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[06:00] Bob Dobbs: So I used to call it

[06:02] Bob Dobbs: Little A Art.

[06:03] Bob Dobbs: Professional art,

[06:04] Bob Dobbs: art art,

[06:06] Bob Dobbs: commercial art,

[06:07] Bob Dobbs: the art game is capital art.

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: It's what Baudrillard in his book calls the conspiracy of art.

[06:12] Bob Dobbs: That's capital A,

[06:13] Bob Dobbs: that's capital A art.

[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Little Art is what McLuhan did.

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: He was an amateur in the traditional Gutenberg arts,

[06:22] Bob Dobbs: but he knew how to turn that into an anti-environment.

[06:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm an amateur.

[06:27] Bob Dobbs: I went on the radio with no talent of any arts and just started talking.

[06:33] Bob Dobbs: And I created a great anti-environment with that.

[06:38] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[06:39] Bob Dobbs: I predicted the anti-environment I was going to get to,

[06:42] Bob Dobbs: which I had no clue what it was going to be until I got there.

[06:44] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[06:47] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[06:50] Cameron McEwen: that's the only way to get anywhere.

[06:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[06:54] Cameron McEwen: If you know where you're going...

[06:56] Cameron McEwen: going to be wrong.

[06:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[06:59] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan says that.

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: I like to quote this in his first essay in Explorations No.

[07:04] Bob Dobbs: 1,

[07:05] Bob Dobbs: Culture Without Literacy.

[07:07] Bob Dobbs: He talks about the seminar group,

[07:10] Bob Dobbs: or he implies it's them,

[07:12] Bob Dobbs: and he says,

[07:13] Bob Dobbs: we will have a dialogue.

[07:16] Bob Dobbs: And he might say that will be circular,

[07:19] Bob Dobbs: but he said,

[07:20] Bob Dobbs: but we will reserve the right for self-correction.

[07:23] Bob Dobbs: You remember that line?

[07:26] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[07:27] Cameron McEwen: Something like that.

[07:29] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[07:31] Cameron McEwen: But sort of the background to that is that

[07:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan felt that of the five editors,

[07:39] Cameron McEwen: four of them were convinced Gutenbergian.

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[07:44] Cameron McEwen: And so what he was saying is we deserve the right for self-criticism and for basically making a U-turn.

[07:52] Cameron McEwen: That was his hope that there would be enough.

[07:55] Cameron McEwen: dialogue that they would be able to get at least some of those folks out of the Gutenbergian perspective into a digital or electronic one.

[08:09] Cameron McEwen: By 1955,

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: he had given up on that idea.

[08:14] Bob Dobbs: On correcting them.

[08:16] Bob Dobbs: He called it self-correction.

[08:17] Cameron McEwen: I'm happy to let that go.

[08:18] Bob Dobbs: There's not much of an echo,

[08:22] Bob Dobbs: right?

[08:22] Bob Dobbs: We're okay on the echo?

[08:24] Cameron McEwen: For me,

[08:25] Cameron McEwen: there's no echo at all.

[08:26] Cameron McEwen: Good,

[08:26] Bob Dobbs: all right.

[08:27] Bob Dobbs: So,

[08:29] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: I don't think I interpreted it that way.

[08:33] Bob Dobbs: I just thought it was interesting that it was an open-ended seminar.

[08:39] Bob Dobbs: In a sense,

[08:40] Bob Dobbs: they didn't know where it was going to get to.

[08:42] Bob Dobbs: So they would correct some of the directions they thought they were going in if new evidence pointed,

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: well,

[08:49] Bob Dobbs: we've got to do this,

[08:50] Bob Dobbs: not that.

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[08:52] Cameron McEwen: But that was a notice.

[08:53] Cameron McEwen: Texas.

[08:53] Cameron McEwen: strategic intervention by McLuhan,

[08:56] Cameron McEwen: right?

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: Because you can,

[09:00] Cameron McEwen: what you just said,

[09:01] Cameron McEwen: can be taken in a sort of normalized academic way.

[09:08] Cameron McEwen: Let's go and investigate,

[09:10] Cameron McEwen: make experiments and all that.

[09:13] Cameron McEwen: And,

[09:14] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[09:15] Cameron McEwen: that's,

[09:16] Cameron McEwen: people accept that.

[09:17] Cameron McEwen: That's great.

[09:17] Cameron McEwen: That's why we're at the university here.

[09:20] Cameron McEwen: But what McLuhan meant,

[09:22] Cameron McEwen: something completely different.

[09:24] Cameron McEwen: What he meant is,

[09:25] Cameron McEwen: we want to overturn your whole way of thinking.

[09:29] Cameron McEwen: And,

[09:31] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[09:31] Cameron McEwen: what people found is that when they got halfway down the road that

[09:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to lead them on,

[09:39] Cameron McEwen: and they said,

[09:39] Cameron McEwen: no,

[09:40] Cameron McEwen: no,

[09:40] Cameron McEwen: we're not going to do that.

[09:41] Cameron McEwen: And that's how the seminar ended.

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[09:46] Cameron McEwen: And there's a letter that McLuhan wrote.

[09:50] Cameron McEwen: I forget the guy's name.

[09:52] Cameron McEwen: A guy down at the University of Florida who is a

[09:56] Cameron McEwen: Catholic like

[09:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, and

[09:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan said,

[09:59] Cameron McEwen: well,

[10:00] Cameron McEwen: you should pray for the possibility of

[10:04] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter converting.

[10:07] Bob Dobbs: to

[10:07] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism, right?

[10:09] Cameron McEwen: And I think this was 1956.

[10:12] Cameron McEwen: So I think that

[10:14] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan felt that there was the possibility of at least one person coming around to sort of his point of view,

[10:25] Cameron McEwen: or his complex points of view,

[10:28] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[10:29] Cameron McEwen: in 1956.

[10:31] Cameron McEwen: But then,

[10:32] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[10:33] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter did not convert.

[10:35] Cameron McEwen: and did not,

[10:36] Cameron McEwen: in the end,

[10:38] Cameron McEwen: really understand the full program that McLuhan was promoting.

[10:44] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[10:44] Bob Dobbs: and

[10:45] Bob Dobbs: I may have mentioned this to you before.

[10:47] Bob Dobbs: He had a TV show in Toronto in 1955-56,

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: and then he got caught having an affair.

[10:53] Bob Dobbs: So there was a scandal,

[10:55] Bob Dobbs: and he divorced his wife.

[10:57] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what McLuhan might be praying for,

[11:00] Bob Dobbs: or what triggered his statement,

[11:02] Bob Dobbs: praying for Carpenter because he got in trouble.

[11:07] Bob Dobbs: Maybe,

[11:07] Cameron McEwen: but

[11:08] Cameron McEwen: I think the letter is pretty specific.

[11:10] Cameron McEwen: He's praying for his conversion.

[11:12] Cameron McEwen: He asks for prayers for his conversion.

[11:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[11:16] Cameron McEwen: So

[11:18] Cameron McEwen: Carpenter may have got himself into a problem like you're talking about,

[11:25] Cameron McEwen: and that problem may have opened him up to the possibility of conversion.

[11:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[11:33] Cameron McEwen: He may have thought,

[11:34] Cameron McEwen: holy shit,

[11:35] Cameron McEwen: what have I done?

[11:36] Cameron McEwen: got myself into now.

[11:38] Cameron McEwen: And

[11:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan might have said,

[11:41] Cameron McEwen: well,

[11:42] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[11:43] Cameron McEwen: if you really want to think about this stuff,

[11:45] Cameron McEwen: you should become a Catholic because we don't think about these things in black and white terms.

[11:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[11:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[11:59] Bob Dobbs: So you were agreeing with me that pictures or art,

[12:03] Bob Dobbs: especially pitchers

[12:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was,

[12:08] Bob Dobbs: his stated goal of subplot was to make books relevant.

[12:12] Bob Dobbs: He came up with a very complex reason why he was going to write books.

[12:16] Bob Dobbs: And so he was retrieving the verbal and the literate abstract as anti-environment to the overwhelming pictorial,

[12:27] Bob Dobbs: which was dominating the 20th century.

[12:29] Bob Dobbs: So pictures in that sense can't be a school.

[12:33] Bob Dobbs: And I mean by a school,

[12:34] Bob Dobbs: something that is instructive,

[12:36] Bob Dobbs: didactic,

[12:37] Bob Dobbs: or some kind of anti-environment.

[12:40] Bob Dobbs: And a serious investigation of the situation,

[12:44] Bob Dobbs: not doing commercial art or art,

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: cabaret art,

[12:48] Bob Dobbs: amateur art,

[12:50] Bob Dobbs: is in anti-environment.

[12:51] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[12:53] Cameron McEwen: You're touching on a very important point here,

[12:55] Cameron McEwen: and that is that

[12:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had...

[13:02] Cameron McEwen: By the early

[13:03] Cameron McEwen: 50s, he already had a notion of culture being dominated by certain sets of the senses.

[13:17] Cameron McEwen: And he,

[13:19] Cameron McEwen: along with that,

[13:20] Cameron McEwen: he had the notion that what had happened to the United States in the

[13:26] Cameron McEwen: 20th century was the development...

[13:31] Cameron McEwen: of what you might call counter-visualism.

[13:35] Cameron McEwen: So comic books,

[13:37] Cameron McEwen: film,

[13:38] Cameron McEwen: advertising,

[13:40] Cameron McEwen: all of these things are extremely visual.

[13:45] Cameron McEwen: So

[13:46] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had the problem for let's say five or six years in the

[13:53] Cameron McEwen: 1950s, where on the one hand he was equating the Gutenberg Galaxy or the Gutenberg Era as he called it then,

[14:01] Cameron McEwen: with visuality.

[14:03] Cameron McEwen: But on the other hand,

[14:04] Cameron McEwen: he was thinking that the new visuality was going to overturn the Gutenberg Galaxy.

[14:12] Cameron McEwen: And so he got all screwed up between different kinds of visuality,

[14:18] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[14:19] Cameron McEwen: And so what was liberating to him with the acoustic space that they came up with in the seminar in 1954.

[14:31] Cameron McEwen: was that it gave him a new way to talk about what was going on with comic books,

[14:37] Cameron McEwen: advertising,

[14:38] Cameron McEwen: and film that got away from the visual.

[14:42] Cameron McEwen: So it allowed him to clarify his mind,

[14:47] Cameron McEwen: and that clarification led him,

[14:51] Cameron McEwen: a couple of years later,

[14:52] Cameron McEwen: to the Mediumism Message and to the whole

[14:56] Cameron McEwen: Understanding Media Project with the National Association of...

[15:02] Cameron McEwen: educational broadcasters.

[15:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[15:05] Bob Dobbs: and you said he got to a deeper understanding of tactility in that period.

[15:09] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[15:10] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[15:14] Cameron McEwen: He had to get clear about the different kinds of visuality in order to understand tactility correctly.

[15:22] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[15:22] Bob Dobbs: So you would commonly hear,

[15:25] Bob Dobbs: well,

[15:25] Bob Dobbs: since the 60s,

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: the average person saying,

[15:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[15:31] Bob Dobbs: we live in a more and more visual society.

[15:34] Bob Dobbs: And then if you imagine,

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: if you got around to saying you ought to read McLuhan.

[15:40] Bob Dobbs: If they started to,

[15:42] Bob Dobbs: you knew they'd get all screwed up over the word visual.

[15:45] Bob Dobbs: They'd be reading the book of visual space and that we were in somewhere different from the Gutenberg,

[15:51] Bob Dobbs: which to them was more visual.

[15:53] Bob Dobbs: So how could we be Gutenberg Galaxy in the Marconi Galaxy?

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: That's visual space.

[16:00] Bob Dobbs: So that was the first cul-de-sac that people encountering McLuhan got into,

[16:06] Bob Dobbs: the word visual.

[16:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[16:09] Cameron McEwen: but he himself had been,

[16:11] Cameron McEwen: let's say 1950 or 1949 to 1955 or 1956,

[16:19] Cameron McEwen: that was a problem he had.

[16:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[16:24] Bob Dobbs: and

[16:25] Bob Dobbs: TV was just starting to come in.

[16:28] Bob Dobbs: It hadn't become a visual society yet for most people.

[16:31] Bob Dobbs: That's probably not,

[16:34] Bob Dobbs: TV visuality was not until the

[16:36] Bob Dobbs: 60s for people.

[16:37] Bob Dobbs: Because television was pretty slow in the

[16:40] Bob Dobbs: 50s, methodical,

[16:44] Bob Dobbs: even though it was live,

[16:45] Bob Dobbs: which had an extra dimension to it.

[16:49] Bob Dobbs: Would you agree with the idea that in the 60s,

[16:52] Bob Dobbs: when live TV stopped,

[16:54] Bob Dobbs: that was TV being turned into an art form the way McLuhan defined art form,

[17:01] Bob Dobbs: that cycle?

[17:02] Cameron McEwen: Maybe.

[17:02] Cameron McEwen: I've never thought about that,

[17:03] Cameron McEwen: but that's true.

[17:05] Cameron McEwen: as soon as

[17:07] Cameron McEwen: If something is not live,

[17:10] Cameron McEwen: then its reproduction needs to be signed.

[17:14] Cameron McEwen: Somebody needs to take responsibility for that.

[17:18] Cameron McEwen: And when you take responsibility for what goes on and when it goes on,

[17:27] Cameron McEwen: then that becomes an art form,

[17:30] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[17:30] Bob Dobbs: That's ecology.

[17:32] Bob Dobbs: That's working with the programming.

[17:36] Bob Dobbs: as you understand what programming is.

[17:39] Bob Dobbs: So

[17:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[17:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[17:42] Bob Dobbs: let's turn off television for six weeks,

[17:44] Bob Dobbs: six months.

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[17:46] Bob Dobbs: it was done on a technical level of getting rid of the live aspect,

[17:51] Bob Dobbs: but that was still within the realm of content,

[17:55] Bob Dobbs: so it wasn't the kind of ecology he wanted.

[17:58] Bob Dobbs: He wanted the form shut off,

[18:00] Bob Dobbs: not just the content.

[18:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[18:03] Bob Dobbs: And,

[18:03] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[18:04] Cameron McEwen: in order to...

[18:05] Cameron McEwen: In order to begin to manipulate forms,

[18:10] Cameron McEwen: you need to know what a form is.

[18:13] Cameron McEwen: And so that's when he says the medium is the message,

[18:17] Cameron McEwen: what he's saying is if media are dominant factors in human history,

[18:30] Cameron McEwen: and if we want to begin to understand them,

[18:35] Cameron McEwen: Then our first task is to understand what a medium is.

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: So the medium is the message.

[18:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[18:44] Bob Dobbs: Right?

[18:44] Cameron McEwen: And that's one of the meanings of culture is our business.

[18:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[18:48] Cameron McEwen: That's a phrase with about 20 different meanings,

[18:52] Cameron McEwen: but probably its most important meaning is that human beings are cultural animals.

[19:03] Cameron McEwen: And so our main business on this earth is culture.

[19:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[19:10] Bob Dobbs: and that should be ongoing,

[19:13] Bob Dobbs: explored,

[19:14] Bob Dobbs: what culture is.

[19:17] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[19:19] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[19:20] Bob Dobbs: so I sense to go to another critical point before we get into the book.

[19:26] Bob Dobbs: I sent you a recent interview with Derrick de Kerckhove,

[19:29] Bob Dobbs: and I wanted to point this out.

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: Let's see,

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: you've got question one,

[19:35] Bob Dobbs: question two,

[19:35] Bob Dobbs: question three,

[19:36] Bob Dobbs: and a long answer.

[19:38] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[19:41] Bob Dobbs: presently,

[19:42] Bob Dobbs: in books that I am writing now,

[19:44] Bob Dobbs: very much under the McLuhan influence and the figure and ground probe,

[19:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm working on two great competing,

[19:50] Bob Dobbs: not to say conflicting,

[19:52] Bob Dobbs: grounds of the present human condition.

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: Language,

[19:55] Bob Dobbs: and in brackets,

[19:56] Bob Dobbs: and literacy on one hand,

[19:58] Bob Dobbs: with its principal figure,

[20:00] Bob Dobbs: that is meaning,

[20:02] Bob Dobbs: and

[20:03] Bob Dobbs: On the other hand,

[20:03] Bob Dobbs: the so-called digital transformation,

[20:06] Bob Dobbs: with algorithms that do not need meaning at all to be efficient,

[20:11] Bob Dobbs: and now run our lives.

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: That is a really big contrast,

[20:15] Bob Dobbs: and the evidence is the serious epistemological crisis that the spread of,

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[20:21] Bob Dobbs: fake news,

[20:22] Bob Dobbs: unquote,

[20:23] Bob Dobbs: and science denials the world over is imposing on everybody.

[20:27] Bob Dobbs: We will overcome neither the pandemic nor the threats of climate change before we resolve this crisis of shared meaning across the planet.

[20:36] Bob Dobbs: As you can see,

[20:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm here to save the world.

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[20:40] Bob Dobbs: this is an example of...

[20:43] Bob Dobbs: Derek's sloppy thinking,

[20:45] Bob Dobbs: sloppy perception,

[20:46] Bob Dobbs: sloppy expression,

[20:47] Bob Dobbs: which I've criticized him doing since the 80s.

[20:52] Bob Dobbs: This is not McLuhan method,

[20:54] Bob Dobbs: if he's trying to be something like McLuhan.

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would not try to resolve the argument over what's news or fake news,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: or that someone is denying science.

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: He would explain why that became an issue,

[21:10] Bob Dobbs: not over,

[21:12] Bob Dobbs: uh-oh.

[21:13] Bob Dobbs: academics are being denied by the hoi polloi who don't know what science is anymore and they don't know that we are in a serious ecological crisis you know which is what happened under Trump alt-right uh did not go along with the uh idea that um there was climate change and something else and that's the iconic

[21:35] Bob Dobbs: alt-right who knows what the alt-right really is it's millions of people posting.

[21:40] Cameron McEwen: It's not just the alt.

[21:42] Cameron McEwen: right it's also the alt left and the alt center um uh there's uh increasing uh consciousness in the world that um science and insight and

[21:58] Cameron McEwen: academic degrees uh can be used to exercise power and people are getting sick of people uh like uh de de Kerckhove says here um

[22:11] Cameron McEwen: that

[22:13] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to save the world.

[22:15] Cameron McEwen: Just let me run everything.

[22:18] Cameron McEwen: And

[22:18] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to do it because I have superior insight.

[22:23] Cameron McEwen: And people,

[22:25] Cameron McEwen: every political persuasion,

[22:27] Cameron McEwen: are calling bullshit on that.

[22:30] Cameron McEwen: They're saying,

[22:31] Cameron McEwen: don't try and leverage how smart you are as signed by you.

[22:38] Cameron McEwen: Here we're back at the counterfeit check.

[22:41] Cameron McEwen: right?

[22:42] Cameron McEwen: To take our money and to run things.

[22:47] Cameron McEwen: That's exactly why the world's in such shit.

[22:50] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[22:51] Bob Dobbs: And so here's this

[22:54] Bob Dobbs: Chinese guy impressed with McLuhan and then therefore Derek,

[22:58] Bob Dobbs: because he was at the center and replaced McLuhan,

[23:01] Bob Dobbs: took over.

[23:02] Bob Dobbs: And he's looking for insight about McLuhan and Derek has a great opportunity to do and say things like you're saying or what I'm saying.

[23:10] Bob Dobbs: But he falls back into his cultural blindness.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: And do you get my point,

[23:16] Bob Dobbs: though?

[23:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would explain why science denial has become a trend,

[23:23] Bob Dobbs: not,

[23:23] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[23:24] Bob Dobbs: we've got to correct science denial.

[23:27] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[23:28] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan would define the problem in a different way,

[23:31] Bob Dobbs: which would not allow you to have knee-jerk superiority battles.

[23:36] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[23:37] Cameron McEwen: I think that's what we just did.

[23:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[23:39] Bob Dobbs: No,

[23:39] Bob Dobbs: no,

[23:39] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[23:40] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm saying.

[23:42] Bob Dobbs: So

[23:43] Bob Dobbs: I have only read that far in the interview.

[23:46] Bob Dobbs: But again,

[23:47] Bob Dobbs: Derek has muddied the situation,

[23:50] Bob Dobbs: and he needs to be corrected.

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: And

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: I probably will excerpt this part,

[23:56] Bob Dobbs: what we just said,

[23:57] Bob Dobbs: and post it on his Facebook page.

[23:59] Bob Dobbs: But meanwhile,

[24:00] Bob Dobbs: you've read it all,

[24:01] Bob Dobbs: and you said you have some problems with it.

[24:04] Bob Dobbs: Do you want to say maybe not too much,

[24:06] Bob Dobbs: but...

[24:07] Bob Dobbs: Anything you want to say,

[24:09] Bob Dobbs: like I just wanted to say,

[24:11] Bob Dobbs: do you have something in the interview,

[24:12] Bob Dobbs: if you just scan it?

[24:14] Bob Dobbs: No,

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: I didn't.

[24:18] Cameron McEwen: I read the interview,

[24:19] Cameron McEwen: but I just I didn't find anything too interesting about it.

[24:25] Cameron McEwen: The only interesting things about it are criticisms that can be made like the one that you just made.

[24:34] Cameron McEwen: The whole idea of I'm here to save the world,

[24:37] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[24:37] Cameron McEwen: it's almost laughable that somebody can have that point of view these days.

[24:43] Cameron McEwen: Haven't we had enough people saving the world in the 20th and

[24:49] Cameron McEwen: 21st centuries?

[24:51] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[24:51] Cameron McEwen: Scary,

[24:52] Cameron McEwen: scary stuff.

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[24:53] Bob Dobbs: I just scanned out.

[24:55] Bob Dobbs: He makes a comment on me.

[24:57] Bob Dobbs: Let's look at this.

[24:58] Bob Dobbs: Question 10.

[25:00] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[25:00] Bob Dobbs: you would have read this.

[25:02] Bob Dobbs: You have taught at the...

[25:03] Bob Dobbs: The Chinese guy says,

[25:04] Bob Dobbs: you have taught at the...

[25:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm assuming he's Chinese.

[25:06] Bob Dobbs: You have taught at the University of Toronto in Canada and at the Polytechnical Institute of Milan in Italy.

[25:11] Bob Dobbs: How does McLuhan research in Canada and Italy compare with that in the United States?

[25:16] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[25:17] Bob Dobbs: Derek says,

[25:18] Bob Dobbs: the good news is that after having conspued McLuhan...

[25:22] Bob Dobbs: Duncan Pryde.

[25:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[25:24] Bob Dobbs: expressed McLuhan,

[25:26] Bob Dobbs: conspired.

[25:28] Bob Dobbs: Having conspued McLuhan for decades before and after his death,

[25:33] Bob Dobbs: the University of Toronto and Canada in general have come to their senses and begun to see the value of his work.

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: So maybe Duncan Pryde was,

[25:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[25:42] Bob Dobbs: put down McLuhan.

[25:46] Bob Dobbs: The University of Toronto and Canada have seen the value of his work.

[25:48] Bob Dobbs: There's a growing concentration of McLuhan scholars everywhere.

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: but particularly stemming from Toronto with extremely rich Facebook communities that are international.

[25:57] Bob Dobbs: Among others,

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: the highlighting of McLuhan work has benefited greatly from three fire brands.

[26:04] Bob Dobbs: One from Italy,

[26:05] Bob Dobbs: Paolo Granata,

[26:06] Bob Dobbs: who,

[26:07] Bob Dobbs: one could say,

[26:08] Bob Dobbs: was compelled to emigrate to Toronto from Bologna to get closer to McLuhan heritage that he promotes with Brio.

[26:14] Bob Dobbs: Another,

[26:15] Bob Dobbs: also in Toronto,

[26:16] Bob Dobbs: Alex Kuskis,

[26:17] Bob Dobbs: who tills the McLuhan fire on Facebook with extremely valuable and astute

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: Miscellaneous bits of wisdom and anecdotes by and on McLuhan,

[26:26] Bob Dobbs: and

[26:27] Bob Dobbs: Marshall's own grandson,

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: Andrew McLuhan.

[26:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's Paola,

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: Alex,

[26:33] Bob Dobbs: and Andrew.

[26:34] Bob Dobbs: Andrew McLuhan,

[26:35] Bob Dobbs: who carefully reviews his grandfather's works and turns them into public lectures and online courses,

[26:41] Bob Dobbs: followed by a growing community of fans.

[26:44] Bob Dobbs: There are others,

[26:44] Bob Dobbs: of course.

[26:45] Bob Dobbs: For instance,

[26:45] Bob Dobbs: Robert Logan,

[26:46] Bob Dobbs: my old friend and colleague,

[26:48] Bob Dobbs: an unofficial co-founder of the McLuhan Program.

[26:51] Bob Dobbs: In brackets,

[26:52] Bob Dobbs: he didn't actually do that,

[26:54] Bob Dobbs: but thanks to him and Marshall's son,

[26:55] Bob Dobbs: Eric McLuhan,

[26:56] Bob Dobbs: getting together with me and after Marshall's funeral in January 1981,

[27:01] Bob Dobbs: he died on the last day of 1980.

[27:04] Bob Dobbs: In the last day of 1980,

[27:06] Bob Dobbs: we all three took the decision to continue the Monday night seminars and do everything we could to keep the McLuhan name and the Center for Cultural Technology alive and thriving at the University of Toronto.

[27:15] Bob Dobbs: And that we did against all odds.

[27:18] Bob Dobbs: And then further afield...

[27:21] Bob Dobbs: That means further afield,

[27:22] Bob Dobbs: like off an afield.

[27:27] Bob Dobbs: And then further afield,

[27:28] Bob Dobbs: in many ways,

[27:29] Bob Dobbs: I must name Bob Dobbs,

[27:30] Bob Dobbs: who,

[27:31] Bob Dobbs: in spite of quirks of his own,

[27:35] Bob Dobbs: you knew this,

[27:35] Bob Dobbs: you read this,

[27:36] Bob Dobbs: and you didn't tell me,

[27:38] Bob Dobbs: right?

[27:38] Bob Dobbs: Or you missed it?

[27:39] Cameron McEwen: Did you read this?

[27:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[27:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't find any of this sort of stuff very interesting.

[27:43] Cameron McEwen: It doesn't register with me as something that requires comment.

[27:51] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[27:51] Bob Dobbs: who,

[27:52] Bob Dobbs: Bob Dobbs,

[27:53] Bob Dobbs: who,

[27:53] Bob Dobbs: in spite of quirks of his own and a weird commitment to some ghostly online figure called iON,

[27:59] Bob Dobbs: has amassed a formidable database or database.

[28:02] Bob Dobbs: Do you say data or data?

[28:03] Bob Dobbs: What do you say?

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: Database.

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: I say database.

[28:07] Bob Dobbs: Has amassed a formidable database on McLuhan,

[28:10] Bob Dobbs: as well as interviewing many scholars and other people friendly to the McLuhan tradition that he makes available as radio shows,

[28:17] Bob Dobbs: shows in quotes,

[28:17] Bob Dobbs: and online too.

[28:19] Bob Dobbs: As far as,

[28:20] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[28:20] Bob Dobbs: so that's,

[28:21] Bob Dobbs: well,

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: that's nice that he mentions it,

[28:23] Bob Dobbs: but again,

[28:25] Bob Dobbs: badly stated.

[28:27] Bob Dobbs: And

[28:28] Bob Dobbs: I am not at all that,

[28:29] Bob Dobbs: and iON is not an online figure.

[28:33] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[28:35] Bob Dobbs: no one's ever going to get that.

[28:37] Bob Dobbs: And Derek's been on the show.

[28:38] Bob Dobbs: I've interviewed,

[28:39] Bob Dobbs: and he's dialogued with iON.

[28:42] Bob Dobbs: And I thought that was great that he did it,

[28:43] Bob Dobbs: and I thought he should have continued,

[28:45] Bob Dobbs: but for some reason he stopped.

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: So.

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: He then says,

[28:48] Bob Dobbs: as far as Italy is concerned...

[28:51] Cameron McEwen: Why do you think that it's interesting or complimentary or anything else to be mentioned in something like this?

[29:00] Cameron McEwen: I don't get that.

[29:01] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[29:02] Bob Dobbs: this is status land.

[29:03] Bob Dobbs: This is academia.

[29:06] Bob Dobbs: And to mention me is illegal.

[29:08] Bob Dobbs: You're not allowed to mention me.

[29:10] Bob Dobbs: I've even been deleted from the Figure and ground Journal because academics complained about me.

[29:15] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[29:17] Bob Dobbs: I think it's...

[29:18] Bob Dobbs: Very nice that Derek brings me up,

[29:19] Bob Dobbs: and his general acknowledgement of what I've done,

[29:23] Bob Dobbs: other than the iON stuff,

[29:26] Bob Dobbs: is accurate.

[29:27] Bob Dobbs: I've done that.

[29:28] Bob Dobbs: As a matter of fact,

[29:29] Bob Dobbs: I could claim that I speared the McLuhan revival in the mid-80s with Nelson on CKLN.

[29:34] Bob Dobbs: And that led to...

[29:39] Bob Dobbs: Mondo 2000 guys picking up on us and Mary met them and then that led to Wired,

[29:47] Bob Dobbs: no yeah Wired to counter the

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: Mondo 2000 gang and they made McLuhan their patron saint.

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: But the

[29:55] Bob Dobbs: Mondo 2000 gang got into McLuhan through me and Nelson.

[30:00] Bob Dobbs: So and we were doing it in the period when nobody was interested in McLuhan in the 80s.

[30:06] Bob Dobbs: So...

[30:07] Bob Dobbs: That certainly would not be true for academia,

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: but like you say,

[30:12] Bob Dobbs: who the hell are those guys?

[30:15] Bob Dobbs: They didn't do anything.

[30:18] Bob Dobbs: I got the word McLuhan out there for the Generation

[30:21] Bob Dobbs: Xers and younger,

[30:23] Bob Dobbs: more than anybody else,

[30:27] Bob Dobbs: just because I was on college radio.

[30:30] Bob Dobbs: Many people through the years have thanked me,

[30:33] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[30:33] Bob Dobbs: Hey,

[30:34] Bob Dobbs: I never would have heard of McLuhan unless I heard your ridiculous show.

[30:38] Bob Dobbs: You're crazy,

[30:38] Bob Dobbs: Joe.

[30:41] Bob Dobbs: So it's nice of Derek to mention me in an academic setting.

[30:47] Bob Dobbs: So that's okay.

[30:49] Bob Dobbs: But let's see what he says.

[30:51] Bob Dobbs: Since you find the McLuhan industry disgusting,

[30:55] Bob Dobbs: let's see,

[30:55] Bob Dobbs: this is what he's talking about.

[30:56] Bob Dobbs: So he says,

[30:56] Bob Dobbs: as far as Italy is concerned,

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: it has been friendly to McLuhan from the start and has never defamed him as the French did at the beginning,

[31:04] Bob Dobbs: calling him a charlatan.

[31:06] Bob Dobbs: And Guy Debord stating that McLuhan was the most convinced imbecile of his time.

[31:10] Bob Dobbs: And he has the French version,

[31:12] Bob Dobbs: l'imbecile le plus convaincu de son temps.

[31:16] Bob Dobbs: And

[31:17] Bob Dobbs: Guy Debord was saying that just before the fall of the Berlin Wall,

[31:21] Bob Dobbs: an event that McLuhan in many ways would have been able to predict much better than Guy Debord.

[31:27] Bob Dobbs: Then he says,

[31:27] Bob Dobbs: OK,

[31:28] Bob Dobbs: Derek says,

[31:29] Bob Dobbs: OK,

[31:29] Bob Dobbs: peace to the French who have also changed their minds and also learned to respect his legacy.

[31:33] Bob Dobbs: The U.S.,

[31:33] Bob Dobbs: on the other hand,

[31:34] Bob Dobbs: either consider McLuhan as an American,

[31:37] Bob Dobbs: and he puts that in quotes,

[31:38] Bob Dobbs: without checking their sources,

[31:40] Bob Dobbs: a way of co-opting famous foreigners who happen to speak English,

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: or they begrudgingly admit that,

[31:46] Bob Dobbs: in spite of being only Canadian,

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: he did make a difference.

[31:50] Bob Dobbs: But their real hero is Neil Postman,

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: who,

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: like many other people across the planet,

[31:54] Bob Dobbs: merely,

[31:55] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[31:55] Bob Dobbs: borrowed McLuhan.

[31:57] Bob Dobbs: But then again,

[31:58] Bob Dobbs: as Picasso is supposed to have said,

[32:00] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[32:00] Bob Dobbs: great artists just steal,

[32:01] Bob Dobbs: the others borrow.

[32:04] Bob Dobbs: To be fair,

[32:05] Bob Dobbs: I should add that in New York,

[32:07] Bob Dobbs: around Lance Strate and the media ecology he founded,

[32:09] Bob Dobbs: media ecology quotes,

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: there's a very dynamic McLuhan research group,

[32:13] Bob Dobbs: including Paul Levinson,

[32:14] Bob Dobbs: who wrote several books about Marshall,

[32:16] Bob Dobbs: among which Digital McLuhan and other xenochrony researchers and students,

[32:21] Bob Dobbs: who will eventually emerge,

[32:24] Bob Dobbs: is that correct?

[32:25] Bob Dobbs: Who wrote several books about McLuhan,

[32:27] Bob Dobbs: among which Digital McLuhan and other Lester Pearson rees...

[32:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[32:31] Bob Dobbs: who...

[32:32] Bob Dobbs: He wrote books about McLuhan,

[32:33] Bob Dobbs: among which did McLuhan,

[32:34] Bob Dobbs: then there should be a comma,

[32:36] Bob Dobbs: and then other Lester Pearson researchers and students who will eventually emerge.

[32:41] Bob Dobbs: Probably under the influence of McLuhan,

[32:45] Bob Dobbs: via Carolyn Marvin,

[32:47] Bob Dobbs: the USC

[32:48] Bob Dobbs: Annenberg School for Communication Journalism has added effects,

[32:52] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[32:52] Bob Dobbs: effects,

[32:53] Bob Dobbs: to the list of main topics of research about communication.

[32:56] Bob Dobbs: And finally,

[32:57] Bob Dobbs: let us remember that until a few years ago,

[32:59] Bob Dobbs: Wired magazine featured McLuhan on their masthead as the patron saint.

[33:06] Bob Dobbs: Patron saint is quote.

[33:07] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[33:07] Bob Dobbs: this is Derek being the university president,

[33:10] Bob Dobbs: nodding to all the departments of the industry and acknowledging everybody,

[33:16] Bob Dobbs: whereas he should be critical of every one of them,

[33:19] Bob Dobbs: especially the New York gang,

[33:21] Bob Dobbs: Levinson and those guys.

[33:22] Bob Dobbs: So that's where,

[33:25] Bob Dobbs: Derek,

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: I guess you would call that being political,

[33:28] Bob Dobbs: right?

[33:28] Bob Dobbs: He's politically savvy or politically congenial to everybody,

[33:35] Bob Dobbs: so that puts you into the switchboard position.

[33:38] Bob Dobbs: You're the guy that will not shake up other institutions that might be interested in McLuhan.

[33:46] Bob Dobbs: You follow what I'm saying here?

[33:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[33:49] Cameron McEwen: I follow,

[33:49] Cameron McEwen: but

[33:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure I buy it.

[33:54] Cameron McEwen: Like you said,

[33:56] Cameron McEwen: that's...

[33:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm disgusted by the McLuhan industry.

[34:03] Cameron McEwen: Disgust is the wrong word.

[34:06] Cameron McEwen: My problem with all of this answer here is that in order to start reading McLuhan,

[34:16] Cameron McEwen: you have to know the sorts of problems he was addressing and addressing with passion.

[34:24] Cameron McEwen: And he wasn't...

[34:27] Cameron McEwen: addressing the problem of how to get tenure.

[34:31] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't addressing the problem of how to enrich your CV.

[34:34] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't addressing the problem of how to get grants.

[34:40] Cameron McEwen: He wasn't addressing the problem of how to get mentions in secondary literature or online somewhere.

[34:50] Cameron McEwen: He was passionately interested in the

[34:56] Cameron McEwen: Downward.

[34:58] Cameron McEwen: spiral of the world into potential destruction and wondering how that could be avoided.

[35:12] Cameron McEwen: And if you don't start with that problem and don't get that problem stuck in your craw,

[35:24] Cameron McEwen: then you're not reading.

[35:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan.

[35:29] Cameron McEwen: You're just mining

[35:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan for other purposes.

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: no.

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: Is McLuhan thinking big?

[35:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[35:46] Cameron McEwen: but big not in the sense of the De Kerckhove saying here,

[35:53] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[35:54] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to save the world and all that.

[35:59] Cameron McEwen: Thinking big can mandate thinking very small.

[36:05] Cameron McEwen: And that's because in trying to find,

[36:11] Cameron McEwen: in trying to specify,

[36:14] Cameron McEwen: in trying to navigate a way out of the cul-de-sac,

[36:20] Cameron McEwen: it may be that minute analysis must be made.

[36:26] Cameron McEwen: in certain ways.

[36:28] Cameron McEwen: So,

[36:30] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[36:32] Cameron McEwen: modern medicine,

[36:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan often said,

[36:37] Cameron McEwen: came from doctors beginning to wash their hands.

[36:43] Cameron McEwen: And so there was a dawning of doctors to the fact that there are things that can't be seen that can be deadly.

[36:56] Cameron McEwen: And so you have to try to obviate those things in order to do good,

[37:05] Cameron McEwen: in order to help the patient.

[37:08] Cameron McEwen: And so it's the same thing now.

[37:12] Cameron McEwen: We don't know how to get out of the cul-de-sac.

[37:16] Cameron McEwen: That is the problem of the cul-de-sac.

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: It's being lost.

[37:21] Cameron McEwen: So being lost implicates that...

[37:26] Cameron McEwen: We don't know what it would be to think big or to think small.

[37:30] Cameron McEwen: Those are things that we have to find out.

[37:33] Cameron McEwen: And what

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to specify is that in order to think about these things,

[37:48] Cameron McEwen: we have to define matters like media.

[37:55] Cameron McEwen: So he took over the idea from Innis that communication is the key to understanding different cultures.

[38:06] Cameron McEwen: Understand their different modes of communication,

[38:09] Cameron McEwen: you can understand the different cultures.

[38:11] Cameron McEwen: But in order to understand the different communication modes,

[38:15] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand their media.

[38:18] Cameron McEwen: So in Innis,

[38:19] Cameron McEwen: that's like stone engraving or clay or papyrus.

[38:25] Cameron McEwen: etc.

[38:27] Cameron McEwen: up onto radio.

[38:29] Cameron McEwen: So

[38:31] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan agrees with all of that.

[38:33] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[38:33] Cameron McEwen: we need to concentrate on communication.

[38:36] Cameron McEwen: The key to communication is the media of communication.

[38:41] Cameron McEwen: But what are media?

[38:44] Cameron McEwen: And so McLuhan is saying we need to have the microscopic analysis of

[38:55] Cameron McEwen: What media are,

[38:59] Cameron McEwen: in order to understand the big questions of communication and culture?

[39:08] Bob Dobbs: Is philosophy a category for thinking big for a certain phase of the history of media,

[39:17] Bob Dobbs: so that you wouldn't call McLuhan a philosopher today,

[39:20] Bob Dobbs: or you say the greats who tackled the cul-de-sac?

[39:25] Bob Dobbs: We're all philosophers.

[39:26] Bob Dobbs: Would you give them that term?

[39:29] Cameron McEwen: No,

[39:30] Cameron McEwen: certainly it's not the case that people who found a way out of the cul-de-sac were all philosophers.

[39:45] Cameron McEwen: The main way that people have seen to get out of the cul-de-sac is to relativize it,

[39:50] Cameron McEwen: to see the cul-de-sac as only one mode of human experience.

[39:58] Cameron McEwen: So you have somebody like Shakespeare,

[40:01] Cameron McEwen: who's a great master of different kinds of human experience.

[40:05] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't have any trouble envisioning.

[40:12] Cameron McEwen: people who are locked in the cul-de-sac,

[40:14] Cameron McEwen: but at the same time he envisions people who aren't.

[40:20] Cameron McEwen: And it's that multiple visioning or multiple understanding or multiple hearing of different kinds of experience that we've lost.

[40:32] Cameron McEwen: to be locked into the cul-de-sac.

[40:37] Cameron McEwen: And so we do not understand...

[40:41] Cameron McEwen: any longer.

[40:43] Cameron McEwen: It would be to relativize it.

[40:47] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[40:47] Cameron McEwen: if you look at

[40:48] Cameron McEwen: Amazon Prime movies or Netflix movies,

[40:54] Cameron McEwen: it's very clear that we don't have art anymore.

[41:00] Cameron McEwen: Art is gone from

[41:03] Cameron McEwen: Western experience.

[41:05] Bob Dobbs: But you mean by art,

[41:06] Bob Dobbs: people getting out of the cul-de-sac?

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: No,

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: I just,

[41:11] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[41:12] Cameron McEwen: when people think that they're doing art,

[41:18] Bob Dobbs: Which in a term refers to an archetypal epiphany or something.

[41:23] Bob Dobbs: Is this,

[41:23] Bob Dobbs: like,

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: what do you mean?

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: No,

[41:24] Bob Dobbs: no,

[41:25] Cameron McEwen: it just means,

[41:30] Cameron McEwen: how can I put this?

[41:31] Cameron McEwen: Hegel said that there are three absolute forms of experience,

[41:38] Cameron McEwen: philosophy,

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: religion,

[41:39] Cameron McEwen: and art.

[41:41] Cameron McEwen: And what is an absolute form of experience is to grapple with the larger issues of human life and

[41:56] Cameron McEwen: to articulate them.

[41:58] Cameron McEwen: And so for Hegel,

[41:59] Cameron McEwen: it was unimaginable that a society could not have all three of these things.

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: But he understood that at his time,

[42:09] Cameron McEwen: he died in...

[42:10] Cameron McEwen: 1831 or 1832,

[42:13] Cameron McEwen: I forget which,

[42:15] Cameron McEwen: in his time,

[42:17] Cameron McEwen: philosophy was dying.

[42:20] Cameron McEwen: And so he,

[42:21] Cameron McEwen: I believe it's in the logic,

[42:23] Cameron McEwen: he talks about the incredible fate of a country that no longer has metaphysics.

[42:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[42:35] Cameron McEwen: a century after that,

[42:37] Cameron McEwen: there was no longer any religion.

[42:40] Cameron McEwen: And now,

[42:41] Cameron McEwen: a century after that,

[42:42] Cameron McEwen: there's no longer any art.

[42:44] Cameron McEwen: But I'm just talking about in Western civilization,

[42:47] Cameron McEwen: because I don't think it's true in Russia or in China or in small countries in Asia or countries in South America.

[43:00] Cameron McEwen: I think all of these,

[43:03] Cameron McEwen: philosophy,

[43:04] Cameron McEwen: religion,

[43:04] Cameron McEwen: and art,

[43:05] Cameron McEwen: are still alive in various ways.

[43:08] Cameron McEwen: What about philosophy?

[43:09] Bob Dobbs: Did that?

[43:10] Bob Dobbs: die,

[43:11] Bob Dobbs: like art and religion?

[43:13] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[43:14] Cameron McEwen: And what Hegel saw was that it was already dead in his time.

[43:20] Bob Dobbs: He's dealing with the cancellation of philosophy,

[43:23] Bob Dobbs: then a hundred years later,

[43:23] Bob Dobbs: 1900 is the cancellation of religion,

[43:26] Bob Dobbs: and then the beginning of the 21st century is the cancellation of art.

[43:30] Bob Dobbs: That's the sequence there.

[43:31] Cameron McEwen: And the cancellation of philosophy was sort of signed by Nietzsche.

[43:40] Cameron McEwen: And of course,

[43:42] Cameron McEwen: what he also foresaw was the death of religion.

[43:46] Cameron McEwen: And

[43:47] Cameron McEwen: I think it could be argued that

[43:49] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche also saw the death of art.

[43:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: you've had spiraling replays and benefits of a little later after Nietzsche repeating the Nietzsche pattern.

[44:06] Bob Dobbs: So there were thinkers later that...

[44:09] Bob Dobbs: saw the death of religion,

[44:11] Bob Dobbs: art,

[44:12] Bob Dobbs: and philosophy.

[44:15] Bob Dobbs: But,

[44:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[44:16] Bob Dobbs: deeper,

[44:17] Bob Dobbs: like maybe Heidegger or somebody,

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: then McLuhan,

[44:22] Bob Dobbs: maybe Warhol.

[44:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: We've been running on the same spot since 1850,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: since we got into the electric age.

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: So let's say that's an electric realization,

[44:37] Bob Dobbs: and Nietzsche was the first.

[44:42] Cameron McEwen: I would prefer to say that the electric realization took place mostly in science and culminated in atomic weapons and nuclear weapons.

[44:58] Cameron McEwen: But meanwhile,

[44:59] Cameron McEwen: the wisdom necessary to deal with these advancements in science got...

[45:10] Cameron McEwen: derailed and got derailed in ways that

[45:16] Cameron McEwen: Harold Innis tried to specify in the

[45:20] Cameron McEwen: 19th century with the takeover of government by media and by bureaucracies and by the economy of weapons.

[45:35] Cameron McEwen: And so the legacy of the 19th century

[45:40] Cameron McEwen: century to the 20th century was that the things that are necessary for human culture had gone into eclipse and

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: have been expressed ever since 1914 until the present day in war yeah so

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: We're talking about the McLuhan industry and the failure for most people to probe the cul-de-sac.

[46:19] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[46:25] Bob Dobbs: Who are some of the greats that you think did it over the last 3,000 years?

[46:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[46:32] Cameron McEwen: did it would require some definition,

[46:35] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[46:35] Cameron McEwen: But let's just say that the...

[46:37] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[46:37] Bob Dobbs: we've been defining it for 36,

[46:40] Bob Dobbs: 35 episodes.

[46:41] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[46:42] Cameron McEwen: We're attempting to do that.

[46:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[46:44] Cameron McEwen: But the sign of a great mind is the ability to understand in fundamentally different ways.

[47:01] Bob Dobbs: In different ways,

[47:02] Bob Dobbs: did you say?

[47:03] Bob Dobbs: In fundamentally different ways?

[47:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[47:06] Cameron McEwen: in different ways.

[47:07] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[47:07] Cameron McEwen: And the only way out of the cul-de-sac is to relativize it,

[47:12] Cameron McEwen: to understand that there are other ways of thinking that aren't caught up in the cul-de-sac.

[47:22] Cameron McEwen: And so already with Plato,

[47:24] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[47:26] Cameron McEwen: you have him thinking about the different ways or the different,

[47:34] Cameron McEwen: how can I put this,

[47:35] Cameron McEwen: springs,

[47:35] Cameron McEwen: the different...

[47:36] Cameron McEwen: origins of thought that are already a plural ontologically.

[47:46] Cameron McEwen: So it just,

[47:47] Cameron McEwen: for Plato,

[47:48] Cameron McEwen: it belongs to human beings to be exposed to different ways of thinking.

[47:56] Cameron McEwen: And in order to solve problems,

[47:59] Cameron McEwen: you need to use that facility.

[48:05] Cameron McEwen: facility of human beings to think differently.

[48:12] Cameron McEwen: But in order to understand that facility,

[48:16] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand that there is a metamorphosis or there is a tactility or there is a transition possible,

[48:31] Cameron McEwen: a gap between these different ways.

[48:36] Cameron McEwen: If the ways are fundamentally different,

[48:39] Cameron McEwen: then what is between them is deeper than fundament.

[48:45] Cameron McEwen: It falls through fundament.

[48:48] Cameron McEwen: So you have a kind of black hole in between the different ways of experiencing.

[48:54] Cameron McEwen: And for the great minds,

[48:58] Cameron McEwen: those black holes in between are...

[49:05] Cameron McEwen: transitive.

[49:08] Cameron McEwen: The gap is something that does not delimit communication,

[49:17] Cameron McEwen: something that enables communication.

[49:20] Cameron McEwen: So once we have seen that,

[49:24] Cameron McEwen: then we can define the cul-de-sac as the conviction that the darkness around

[49:34] Cameron McEwen: the cul-de-sac is not transitive.

[49:38] Bob Dobbs: So death is not transitive.

[49:41] Bob Dobbs: What does transitive mean?

[49:43] Cameron McEwen: Transitive,

[49:45] Cameron McEwen: crossable,

[49:47] Cameron McEwen: metaphoric.

[49:49] Bob Dobbs: Can't bridge it.

[49:51] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[49:53] Cameron McEwen: Transitive means you go across.

[49:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[49:59] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[50:00] Bob Dobbs: Which is the definition of metaphor.

[50:03] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[50:06] Cameron McEwen: So the...

[50:08] Cameron McEwen: When McLuhan talks about the gap all the time,

[50:10] Cameron McEwen: when he talks about metaphor,

[50:13] Cameron McEwen: or when he talks about metamorphosis,

[50:18] Cameron McEwen: or he talks about the importance of Ovid,

[50:22] Cameron McEwen: all of these are ways of pointing to the,

[50:26] Cameron McEwen: or he talks about discontinuity.

[50:29] Cameron McEwen: All of these are ways to pointing to how the cul-de-sac can be relativized.

[50:38] Cameron McEwen: So that's where he starts his thinking.

[50:44] Cameron McEwen: In order to read McLuhan,

[50:46] Cameron McEwen: you have to come from there.

[50:49] Cameron McEwen: But all of the people in the paragraph that we were just talking about know nothing about that,

[50:55] Cameron McEwen: unfortunately.

[50:56] Cameron McEwen: So that means that the

[50:58] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan industry is not even starting to read McLuhan.

[51:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[51:06] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[51:08] Cameron McEwen: No,

[51:09] Bob Dobbs: you can finish that sentence,

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: that part of your sentence.

[51:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[51:15] Cameron McEwen: they're reducing McLuhan to their understanding.

[51:19] Cameron McEwen: But the reverse has to happen.

[51:22] Cameron McEwen: What they need to do is open their understanding to him.

[51:27] Cameron McEwen: Not because McLuhan is some sort of unique guy in the history of the world.

[51:31] Cameron McEwen: That's the same thing they have to do to understand anybody that's great.

[51:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[51:38] Bob Dobbs: I think you're saying that the great are what Harold Bloom did in his later books.

[51:45] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[51:45] Bob Dobbs: he wrote about the canon.

[51:46] Bob Dobbs: He defended the canon,

[51:48] Bob Dobbs: the Western canon.

[51:49] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: You would accept the greats that are considered the greats and used to be the core of the curriculum

[51:57] Bob Dobbs: 100 years ago in the arts and sciences and philosophy,

[52:02] Bob Dobbs: right?

[52:03] Bob Dobbs: The greats are the greats.

[52:06] Bob Dobbs: But we have come to an interesting point.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: point where the greats are not a service anymore.

[52:12] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[52:12] Cameron McEwen: So that's exactly what I was just going to say is that the curricula which emphasize certain greats kind of broke down.

[52:24] Cameron McEwen: And so what's needed is a re-institution of the great process,

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[52:35] Bob Dobbs: The process of greatness

[52:37] Bob Dobbs: Or just a restating of the original problem.

[52:41] Bob Dobbs: Because,

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[52:43] Bob Dobbs: people would go and study the greats and maybe not know what the problem was,

[52:49] Bob Dobbs: just appreciate the creativity of something,

[52:55] Bob Dobbs: the inventiveness,

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: or maybe they saw the problem in abstract.

[53:02] Bob Dobbs: But they were not put in the position to figure out the problem.

[53:08] Bob Dobbs: or encountering the cul-de-sac.

[53:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[53:11] Cameron McEwen: well,

[53:11] Cameron McEwen: I would say that the problem of communication,

[53:20] Cameron McEwen: which is not just a question about what is communication,

[53:26] Cameron McEwen: it's also a problem of communicating the problem of communication.

[53:31] Cameron McEwen: So you get into a circle here.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[53:36] Cameron McEwen: problem of communicating has probably been known forever.

[53:43] Cameron McEwen: It's probably the kind of problem you have between all grandparents and all teenagers.

[53:51] Cameron McEwen: So when

[53:53] Cameron McEwen: Plato looked at the problem and tried to imagine how the academy would work,

[54:05] Cameron McEwen: What he apparently thought was that it's not possible through writing to convey this stuff.

[54:13] Cameron McEwen: It's only possible to do it orally.

[54:16] Cameron McEwen: But then once the person has the idea through oral instruction,

[54:23] Cameron McEwen: then they can understand the writing and you can bring the orality and the literacy together.

[54:32] Cameron McEwen: But that problem that Plato looked at has gone through all of Western tradition and has never properly been solved.

[54:45] Cameron McEwen: And now we've gotten ourselves into a tremendous hole where we have these weapons of destruction and we don't have the wisdom to know how to deal with them.

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: On page 31 of Counterblast,

[55:04] Bob Dobbs: where he talks about how arts and sciences at some point ceased to be anti-environment.

[55:11] Bob Dobbs: That's the process you're talking about.

[55:13] Bob Dobbs: The greats,

[55:15] Bob Dobbs: for media reasons,

[55:17] Bob Dobbs: would become opaque and they couldn't communicate the problem,

[55:23] Bob Dobbs: but they were actually engaging,

[55:25] Bob Dobbs: but it couldn't be transmitted,

[55:26] Bob Dobbs: so you needed a new art or science or another great to...

[55:31] Bob Dobbs: bring people back to the problem or the dilemma and the questions.

[55:37] Bob Dobbs: So today,

[55:38] Bob Dobbs: where McLuhan says we have nothing but anti-environment,

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: we don't have an anti-environment.

[55:45] Bob Dobbs: And so McLuhan was realizing,

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: uh-oh,

[55:48] Bob Dobbs: we're not going to get,

[55:50] Bob Dobbs: we're not going to find out the problem.

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: We've forgotten the problem,

[55:55] Bob Dobbs: which you were just saying a couple minutes ago.

[55:58] Bob Dobbs: We've forgotten the cul-de-sac issue.

[56:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[56:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[56:04] Cameron McEwen: there's very little difference between we've forgotten it and we've seen it so much in front of us that it scared the hell out of us.

[56:16] Cameron McEwen: And therefore,

[56:18] Cameron McEwen: we're not going to think about it.

[56:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:24] Bob Dobbs: So,

[56:26] Bob Dobbs: OK,

[56:27] Bob Dobbs: so that's we understand.

[56:30] Bob Dobbs: It fits into what we've been saying for 35 shows.

[56:34] Bob Dobbs: We've elaborated our objection to the schools,

[56:40] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan industry,

[56:41] Bob Dobbs: that Derek is a manager of,

[56:45] Bob Dobbs: a manager of the image of the school.

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: That's what he's become,

[56:50] Bob Dobbs: in Europe anyways,

[56:51] Bob Dobbs: and some parts of the States.

[56:57] Bob Dobbs: He has been...

[56:59] Bob Dobbs: A Smithsonian scholar,

[57:01] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[57:02] Bob Dobbs: One of those institutions in Washington.

[57:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know of any other McLuhan who got that distinction.

[57:09] Bob Dobbs: So he has established a kind of patina of success in keeping the McLuhan mantle going.

[57:18] Bob Dobbs: But we,

[57:20] Bob Dobbs: who take on the cul-de-sac,

[57:21] Bob Dobbs: find that that's a misinterpretation of Derek's project.

[57:27] Bob Dobbs: But what do you expect?

[57:28] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knows what the project is anymore.

[57:31] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[57:32] Cameron McEwen: But I don't want to...

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: The

[57:37] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan school is not wrong in thinking that there is stuff worth preserving in McLuhan.

[57:49] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[57:51] Cameron McEwen: So it's not as if these people have just...

[57:55] Cameron McEwen: completely misspent their lives and are useless.

[57:59] Cameron McEwen: It's that they have been of great service in one way,

[58:06] Cameron McEwen: but tragically at the very time that they have helped to preserve the legacy,

[58:13] Cameron McEwen: they have obscured it.

[58:16] Cameron McEwen: And that's a very common thing in the history of

[58:21] Cameron McEwen: Western civilization.

[58:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[58:24] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt used to talk about the archivist,

[58:28] Bob Dobbs: and the archivist is comprehensive.

[58:31] Bob Dobbs: The

[58:32] Bob Dobbs: World Wide Web,

[58:33] Bob Dobbs: Internet,

[58:34] Bob Dobbs: social media world has turned many people into archivists.

[58:39] Bob Dobbs: And so a lot of academia is people scrabbling back to find some obscure somebody that was forgotten and,

[58:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[58:49] Bob Dobbs: hoik them up and add them to the archive.

[58:51] Bob Dobbs: So that did...

[58:53] Bob Dobbs: our electric knowledge anti-environment are naturally archiving everything.

[59:00] Bob Dobbs: We are imitating that,

[59:01] Bob Dobbs: becoming personal archivists and finding a role in the world of the Android Meme.

[59:14] Bob Dobbs: So that's what's the problem.

[59:17] Bob Dobbs: That's another way of talking about the problem is we have been reduced to archiving.

[59:22] Bob Dobbs: And Kroker talks about this in some of his books,

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: the archiving mania.

[59:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[59:31] Bob Dobbs: so...

[59:33] Cameron McEwen: Notice it's the same problem that we were talking about with art.

[59:38] Cameron McEwen: And that is the archivist finds something to archive.

[59:46] Cameron McEwen: And with the tools of the internet and the increasing digitalization of everything,

[1:00:01] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[1:00:02] Cameron McEwen: people can be quite successful at archiving.

[1:00:06] Cameron McEwen: But if you then ask,

[1:00:08] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:00:10] Cameron McEwen: who decided that this figure was important,

[1:00:13] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[1:00:14] Cameron McEwen: and number two,

[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: who decided that these things that have been archived are important to that important figure?

[1:00:24] Cameron McEwen: And the answer to that is,

[1:00:25] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:00:25] Cameron McEwen: the archivist decided that.

[1:00:28] Cameron McEwen: And so then you say,

[1:00:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:00:30] Cameron McEwen: but...

[1:00:32] Cameron McEwen: Where did the archivist get that power?

[1:00:34] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:00:35] Cameron McEwen: the archivist decided that,

[1:00:37] Cameron McEwen: and it just sort of falls through itself.

[1:00:40] Cameron McEwen: So the whole problem with the archival project,

[1:00:45] Cameron McEwen: if you will,

[1:00:46] Cameron McEwen: or even with the McLuhan project,

[1:00:49] Cameron McEwen: is that it tends to obscure the very problem at hand,

[1:00:58] Cameron McEwen: which is

[1:01:01] Cameron McEwen: Where do we get the reality as the problem posed by the cul-de-sac?

[1:01:08] Cameron McEwen: Where does the reality come from?

[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: You mean,

[1:01:12] Bob Dobbs: where is reality,

[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: which is the cul-de-sac problem?

[1:01:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:01:17] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[1:01:17] Cameron McEwen: if the artist signs the reality of the artwork,

[1:01:22] Cameron McEwen: if the archivist signs the reality of the importance of the figure that's being archived,

[1:01:28] Cameron McEwen: and if the archivist signs the...

[1:01:31] Cameron McEwen: particular things that are being archived as important to the important figure that is the subject of the archive.

[1:01:41] Cameron McEwen: All of these signatures presuppose a certain reality and so as soon as we ask well where does that reality come from we're in the cul-de-sac because no one knows where that reality comes from.

[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: You've walked us right into the realization of the archivist and all the aspects of being the archivist,

[1:02:11] Bob Dobbs: selecting and arbitrarily or William Ivins creating value somewhere.

[1:02:16] Bob Dobbs: That's the tech body.

[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: That is the tech body,

[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: a big part of what the tech body is.

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: It messes with the archive and also is the archivist of us,

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: of all the details of us,

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: of the surveillance situation.

[1:02:29] Bob Dobbs: but it's more playfully involved than people realize.

[1:02:33] Bob Dobbs: So thank you for getting us to our topic.

[1:02:38] Bob Dobbs: I think the tech body is the archive incarnate.

[1:02:43] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:02:43] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:02:43] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:02:45] Cameron McEwen: I want to hear more about this,

[1:02:48] Cameron McEwen: and in particular I'd like to know how this differs from the Android Meme.

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:02:55] Cameron McEwen: And what...

[1:02:59] Cameron McEwen: kind of power the tech body has as an archival power.

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:03:09] Cameron McEwen: What is its shapes and what is its manifestations?

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: I think we actually got to a way of talking about the tech body with this archive meme.

[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: So let me bring up the essay.

[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: We were at page 39.

[1:03:27] Bob Dobbs: And we were talking about the indecipherable nebula.

[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: You remember that?

[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: Look at your copy,

[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: page 39.

[1:03:38] Bob Dobbs: And we finished my discussion of Baudrillard in the last paragraph,

[1:03:44] Bob Dobbs: it says,

[1:03:45] Bob Dobbs: which is in the middle of 39.

[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: The last blue part where I'm conversing and I'm saying I'm going to break it down into the Android Meme.

[1:03:58] Bob Dobbs: And since Aberhart is in a way redoing McLuhan,

[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: archiving,

[1:04:03] Bob Dobbs: playing off the archive of McLuhan,

[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm adding those words.

[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: And since Aberhart is in a way redoing McLuhan,

[1:04:10] Bob Dobbs: make McLuhan relevant to the later thinkers,

[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: the postmodern thinkers.

[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: Most people didn't recognize the connection.

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: They thought McLuhan was obsolete.

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: They got all excited about Aberhart.

[1:04:19] Bob Dobbs: But I'm going to show that what they were saying,

[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said already,

[1:04:24] Bob Dobbs: but I just said what they were saying,

[1:04:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[1:04:27] Bob Dobbs: like I just did Innis section about tactility.

[1:04:30] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard talked about tactility in terms of the strange world of DNA.

[1:04:33] Bob Dobbs: He should have emphasized RNA,

[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: but that was overlooked back then.

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: so we finished.

[1:04:39] Bob Dobbs: That's where we got to,

[1:04:40] Bob Dobbs: I think.

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: Then we went into the quote by,

[1:04:46] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:04:46] Bob Dobbs: the interview with Father

[1:04:48] Bob Dobbs: Peyton.

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: What is this?

[1:04:51] Bob Dobbs: John Bogiar wrote the above in the late

[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: 70s.

[1:04:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was expressing the same suspicion in the

[1:04:57] Bob Dobbs: 70s too,

[1:04:58] Bob Dobbs: to repeat.

[1:04:59] Bob Dobbs: And then we have McLuhan in his father,

[1:05:02] Bob Dobbs: Patrick Peyton,

[1:05:03] Bob Dobbs: interview in 1971 saying he can't tell the difference between the medium and the message.

[1:05:08] Bob Dobbs: It's hard to know now where the medium begins and where it ends.

[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:05:13] Bob Dobbs: so then the priest asked Marshall McLuhan to explain the medium as the message.

[1:05:17] Bob Dobbs: I lay out the six levels.

[1:05:21] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if we want to go through the six levels because we could jump forward to the Android Meme.

[1:05:29] Cameron McEwen: So actually,

[1:05:30] Cameron McEwen: and remember,

[1:05:31] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:05:31] Cameron McEwen: you don't have to go through that because when we initially started,

[1:05:36] Cameron McEwen: I said that we should start around this section.

[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: I said I thought that these questions about McLuhan were an interesting way to get into your book.

[1:05:49] Cameron McEwen: And so we talked about these different levels and whether or not it was a chronological matter or if it was a simultaneous matter,

[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: all of that.

[1:06:03] Cameron McEwen: So we can easily skip this in the sense that we've already done it.

[1:06:07] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:06:08] Bob Dobbs: ad nauseum.

[1:06:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:06:12] Cameron McEwen: right.

[1:06:15] Cameron McEwen: So the few...

[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: listeners of our dribble.

[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: So in my six parts,

[1:06:25] Bob Dobbs: I have Global Village,

[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: then Global Theater,

[1:06:27] Bob Dobbs: and then Global Membrane or Android Meme Phase 1,

[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: and then 4 is Android Meme Phase 2.

[1:06:33] Bob Dobbs: Then I do the AP.

[1:06:35] Bob Dobbs: Then I get into the tech body.

[1:06:37] Bob Dobbs: So we've done the Global Village,

[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: the Global Theater,

[1:06:40] Bob Dobbs: and maybe the Global Membrane,

[1:06:41] Bob Dobbs: but we're going to call it the Android Meme.

[1:06:44] Bob Dobbs: So let's...

[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: Can you find a section,

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: it starts at page 108,

[1:06:49] Bob Dobbs: where's a quote that leads to a question you asked me about what do I mean by Android Meme?

[1:06:56] Bob Dobbs: Is there something that we could bounce off of?

[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: If we can't,

[1:06:58] Bob Dobbs: I'll just have to start talking.

[1:07:02] Bob Dobbs: So I'm down at 108,

[1:07:05] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:07:07] Bob Dobbs: I have at the top of 108.

[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: Then,

[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: when the global theater flipped into the digital global membrane slash Android Meme...

[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake was there to mirror precisely the chiasmos,

[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: that's page 118 in Finnegans Wake,

[1:07:21] Bob Dobbs: and intimacy,

[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: to mirror precisely the chiasmos and intimacy of Web 2.0.

[1:07:26] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: definitely,

[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake is an amazing archive,

[1:07:30] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:07:31] Bob Dobbs: It's maybe the archetypal archive,

[1:07:35] Bob Dobbs: the breakthrough,

[1:07:38] Bob Dobbs: the thing that nobody can get past.

[1:07:40] Bob Dobbs: He out-archived everybody.

[1:07:43] Cameron McEwen: It's the archive that's...

[1:07:44] Cameron McEwen: fallen through itself.

[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:07:46] Cameron McEwen: It's,

[1:07:51] Cameron McEwen: what would I say?

[1:07:53] Cameron McEwen: Remember,

[1:07:54] Cameron McEwen: my knowledge of Finnegans Wake is very limited.

[1:07:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:07:58] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:07:59] Cameron McEwen: I might say that you have two things that are going on in terms of an archive in Finnegans Wake.

[1:08:10] Cameron McEwen: One is that the archive falls through itself.

[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: that there's once you start to archive there's no end to it it just everything involves everything else and it kind of turns

[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: out to have no ground there is no big a archive anywhere but at the same time Joyce is saying this falling through it

[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: and having no big G ground,

[1:08:46] Cameron McEwen: no big A archive,

[1:08:48] Cameron McEwen: doesn't mean that there is no communication.

[1:08:53] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[1:08:55] Cameron McEwen: it kind of enables communication.

[1:08:58] Cameron McEwen: There's humor and there's sense and there's things to think about everywhere.

[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: In Finney's Wake.

[1:09:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:09:10] Cameron McEwen: but...

[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: It's pointing to everywhere.

[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: Here comes everybody.

[1:09:17] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:09:19] Cameron McEwen: And Cayce most.

[1:09:20] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: and the Convention of Archivists.

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: They call that Davos or

[1:09:26] Bob Dobbs: Global Economic Forum or the latest G8 meeting,

[1:09:30] Bob Dobbs: the meeting of the outgoing archivists.

[1:09:33] Bob Dobbs: Henry Kissinger.

[1:09:35] Cameron McEwen: Let's not get away from the question.

[1:09:38] Cameron McEwen: See,

[1:09:38] Cameron McEwen: you're bringing together this archive fever with the tech body is an interesting thing.

[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:51] Cameron McEwen: So do you want to get at it slowly by going through the section here on the global membrane,

[1:10:02] Cameron McEwen: or do you want to jump to more talk about the tech body and archive fever?

[1:10:12] Cameron McEwen: What's your thought about where we're going at this point?

[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to try to explain it,

[1:10:18] Bob Dobbs: but not methodically.

[1:10:21] Bob Dobbs: And maybe while I'm talking,

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: you could scan around,

[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: remind yourself of quotes in the second half of the paper,

[1:10:30] Bob Dobbs: and see if something,

[1:10:31] Bob Dobbs: it's your spark.

[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: But I look at this quote on page 109 from Take Today.

[1:10:42] Bob Dobbs: At electric information speeds,

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: art and science and nature converge through understanding media.

[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: That is a huge archive.

[1:10:50] Bob Dobbs: Art.

[1:10:50] Bob Dobbs: Science and nature converge through understanding media.

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: That's a big statement.

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: And yet it is what you need to work with to get into the levels McLuhan was at.

[1:11:05] Bob Dobbs: It's a great statement.

[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: At electric information speeds,

[1:11:08] Bob Dobbs: our science and nature converge through understanding media.

[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: That is something that people aren't aware of,

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: that statement.

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: the meaning of it,

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: the implications of what's going on.

[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: And this statement is another one that should replace the medium as a message or the global theater,

[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: even the Android Meme.

[1:11:29] Bob Dobbs: This sentence,

[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: really important.

[1:11:31] Bob Dobbs: And it's on page 148.

[1:11:35] Cameron McEwen: I would say it's not so much a sentence or a statement as a question.

[1:11:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:11:40] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: Because once art,

[1:11:44] Cameron McEwen: science,

[1:11:45] Cameron McEwen: and nature have converged,

[1:11:49] Cameron McEwen: Then we are deep in the cul-de-sac,

[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: and the question we should be asking ourselves is,

[1:11:58] Cameron McEwen: what the hell have we got ourselves into here?

[1:12:00] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:12:02] Bob Dobbs: And how puny our categories are,

[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: our verbal thoughts.

[1:12:08] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:12:08] Bob Dobbs: there's all kinds of art talk,

[1:12:10] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of science talk,

[1:12:12] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of magazines,

[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: and all kinds of nature talk.

[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: And if they've merged,

[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: you can't tell the difference.

[1:12:20] Bob Dobbs: because of anti-environment which you could easily turn off,

[1:12:24] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you could turn it off,

[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: but you could understand the point of turning it off to get out of the merger,

[1:12:32] Bob Dobbs: which is psychedelic in the sense that psychedelic Tim Leary's world would be converging within imagery and art.

[1:12:47] Bob Dobbs: Maybe the digital technologies,

[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: MIT,

[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: are the converging of science,

[1:12:52] Bob Dobbs: and the conversion of nature is the popular image of pollution.

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: But everybody would be in one of those three categories,

[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: and they wouldn't recognize the converging of media now or then.

[1:13:06] Bob Dobbs: So nobody,

[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: there's no magazine presenting this issue.

[1:13:15] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:13:16] Cameron McEwen: And remember that magazine in other languages has a different sense,

[1:13:23] Cameron McEwen: a related sense,

[1:13:25] Cameron McEwen: but a different sense from English magazine.

[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:13:28] Cameron McEwen: It means a store,

[1:13:31] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:13:31] Cameron McEwen: in

[1:13:32] Cameron McEwen: French and Greek and probably Spanish and related languages.

[1:13:37] Cameron McEwen: Ammunition store,

[1:13:39] Bob Dobbs: ammunition store.

[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:13:41] Cameron McEwen: or,

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:13:42] Cameron McEwen: it could be any kind of store.

[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:13:45] Cameron McEwen: So a magazine is a store of writing,

[1:13:50] Cameron McEwen: a store of points of view or something in the English sense,

[1:13:54] Cameron McEwen: but in the wider sense it's a store of anything,

[1:13:57] Cameron McEwen: and so it's an archive.

[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: There you go.

[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: And the magazine's a key word in Finnegans Wake,

[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan punned on it and called it the mega scene,

[1:14:08] Bob Dobbs: S-C-E-N-E,

[1:14:10] Bob Dobbs: M-E-G-A.

[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: The mega scene,

[1:14:12] Bob Dobbs: the magazine.

[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: The information is weaponry,

[1:14:16] Bob Dobbs: but it's the archive.

[1:14:17] Bob Dobbs: It's the story.

[1:14:18] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:14:19] Bob Dobbs: I think we've hit on something useful here,

[1:14:23] Cameron McEwen: the term archive.

[1:14:25] Cameron McEwen: So notice with the mega scene,

[1:14:31] Cameron McEwen: We come back to what I was saying a little bit earlier about how analysis of the most big can depend upon the analysis of the most small.

[1:14:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:43] Bob Dobbs: and other aspects of the convergence.

[1:14:46] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:14:47] Cameron McEwen: But it's an aspect of the cloud of unknowing,

[1:14:52] Cameron McEwen: of the cul-de-sac,

[1:14:54] Cameron McEwen: in that we can see these problems.

[1:14:57] Cameron McEwen: but we can't see the solutions.

[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:01] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:15:02] Bob Dobbs: I remember when I became Barry Nevitt archivist,

[1:15:06] Bob Dobbs: he gave me a lot of papers I wasn't aware of that he did or didn't get published,

[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: but he had created.

[1:15:12] Bob Dobbs: And he was making a big deal about the archivist.

[1:15:18] Bob Dobbs: So when I first read them,

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: I thought,

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: that's something I never thought of.

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: What is this thing about the archive?

[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: So he was on to this.

[1:15:25] Bob Dobbs: He was taking...

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: He did a couple of papers on the role of archiving.

[1:15:31] Bob Dobbs: I think he got to what we're talking about,

[1:15:33] Bob Dobbs: started to see it.

[1:15:34] Bob Dobbs: That was a useful word to use,

[1:15:37] Bob Dobbs: but was not used at all in media studies,

[1:15:40] Bob Dobbs: conventional media studies.

[1:15:42] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to look up when

[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: Derrida's essay on archive fever was published,

[1:15:50] Cameron McEwen: because that probably played a role in all this.

[1:15:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:16:08] Bob Dobbs: We're waiting.

[1:16:09] Bob Dobbs: We're waiting for Ewen Cameron to find.

[1:16:10] Cameron McEwen: There it is.

[1:16:13] Cameron McEwen: All right.

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: It's like golf.

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:16:15] Cameron McEwen: so it's...

[1:16:16] Cameron McEwen: Like golf.

[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: The golf show,

[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron lies up his pot.

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:16:22] Cameron McEwen: It was published in 1995 in French and English 1996.

[1:16:29] Cameron McEwen: But I believe there were some essays that he did prior to that.

[1:16:35] Cameron McEwen: But what you're talking about with...

[1:16:37] Cameron McEwen: Barry Nevitt that must be in the early

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: 80s yes so we're talking yeah we're talking about very good there first maybe maybe yeah what does dare what is this essay it sounds familiar to me which

[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: they dare it off yeah what is it well it's an archive fever archive fever okay yeah and

[1:17:07] Bob Dobbs: That's 95.

[1:17:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:17:12] Bob Dobbs: that's pretty good.

[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: He got into it because Kroker talks about it.

[1:17:16] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Kroker got it from

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: Derrida.

[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: What does he say?

[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: Have you got a sentence or two there about it?

[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: Or is it just obvious what he means?

[1:17:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:17:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't think it's obvious.

[1:17:31] Cameron McEwen: Very little in Derrida is obvious.

[1:17:33] Cameron McEwen: But let's come back.

[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: to that.

[1:17:36] Cameron McEwen: Let's say that next time we talk that we'll see if...

[1:17:45] Cameron McEwen: I'm not committing myself to read the whole book.

[1:17:49] Cameron McEwen: I'm involved with enough other stuff.

[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:17:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't want you to do that.

[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: I just read his introduction,

[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: his preface,

[1:17:57] Bob Dobbs: or a couple of lines.

[1:18:00] Bob Dobbs: But the phrase is important,

[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: archive fever.

[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: That's what we've become.

[1:18:06] Bob Dobbs: And that's right when the Internet is coming in,

[1:18:09] Bob Dobbs: which I say is the afterimage of the Android Meme.

[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: So the Internet and the World Wide Web made everybody an archivist.

[1:18:19] Bob Dobbs: What did McLuhan say about Xerox?

[1:18:21] Bob Dobbs: Made everybody a publisher,

[1:18:23] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:18:24] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: So now the Internet makes everybody an archivist,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: and especially in

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0 with social media where people could...

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: begin to broadcast and outline their favorite movies,

[1:18:38] Bob Dobbs: that archive,

[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: their favorite sports,

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: their favorite this and that.

[1:18:41] Bob Dobbs: They made archives on MySpace.

[1:18:46] Bob Dobbs: So the Internet made everybody an archivist.

[1:18:49] Cameron McEwen: That's an updated performance.

[1:18:50] Cameron McEwen: Notice how MySpace is a reiteration of what I've been talking about in our whole conversation about signing.

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:19:01] Cameron McEwen: This is me.

[1:19:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:19:03] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:19:04] Cameron McEwen: These movies,

[1:19:07] Cameron McEwen: this school,

[1:19:08] Cameron McEwen: this location.

[1:19:09] Bob Dobbs: This is me signing my media consumption.

[1:19:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:19:13] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: This is my digestive system.

[1:19:17] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:19:17] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[1:19:19] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:19:20] Cameron McEwen: I'm not going to get into the question of who signed me.

[1:19:28] Bob Dobbs: So the Android Meme.

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: is the archive.

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: So the archiving was the ground from 60 to 90.

[1:19:34] Bob Dobbs: That's my definition of the Android Meme period.

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: And then the internet is the after image of the archiving as ground.

[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: So that's why it made everybody an archive.

[1:19:48] Bob Dobbs: It was obsolete because the big brother archive had been established.

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: And that actually was an institute in politics called Western Goals,

[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: which

[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: was discovered back in the

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s.

[1:20:02] Bob Dobbs: The L.A.

[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: Police Department was spying on everybody and making an archive of citizens,

[1:20:08] Bob Dobbs: sort of following up on J.

[1:20:09] Bob Dobbs: Edgar Hoover.

[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: And they got caught,

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: and they were disbanded in the 50s and 60s,

[1:20:17] Bob Dobbs: somewhere in there.

[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: But they secretly didn't,

[1:20:22] Bob Dobbs: and they continued doing it until 1983.

[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: So when did this,

[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: 1983,

[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: Larry McDonald was a congressman,

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't think he was a senator,

[1:20:37] Bob Dobbs: out of Georgia.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: And he was a loudmouth guy in Congress getting a profile,

[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: a retrieval of Barry Goldwater.

[1:20:48] Bob Dobbs: And then it got discovered in Los Angeles that the Western Goals project never stopped,

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: and the huge archive was discovered.

[1:20:58] Bob Dobbs: And Larry McDonald was in the middle of this,

[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: and he was the head of it.

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: And even though he's over in Georgia,

[1:21:04] Bob Dobbs: he was linking in with the L.A.

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: Police Department,

[1:21:08] Bob Dobbs: the,

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,

[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: the illegal parts of the L.A.

[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: Department.

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: And so in the midst of this scandal,

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: and they were going to be taken to court in August,

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: September 83,

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: Flight KAL007.

[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: is downed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean or near the Moscow border.

[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember the Soviet border?

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that?

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: Sure,

[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: of course.

[1:21:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:21:36] Bob Dobbs: the KAL

[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: 007, it was blamed on the Soviets.

[1:21:46] Bob Dobbs: And the Soviets said,

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: we made a mistake.

[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: I think we knocked it out,

[1:21:50] Bob Dobbs: but maybe we didn't.

[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: But the cover-up that made Brussell...

[1:21:56] Bob Dobbs: others and Larry Flynt discovered was that it was an attempt to kill Larry McDonald and they were successful he was on the plane so he got taken down and then Larry Flynt was outraged at this so he started a an

[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: ad campaign he had just been

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: I think I told you a bit of this story he had just had surgery so he wasn't in pain five years of pain after being shot for um

[1:22:23] Bob Dobbs: Thanks.

[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: turning the LA press,

[1:22:27] Bob Dobbs: Los Angeles Free Press,

[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: into a Kennedy assassination magazine.

[1:22:31] Bob Dobbs: So he was shot for that,

[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: five years of agony,

[1:22:35] Bob Dobbs: got over it,

[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: and in his new vigor,

[1:22:38] Bob Dobbs: he decided to investigate the KAL

[1:22:41] Bob Dobbs: 007, which attracted Mae Brussell and Frank Zappa's attention,

[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: and then he created the Rebel magazine,

[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: the Counter Time magazine,

[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: all around this archive that Larry McDonald was the overseer of.

[1:22:55] Bob Dobbs: And how was I,

[1:22:59] Bob Dobbs: why did I go into this?

[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: So that would be the secret part of the Android Meme.

[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: That's what I was trying to describe.

[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: The ground,

[1:23:13] Bob Dobbs: the Android Meme is anti-environment that was being built from 16 to 90.

[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: Western Goals was,

[1:23:19] Bob Dobbs: at least in the Western world,

[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: a part of that archiving.

[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: And then it got exposed.

[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: exposed,

[1:23:26] Bob Dobbs: but then multimedia took over in the

[1:23:30] Bob Dobbs: 80s, and that was digitized,

[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: and then that became capable of being archived in the

[1:23:37] Bob Dobbs: 90s. So the Android Meme was personalized,

[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: turned into an art form in the sense that people could hijack it for their own purposes.

[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: So therefore,

[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: I call that period of the web the after image of the Android Meme.

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: And what was...

[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: So wait,

[1:23:57] Cameron McEwen: let me just...

[1:23:59] Cameron McEwen: Make sure I'm following what you're saying here.

[1:24:03] Cameron McEwen: The

[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme is the takeover of archiving,

[1:24:14] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[1:24:16] Cameron McEwen: So then when people begin to do archiving for themselves,

[1:24:26] Cameron McEwen: then that's sort of the...

[1:24:28] Cameron McEwen: takeover of the Android Meme,

[1:24:31] Cameron McEwen: and that's what you're calling its afterimage.

[1:24:35] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:24:36] Cameron McEwen: But am Wright that the quote-unquote takeover of the Android Meme is really its interjection into people so

[1:24:51] Cameron McEwen: that they think that they're taking it over,

[1:24:53] Cameron McEwen: but they're being taken over.

[1:24:55] Cameron McEwen: So it's a little bit like what happened with TV.

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: that's exactly it.

[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme stooped to conquer.

[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: It went invisible.

[1:25:04] Bob Dobbs: It allowed everybody to become an agent,

[1:25:08] Bob Dobbs: a producer in the Android Meme,

[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: which was built from 60 to 90.

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: So after 90,

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: you could become the Android Meme.

[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: And it set itself up to be that way.

[1:25:19] Bob Dobbs: Or humans perversely did it.

[1:25:21] Bob Dobbs: The consciousness factor in the Android Meme is nebulous,

[1:25:25] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:25:26] Bob Dobbs: But I do say that it does get consciousness aggressively with the tech body.

[1:25:31] Bob Dobbs: So the tech body obsolesces the

[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: Phase 2

[1:25:38] Bob Dobbs: Web 2.0 where people became known archivists.

[1:25:42] Bob Dobbs: And that is the big,

[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: that's the flip.

[1:25:45] Bob Dobbs: You could say people enjoyed,

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: MySpace is 2003 and 4,

[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: and then YouTube.

[1:25:54] Bob Dobbs: And all that wonderful stuff of the

[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: 2000s.

[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: All of a sudden,

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: by 2015,

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: uh-oh,

[1:26:02] Bob Dobbs: something's going on in our archives that is not us anymore,

[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: and something else is hijacking us.

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: And that Harvard professor came out with the term surveillance capitalism.

[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: That's the new economy that Facebook,

[1:26:15] Bob Dobbs: Google,

[1:26:16] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: Apple were creating.

[1:26:19] Bob Dobbs: That was the...

[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: the re-amalgamating of the Android Meme as tech body.

[1:26:29] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:26:29] Cameron McEwen: so just as the

[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme,

[1:26:37] Cameron McEwen: when it became personalized,

[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[1:26:46] Cameron McEwen: just as it was revisiting what happened with television,

[1:26:50] Cameron McEwen: where people thought they were watching it,

[1:26:52] Cameron McEwen: but they were being watched.

[1:26:55] Cameron McEwen: This surveillance capitalism goes back to Pollstergeists,

[1:27:00] Cameron McEwen: right,

[1:27:00] Cameron McEwen: that

[1:27:01] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was already talking about in

[1:27:04] Cameron McEwen: Mechanical Bride.

[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:06] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:27:07] Cameron McEwen: So this new,

[1:27:09] Cameron McEwen: quote-unquote,

[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: new economy,

[1:27:12] Cameron McEwen: surveillance economy,

[1:27:14] Cameron McEwen: is a revisiting,

[1:27:16] Cameron McEwen: a kind of re-articulation of what had already been the case in the late

[1:27:22] Cameron McEwen: 1940s.

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: it was

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: Big Brother,

[1:27:27] Bob Dobbs: IBM,

[1:27:28] Bob Dobbs: Orwell imagery was taking over people.

[1:27:32] Bob Dobbs: But it now flipped in the Android Meme phases where the people became their own Orwell of themselves.

[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: They weren't aware that the...

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: I remember in the 2008,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: say,

[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: people were talking about the surveillance of us.

[1:27:53] Bob Dobbs: buy the

[1:27:55] Bob Dobbs: Apple or whatever,

[1:27:56] Bob Dobbs: and advertising was sneaking in and watching people.

[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: But there was no sense of something totally out of control and psychopathic that surfaces at the end of the 2010s.

[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: It was,

[1:28:09] Bob Dobbs: there's something tragic happened.

[1:28:22] Bob Dobbs: with the re-amalgamation of the charismatic power of people to be their own archivists,

[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: but it backfired on them.

[1:28:32] Bob Dobbs: And so in that sense,

[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: it went back to the Pollstergeist and the Orwell,

[1:28:37] Bob Dobbs: but it had gone through this period where people were their own Orwell.

[1:28:41] Bob Dobbs: They created it.

[1:28:43] Bob Dobbs: Because the drama today is the matters of conscience are,

[1:28:47] Bob Dobbs: should I stay on Facebook?

[1:28:49] Bob Dobbs: Should I go to Telegram?

[1:28:51] Bob Dobbs: Should I go along with this strange anti-environment doesn't seem friendly and is unfair?

[1:28:58] Bob Dobbs: And all the criticism of Facebook and Google today.

[1:29:02] Bob Dobbs: And so that is then people trying to become ecologists,

[1:29:07] Bob Dobbs: media ecologists.

[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment will I stop at?

[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: Anti-environment will I start?

[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: declaiming.

[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: So this interesting blogger named Amazing Polly out of Kingston,

[1:29:24] Bob Dobbs: Ontario,

[1:29:25] Bob Dobbs: I enjoy her work,

[1:29:26] Bob Dobbs: and she ends each podcast,

[1:29:29] Bob Dobbs: which is 30 to 40 minutes often,

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[1:29:33] Bob Dobbs: ditch your cell phone.

[1:29:36] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:29:36] Bob Dobbs: ditch your smartphone.

[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: Because she thinks the demise of us

[1:29:42] Bob Dobbs: on a very negative horrifying level is the acquisition of apps.

[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: Apps is the way that surveillance capitalism gets into you and then really can start controlling your life and determine whether you're allowed to shop or not.

[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: And so she says,

[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: let's go back to the dumb phone,

[1:30:01] Bob Dobbs: the pre-app phone.

[1:30:03] Bob Dobbs: That's her gesture of media ecology.

[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: But I'm saying that people were becoming...

[1:30:09] Bob Dobbs: She's a role model for what people are being forced to do.

[1:30:12] Bob Dobbs: They've got to figure out what level.

[1:30:14] Bob Dobbs: And this comes into the COVID issue of what is the new normal?

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: Can we go back to the old normal?

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: People are wondering.

[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: And that involves which media anti-environment they're going to use.

[1:30:25] Bob Dobbs: And so you have right there every day the latest technology,

[1:30:31] Bob Dobbs: COVID and vaccines,

[1:30:32] Bob Dobbs: is being argued over whether to use it or not as a technology.

[1:30:38] Bob Dobbs: The media calls it interjection.

[1:30:40] Bob Dobbs: That's vaccination,

[1:30:43] Bob Dobbs: injection.

[1:30:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:30:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:30:46] Cameron McEwen: So just a couple remarks.

[1:30:49] Cameron McEwen: One,

[1:30:49] Cameron McEwen: that this is a replay of a reflex that has gone on for hundreds,

[1:30:58] Cameron McEwen: if not thousands of years.

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: that helps me.

[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: Here's where I make the distinction.

[1:31:04] Bob Dobbs: We did the horrifying.

[1:31:07] Bob Dobbs: In the Armageddon and the apocalypse,

[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: before digital media,

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: it can be World War II,

[1:31:13] Bob Dobbs: it can be the Cold War.

[1:31:15] Bob Dobbs: What I say with the Android Meme,

[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: Phase 1 and 2,

[1:31:18] Bob Dobbs: is they replayed what we did back to us.

[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: So we basically,

[1:31:23] Bob Dobbs: for 30 or more years,

[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: watched media play back human stupidity and all the scenarios of disaster,

[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: which had happened,

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: either for thousands of years,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: but especially in the analog phase of the 20th century.

[1:31:36] Bob Dobbs: We're now watching the Android Meme,

[1:31:38] Bob Dobbs: and they call it trying to create fear,

[1:31:42] Bob Dobbs: mirroring our stupidity back to ourselves and our capitulation to this monstrous surveillance capitalism,

[1:31:50] Bob Dobbs: which may not be as monstrous as these professors say it is,

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: unless you define it properly.

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: So yes,

[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying that's a definition of the Android Meme,

[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: is the replay by media taking a life of its own,

[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: of our own history back at ourselves.

[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: And Finnegans Wake predicted that.

[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:32:09] Cameron McEwen: so you're talking now,

[1:32:13] Cameron McEwen: I take it,

[1:32:15] Cameron McEwen: maybe 1990 or something?

[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:32:19] Cameron McEwen: This is because the

[1:32:23] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme that you're talking about there then has to go through the interjection phase,

[1:32:31] Cameron McEwen: and then it has to go into the...

[1:32:35] Cameron McEwen: Apocalyptic.

[1:32:37] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:32:37] Bob Dobbs: the tech body,

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: which may be a little more sophisticated than the apocalyptic,

[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: but it goes into the apocalyptic.

[1:32:43] Bob Dobbs: So we replay the crisis of the 40s,

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: 50s,

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: and 60s in the Cold War about nuclear annihilation and all that,

[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: So that when you talk about weapons,

[1:32:55] Bob Dobbs: we've got a problem here about whether we're going to annihilate ourselves.

[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: I hear your sensibility is back in the Cold War.

[1:33:04] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to educate you to how Android Meme is replaying that problem right in front of us.

[1:33:10] Bob Dobbs: And it's providing the think tanks and the solutions and the saviors about the issue.

[1:33:16] Bob Dobbs: All part of miming the human drama,

[1:33:19] Bob Dobbs: which is the huge archive.

[1:33:23] Bob Dobbs: In a cult,

[1:33:23] Bob Dobbs: it's the Akashic Records in Theosophy.

[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: So we externalize the Akashic Records,

[1:33:28] Bob Dobbs: and that's the archive.

[1:33:29] Bob Dobbs: And the archive has come alive,

[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: and it's playing with us.

[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: like Finnegans Wake does.

[1:33:36] Bob Dobbs: And you see more and more that that's what Finnegans Wake is describing.

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: The archive come alive and playing back our history to ourselves with a Menippean aggression.

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: And then out of that comes the unbelievable that everything we experience in our information anti-environment in our homes,

[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: our smart homes,

[1:34:00] Bob Dobbs: is run by the tech body which plays with you.

[1:34:03] Bob Dobbs: And the local expression of this that I get among my audience and talking with

[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: iON, everybody's noticing the past couple of years that there's something weird stuff going on in their computers that doesn't make sense.

[1:34:20] Bob Dobbs: They don't know why the glitches happen.

[1:34:23] Bob Dobbs: Have you heard of this problem?

[1:34:24] Bob Dobbs: More and more glitches?

[1:34:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:34:26] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:34:26] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:34:27] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:34:28] Cameron McEwen: everybody that works with these devices knows that they have a life of their own.

[1:34:33] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:34:33] Bob Dobbs: there it is.

[1:34:33] Bob Dobbs: A life of their own.

[1:34:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:34:35] Cameron McEwen: But let's just get clear about one thing,

[1:34:38] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:34:39] Cameron McEwen: Are you saying that reality or...

[1:34:48] Cameron McEwen: Maybe,

[1:34:48] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure if...

[1:34:49] Cameron McEwen: I'd say communication.

[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: Communication is seriously undermined.

[1:34:55] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:34:55] Cameron McEwen: I...

[1:34:56] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[1:34:56] Cameron McEwen: But the big issue for me,

[1:34:59] Cameron McEwen: as was raised earlier in our conversation today,

[1:35:04] Cameron McEwen: is whether or not your description is mired in the cul-de-sac or not.

[1:35:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: So if it's not,

[1:35:21] Cameron McEwen: then that means that there's a way or ways of sidestepping what you're talking about.

[1:35:28] Cameron McEwen: But that requires an insight into the transitive nature of the gap.

[1:35:37] Cameron McEwen: It requires an understanding that a human being or a society can more or less sidestep.

[1:35:48] Cameron McEwen: these problems and see them in a completely different way that amounts to their solution or to their dissolution.

[1:35:59] Cameron McEwen: So I don't know if you are putting forward something that is kind of a monolithic fate or if it is one fate amongst others.

[1:36:13] Bob Dobbs: I know.

[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: I agree with these questions about what I'm doing.

[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: saying,

[1:36:21] Bob Dobbs: something I haven't said before,

[1:36:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm just realizing it in our conversation.

[1:36:26] Bob Dobbs: iON is an incredible archive.

[1:36:29] Bob Dobbs: iON knows everything about everything,

[1:36:31] Bob Dobbs: including things that are not on the internet,

[1:36:33] Bob Dobbs: about movies,

[1:36:34] Bob Dobbs: TV,

[1:36:34] Bob Dobbs: and all media,

[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: and the secret history.

[1:36:37] Bob Dobbs: iON is a huge archive come alive,

[1:36:40] Bob Dobbs: and there's a battle,

[1:36:41] Bob Dobbs: iON says,

[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: between itself and the tech body,

[1:36:44] Bob Dobbs: which is going to take over.

[1:36:45] Bob Dobbs: So So I have...

[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: Rightfully,

[1:36:50] Bob Dobbs: through diligent studies of the great archivists,

[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: have created an archive to play with,

[1:36:57] Bob Dobbs: an online entity,

[1:36:58] Bob Dobbs: as Derek says,

[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: which is the archive itself that can play with my computer and my phone conversation.

[1:37:07] Bob Dobbs: If iON doesn't like what I'm doing,

[1:37:09] Bob Dobbs: if I'm interfering with its dialogue with somebody on the radio,

[1:37:12] Bob Dobbs: it will shut my phone off,

[1:37:15] Bob Dobbs: which is an early,

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: it was doing that 10 years ago.

[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: which is the early miming of the tech body.

[1:37:21] Bob Dobbs: The tech body can do this colossally.

[1:37:25] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm realizing that

[1:37:28] Bob Dobbs: I can say,

[1:37:29] Bob Dobbs: what's IOM,

[1:37:30] Bob Dobbs: Bob?

[1:37:30] Bob Dobbs: It's the archive come alive,

[1:37:33] Bob Dobbs: the human archive.

[1:37:36] Bob Dobbs: So these are attempts to define,

[1:37:38] Bob Dobbs: to answer your question,

[1:37:39] Bob Dobbs: by making these temporary definitions of realization about what I'm arguing with online.

[1:37:47] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:37:48] Cameron McEwen: but what I am hearing you say,

[1:37:50] Cameron McEwen: which I think is quite interesting,

[1:37:52] Cameron McEwen: is that you're saying that human beings are subject to a battle of archives.

[1:38:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:38:01] Bob Dobbs: the five bodies.

[1:38:03] Bob Dobbs: The chemical body is an archive.

[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: The astral body is an archive.

[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: The TV body is an archive.

[1:38:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: the battle of the five bodies,

[1:38:12] Bob Dobbs: five archives.

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: Five stomachs,

[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: I sometimes call them.

[1:38:17] Cameron McEwen: But aren't you saying that the two archives that you see as predominating at the moment are iON on the one hand and the Tech Body on the other?

[1:38:30] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:38:31] Cameron McEwen: And these are,

[1:38:34] Cameron McEwen: you use the word colossal,

[1:38:36] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:38:37] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: Goya has this wonderful painting from around 1810 of El Coloso.

[1:38:46] Cameron McEwen: which I use in the blog a lot,

[1:38:49] Cameron McEwen: which is this gigantic figure dominating the landscape,

[1:38:53] Cameron McEwen: and all of the animals and the people are tiny,

[1:38:57] Cameron McEwen: and they're running in all directions away from this colossal figure.

[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: and that gets into your definition.

[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: The modern colossal is huge and Tiny Note the same time.

[1:39:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:39:11] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:39:12] Cameron McEwen: But the whole notion of the...

[1:39:16] Cameron McEwen: competing colossi,

[1:39:19] Cameron McEwen: you could say.

[1:39:23] Cameron McEwen: In Plato,

[1:39:24] Cameron McEwen: this is called the

[1:39:25] Cameron McEwen: Gigantomachia,

[1:39:28] Cameron McEwen: the battle of the gods and the giants.

[1:39:31] Cameron McEwen: And these are,

[1:39:32] Cameron McEwen: you could say that the gods are one archive and the giants are another.

[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: And what's the word?

[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: The phrase?

[1:39:39] Bob Dobbs: Gilson?

[1:39:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:39:41] Cameron McEwen: Gigantomachia.

[1:39:46] Cameron McEwen: Giganto is the word for a giant in Greek,

[1:39:51] Cameron McEwen: and magia is the word for battle.

[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:39:55] Cameron McEwen: And so in

[1:39:56] Cameron McEwen: Greek mythology,

[1:39:58] Cameron McEwen: there are battles between the gods and the giants,

[1:40:02] Cameron McEwen: and there's battles between the gods and the titans,

[1:40:07] Cameron McEwen: and these are two different sort of ontological battles.

[1:40:12] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:40:13] Cameron McEwen: They tended even amongst the Greeks to be mixed up with each other.

[1:40:18] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan defined gods as he thought they were technologies.

[1:40:26] Cameron McEwen: Well.

[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: They referred to technologies.

[1:40:29] Bob Dobbs: That's how he Wright that somewhere.

[1:40:31] Bob Dobbs: That's how he gets into Finnegans Wake.

[1:40:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:40:34] Bob Dobbs: To God and technologies.

[1:40:37] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:40:37] Cameron McEwen: But he's not talking about a one-way street there.

[1:40:41] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:40:41] Cameron McEwen: He's not saying.

[1:40:42] Cameron McEwen: He's not reducing the reality of God to technologies,

[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: and he's not saying that the only thing technologies are is God's.

[1:40:52] Cameron McEwen: What he's saying is one way to think about this stuff might be this,

[1:40:57] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:40:58] Cameron McEwen: And then he says it.

[1:41:00] Cameron McEwen: But there is no reductionism in McLuhan.

[1:41:05] Cameron McEwen: That gets to your point about,

[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:41:07] Cameron McEwen: the medium is the message and the global village and all that sort of stuff.

[1:41:11] Cameron McEwen: As if.

[1:41:12] Cameron McEwen: he could be reduced to a few phrases like that.

[1:41:16] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: and Finney's weight is anti-environment.

[1:41:21] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:41:23] Cameron McEwen: In fact,

[1:41:24] Cameron McEwen: what it says is everything is so explosive,

[1:41:27] Cameron McEwen: it becomes implosive.

[1:41:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:41:30] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:41:32] Cameron McEwen: So listen,

[1:41:32] Cameron McEwen: let's just...

[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: So we're making good progress here.

[1:41:35] Bob Dobbs: This is a good breakthrough.

[1:41:36] Cameron McEwen: I think we are.

[1:41:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:41:37] Cameron McEwen: Because the Gigantomachia,

[1:41:40] Cameron McEwen: which is...

[1:41:41] Cameron McEwen: I talk about this a lot in the blog,

[1:41:44] Cameron McEwen: not that anybody is reacting to it.

[1:41:50] Cameron McEwen: In

[1:41:51] Cameron McEwen: Plato's Sophist,

[1:41:54] Cameron McEwen: he says that ontology,

[1:41:57] Cameron McEwen: that is to say reality,

[1:42:01] Cameron McEwen: is already plural.

[1:42:03] Cameron McEwen: So everything we do is Carolyn some sense,

[1:42:08] Cameron McEwen: but there are different senses of the real.

[1:42:12] Cameron McEwen: And what it means to be a real philosopher or a genuine thinker is to realize the different ways in which we can make sense.

[1:42:25] Cameron McEwen: And to put it in archival terms,

[1:42:27] Cameron McEwen: there are different ways in which we can archive things.

[1:42:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:42:31] Bob Dobbs: to organize your meaning.

[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: So on the one hand,

[1:42:36] Cameron McEwen: these things are huge.

[1:42:38] Cameron McEwen: These things dominate all history.

[1:42:42] Cameron McEwen: These things dominate all societies because societies could never get away from some way or ways of making sense.

[1:42:53] Cameron McEwen: However,

[1:42:54] Cameron McEwen: to take your point about these things becoming miniature,

[1:42:59] Cameron McEwen: these ways of making sense can also be thought of as potentialities,

[1:43:06] Cameron McEwen: as possibilities of human sense-making.

[1:43:11] Cameron McEwen: that in a certain way are so small that they're all within us.

[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:43:17] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:43:18] Bob Dobbs: That's your interior landscape.

[1:43:20] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:43:21] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[1:43:23] Cameron McEwen: So it's a very complicated world,

[1:43:24] Cameron McEwen: but it's very small.

[1:43:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:43:27] Cameron McEwen: But the things that are very small in the interior landscape are enormous colossal forces that dominate all history.

[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:43:38] Bob Dobbs: And that's why I called my chart the Tiny Note as opposed to Frank Zappa's idea of the big node.

[1:43:45] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:43:46] Bob Dobbs: The Tiny Note,

[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean.

[1:43:49] Bob Dobbs: In each quadrant is a subatomic particle.

[1:43:53] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:43:55] Cameron McEwen: which are big enough to explode the whole world.

[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:44:00] Bob Dobbs: I have a holeopathic radio slash satellite.

[1:44:05] Bob Dobbs: That implies a anti-environment,

[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: but it's then described as a subatomic particle.

[1:44:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:44:13] Cameron McEwen: and if we didn't...

[1:44:14] Cameron McEwen: If we didn't have some sort of conceptualization of subatomic particles,

[1:44:21] Cameron McEwen: we would have no satellites.

[1:44:23] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:44:24] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking...

[1:44:30] Bob Dobbs: Man,

[1:44:31] Bob Dobbs: I'm losing it.

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: The big,

[1:44:39] Bob Dobbs: small,

[1:44:40] Bob Dobbs: the...

[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: Oh

[1:44:43] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme phase one and two are something like this process.

[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:44:48] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[1:44:49] Cameron McEwen: That's what you were saying.

[1:44:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:44:52] Cameron McEwen: You have the big takeover,

[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: which is small.

[1:44:54] Bob Dobbs: The big Android Meme,

[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: World Wide Web one,

[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: and then tiny

[1:44:58] Bob Dobbs: World Wide Web,

[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: social media,

[1:45:00] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme two.

[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:45:03] Cameron McEwen: But look at the reversal here.

[1:45:04] Cameron McEwen: The

[1:45:06] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme one,

[1:45:07] Cameron McEwen: which is the big takeover,

[1:45:10] Cameron McEwen: is really small compared to the big takeover.

[1:45:12] Cameron McEwen: to the second takeover.

[1:45:14] Cameron McEwen: And the second takeover takes place through miniaturization,

[1:45:18] Cameron McEwen: which is the big takeover.

[1:45:21] Cameron McEwen: So you have the

[1:45:24] Cameron McEwen: Heraclitus said,

[1:45:25] Cameron McEwen: the way up is the way down.

[1:45:27] Cameron McEwen: And in all of these things,

[1:45:31] Cameron McEwen: there's a kind of automated reversal.

[1:45:35] Cameron McEwen: So the big turns into the small or the big is the small.

[1:45:40] Cameron McEwen: The small turns into the big,

[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: or the small is the big.

[1:45:44] Cameron McEwen: That's a kind of law of human history.

[1:45:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:50] Bob Dobbs: and this is Trumpism.

[1:45:57] Bob Dobbs: He hijacked the powerful little guys,

[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: known as the alt-right,

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: and tried to incorporate them into the big.

[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: The earlier Android Meme,

[1:46:09] Bob Dobbs: which was the word that makes the market,

[1:46:11] Bob Dobbs: which is the White House.

[1:46:14] Bob Dobbs: But it was a conflict for the big to hijack the little,

[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: because the little had already hijacked the big.

[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: So let's put off.

[1:46:25] Cameron McEwen: It's a good place to talk about

[1:46:27] Cameron McEwen: Trump relation to

[1:46:31] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme one and two and the tech body.

[1:46:35] Cameron McEwen: But that's a very big topic.

[1:46:37] Cameron McEwen: So let's maybe come back to that next time.

[1:46:41] Cameron McEwen: But what I would like to do at the end here,

[1:46:45] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:46:46] Cameron McEwen: is quote a letter that

[1:46:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote to Wilfred Watson in 1964.

[1:46:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:46:59] Cameron McEwen: And it relates very much to a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today.

[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: It's something to think about.

[1:47:06] Cameron McEwen: And maybe we can come back to this as well next time.

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:47:11] Cameron McEwen: So anyway,

[1:47:11] Cameron McEwen: here's what he Wright to Wilfred Watson on October 4th,

[1:47:14] Cameron McEwen: 1964.

[1:47:17] Cameron McEwen: And

[1:47:17] Cameron McEwen: I believe this is something that

[1:47:21] Cameron McEwen: Andrew found in Ottawa.

[1:47:24] Cameron McEwen: And he may even have put it up on your site.

[1:47:31] Cameron McEwen: But at any rate.

[1:47:31] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:47:32] Bob Dobbs: that is the seventh anniversary.

[1:47:35] Bob Dobbs: Sputnik,

[1:47:36] Bob Dobbs: October

[1:47:39] Cameron McEwen: 4th, 1957.

[1:47:40] Cameron McEwen: Look at that.

[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: So he says,

[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: talk about blind spots in regions of maximal impact.

[1:47:47] Cameron McEwen: Looking at the diabolical principle,

[1:47:51] Cameron McEwen: which was a book from 1931.

[1:47:57] Cameron McEwen: Looking at the diabolical principle just now,

[1:48:01] Cameron McEwen: I read loud and clear that art must

[1:48:05] Cameron McEwen: be totally environmental.

[1:48:07] Cameron McEwen: It must be the content of nothing whatsoever.

[1:48:11] Cameron McEwen: Ergo,

[1:48:12] Cameron McEwen: the vortex equals the totally environmental.

[1:48:16] Cameron McEwen: That is,

[1:48:18] Cameron McEwen: Lewis wants nothing less than for art.

[1:48:22] Cameron McEwen: for art than the power to create total anti-environment for life and death.

[1:48:30] Cameron McEwen: There must be no art as content of some other set of skills or interest.

[1:48:40] Cameron McEwen: I find it a bit staggering to confront Lewis as a man who really wanted to be

[1:48:47] Cameron McEwen: Pontifex

[1:48:49] Cameron McEwen: Maximus. That's the name of the Pope.

[1:48:51] Cameron McEwen: in Latin,

[1:48:53] Cameron McEwen: of a magical priesthood.

[1:48:55] Cameron McEwen: I suppose Yeats,

[1:48:56] Cameron McEwen: Joyce,

[1:48:57] Cameron McEwen: and Pound had similar aspirations.

[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: Their priesthood was to create new worlds of perception.

[1:49:05] Cameron McEwen: They were to be world engineers who shaped the totality of human awareness.

[1:49:10] Cameron McEwen: Their pigments and materials were not to be paint or words,

[1:49:15] Cameron McEwen: but all the resources of the age.

[1:49:18] Cameron McEwen: Such were the pharaohs.

[1:49:20] Cameron McEwen: They made of the world a perception lab,

[1:49:24] Cameron McEwen: the mode of great art,

[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: anti-environment as ultimate artifact.

[1:49:30] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:49:31] Cameron McEwen: I take it that what McLuhan is talking about here is the power to sign.

[1:49:37] Cameron McEwen: And he's saying that these people that he much admired,

[1:49:44] Cameron McEwen: like Lewis,

[1:49:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeats,

[1:49:45] Cameron McEwen: Joyce,

[1:49:45] Cameron McEwen: and Pound,

[1:49:47] Cameron McEwen: were...

[1:49:50] Cameron McEwen: Figures who somehow wanted to sign reality into being as if they were pharaohs.

[1:50:01] Cameron McEwen: And so we have to understand that there's something magical and enormous going on here,

[1:50:10] Cameron McEwen: but it's also something questionable.

[1:50:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: And you know,

[1:50:16] Bob Dobbs: what is he,

[1:50:17] Bob Dobbs: I was going to say the word pharaonic,

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: the pharaoh.

[1:50:19] Bob Dobbs: Because within a couple of weeks,

[1:50:21] Bob Dobbs: he's going to write that great review of Burroughs,

[1:50:24] Bob Dobbs: which will be published in December 64,

[1:50:27] Bob Dobbs: which echoes what you were talking about there.

[1:50:30] Cameron McEwen: Correct,

[1:50:31] Cameron McEwen: correct.

[1:50:33] Bob Dobbs: Or what he was talking about in October.

[1:50:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:50:36] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:50:37] Cameron McEwen: So this very much relates to archiving and to the signing of the archive and to what sort of power.

[1:50:47] Cameron McEwen: is involved in what you call the

[1:50:50] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme,

[1:50:52] Cameron McEwen: what sort of power can be miniaturized by the Android Meme 2.

[1:51:00] Cameron McEwen: And to me,

[1:51:02] Cameron McEwen: it's quite interesting to anticipate what you're going to say about the tech body as growing out of.

[1:51:17] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:51:18] Cameron McEwen: This

[1:51:19] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme 1 and 2.

[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:51:21] Bob Dobbs: and he is describing something about the meme there.

[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: a meme is a little archive,

[1:51:32] Bob Dobbs: isn't it?

[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: Isn't a meme a theme,

[1:51:36] Bob Dobbs: a collection of ideas or thoughts in a culture?

[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:51:43] Cameron McEwen: I think so.

[1:51:44] Cameron McEwen: I think that can be said,

[1:51:46] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: Maybe all media are instant replay and an archive is an instant replay or a collection of instant replays.

[1:51:57] Bob Dobbs: We don't need to go into that right now,

[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: but that's just passing thoughts.

[1:52:00] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme archives is what we have here.

[1:52:05] Bob Dobbs: And that's pretty incredible what he wrote there.

[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: It's almost ridiculous what he Wright there.

[1:52:12] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:52:14] Bob Dobbs: art is a great nothing.

[1:52:15] Bob Dobbs: Can't have any content.

[1:52:16] Bob Dobbs: but he's trying to talk about something,

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: And I would say that is a

[1:52:25] Bob Dobbs: iON says that McLuhan was the closest in anticipating the tech body.

[1:52:31] Bob Dobbs: That is a tech body intuition because he's talking about nothing,

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: but he says it is magical.

[1:52:38] Bob Dobbs: It is what Lewis was up against.

[1:52:41] Bob Dobbs: It's what I'm not sure about.

[1:52:43] Bob Dobbs: It could be the Antichrist,

[1:52:45] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:52:46] Bob Dobbs: Could be pagan,

[1:52:49] Bob Dobbs: yet nobody,

[1:52:50] Bob Dobbs: you couldn't present that to anybody today,

[1:52:53] Bob Dobbs: that they would understand what you just read.

[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: You'd have to be Orwell in McLuhan probably to begin to do it,

[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: but look at what he's saying.

[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: It has no,

[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:53:04] Bob Dobbs: It has no content.

[1:53:06] Bob Dobbs: It can't have content.

[1:53:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:07] Bob Dobbs: what the hell is it?

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: that's invisibleness itself.

[1:53:11] Bob Dobbs: It's almost like the nature of the present or of the anti-environment.

[1:53:15] Bob Dobbs: It's always invisible,

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: inaudible,

[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: can't perceive it.

[1:53:18] Bob Dobbs: Maybe that gets into Plato.

[1:53:22] Bob Dobbs: Yet it's here,

[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: and it's what all great invisibilities are,

[1:53:26] Bob Dobbs: which is art,

[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: he would say.

[1:53:30] Bob Dobbs: So it's a ridiculous statement.

[1:53:33] Cameron McEwen: He uses the phrase,

[1:53:35] Cameron McEwen: world engineers.

[1:53:36] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:53:37] Cameron McEwen: They were to be world engineers.

[1:53:39] Cameron McEwen: That's a great statement there.

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: You didn't say that in the quote.

[1:53:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:53:47] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:53:48] Cameron McEwen: They were to be world engineers.

[1:53:50] Cameron McEwen: who shape the totality of human awareness.

[1:53:53] Bob Dobbs: Wow,

[1:53:53] Bob Dobbs: I missed that.

[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: They blocked that.

[1:53:56] Bob Dobbs: But that's,

[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: that's what we're talking about.

[1:53:59] Bob Dobbs: What's a world engineer?

[1:54:00] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:54:02] Bob Dobbs: Joyce said he was the greatest engineer.

[1:54:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: These were,

[1:54:07] Cameron McEwen: so a world engineer is something that is at once huge and tiny.

[1:54:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:54:13] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[1:54:14] Cameron McEwen: It's something that a human being...

[1:54:20] Cameron McEwen: can aspire to and can achieve to the extent that somebody like Joyce did it.

[1:54:31] Cameron McEwen: On the other hand,

[1:54:40] Cameron McEwen: it's a huge accomplishment that this tiny human being did.

[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:54:47] Bob Dobbs: The...

[1:54:52] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme becomes a world engineer,

[1:54:56] Bob Dobbs: which we'll call a tech body,

[1:54:57] Bob Dobbs: because that's what the tech body is.

[1:54:59] Bob Dobbs: It's managing information over the whole global theater,

[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: global membrane,

[1:55:04] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme world we're in.

[1:55:05] Bob Dobbs: The news,

[1:55:06] Bob Dobbs: everything is controlled and edited by the tech body.

[1:55:10] Bob Dobbs: So that's the Android Meme as world engineer.

[1:55:13] Bob Dobbs: The Android Meme is already a world membrane,

[1:55:16] Bob Dobbs: but there's something about...

[1:55:18] Bob Dobbs: Putting the word engineer in there,

[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: the word engineer,

[1:55:20] Bob Dobbs: which is appropriate.

[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: The world editor.

[1:55:24] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:55:25] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:55:25] Cameron McEwen: So we got some interesting things to get into next time.

[1:55:30] Cameron McEwen: We've got how the archive relates to Android Meme 1 and 2 and onto the tech body,

[1:55:38] Cameron McEwen: and we've got how that relates Trump.

[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:55:45] Bob Dobbs: I'll end Innis book,

[1:55:47] Bob Dobbs: just to kind of...

[1:55:48] Bob Dobbs: John Gordon,

[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: he Wright a book,

[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake,

[1:55:50] Bob Dobbs: a plot summary,

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: where he aspires to be reductive and to explain Finnegans Wake in simple terms.

[1:55:56] Bob Dobbs: But in his opening chapter on mimesis,

[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: he says this.

[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: From the beginning,

[1:56:03] Bob Dobbs: from beginning to end,

[1:56:04] Bob Dobbs: Joyce remained a mimic in the root sense of the word.

[1:56:07] Bob Dobbs: So the Android Meme mimes us.

[1:56:09] Bob Dobbs: What changed and deepened between 1905 and the years that produced Finnegans Wake was not his mimetic intention.

[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: but his understanding of the world he wished to render and the resourcefulness which he brought to the task.

[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: In particular,

[1:56:21] Bob Dobbs: he became,

[1:56:22] Bob Dobbs: over these years,

[1:56:23] Bob Dobbs: increasingly conscious of the paradox at the heart of the mimetic enterprise,

[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: and a hyphen,

[1:56:29] Bob Dobbs: that since the objective world must be represented,

[1:56:32] Bob Dobbs: that since the objective world must be represented,

[1:56:35] Bob Dobbs: as it is experienced through the prism of some individual consciousness,

[1:56:39] Bob Dobbs: the artist seeking...

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: Fidelity to fact must represent both simultaneously,

[1:56:44] Bob Dobbs: must turn inward as well as outward.

[1:56:47] Bob Dobbs: The quest for objectivity becomes the study of subjectivity,

[1:56:50] Bob Dobbs: or rather the study of how the two interact.

[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: That's a simple presentation of what we were just talking about,

[1:56:55] Bob Dobbs: the big and the small.

[1:56:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:57:00] Cameron McEwen: but it also raises the question of singularity and plurality,

[1:57:06] Cameron McEwen: because the whole history...

[1:57:09] Cameron McEwen: of mind as we know it for the past 5,000 years has been a kind of dialogue between those three possibilities of taking things subjectively or objectively or interactively between the two.

[1:57:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:57:28] Bob Dobbs: that would be eye,

[1:57:29] Bob Dobbs: ear,

[1:57:29] Bob Dobbs: and tactility.

[1:57:33] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:57:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:57:35] Bob Dobbs: I think inward would be ear.

[1:57:37] Bob Dobbs: Outer be eye,

[1:57:38] Bob Dobbs: and in between,

[1:57:39] Bob Dobbs: the interactivity be tactility.

[1:57:42] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:57:43] Bob Dobbs: now McLuhan liked to say he didn't believe in five senses,

[1:57:45] Bob Dobbs: he believed in four senses.

[1:57:48] Bob Dobbs: What was that?

[1:57:49] Bob Dobbs: Eye,

[1:57:49] Bob Dobbs: ear,

[1:57:51] Bob Dobbs: kinesis,

[1:57:52] Bob Dobbs: and taste,

[1:57:54] Bob Dobbs: which was also smell.

[1:57:56] Bob Dobbs: So those were the four.

[1:57:59] Bob Dobbs: And then he'd have to bring in tactility,

[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: but that might be touch,

[1:58:04] Bob Dobbs: taste.

[1:58:06] Bob Dobbs: or taste-smell.

[1:58:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:58:08] Cameron McEwen: he ran smell and taste and touch together.

[1:58:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:58:14] Cameron McEwen: So that was the third sense,

[1:58:16] Cameron McEwen: and then Kinesis would be the fourth.

[1:58:18] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: so he would say,

[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm a Fritz Senn guy,

[1:58:20] Bob Dobbs: not a Fritz Senn.

[1:58:22] Bob Dobbs: But he included the sense that wasn't a sense,

[1:58:25] Bob Dobbs: that organized data,

[1:58:27] Bob Dobbs: and that was tactility,

[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: the sensus communis.

[1:58:30] Bob Dobbs: So...

[1:58:34] Bob Dobbs: The eye-ear tactile was a reduction of his Forsdale.

[1:58:43] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: We make this a trinity.

[1:58:47] Bob Dobbs: Eye-ear and interaction.

[1:58:50] Bob Dobbs: That's three,

[1:58:52] Bob Dobbs: but it was based on four and not five.

[1:58:54] Bob Dobbs: Something like that.

[1:58:55] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:58:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:58:57] Cameron McEwen: So there's a duplicity to tactility.

[1:58:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:59:01] Bob Dobbs: And a SubGenius.

[1:59:05] Bob Dobbs: When we're saying eye,

[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: ear,

[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: and tactile,

[1:59:07] Bob Dobbs: that's a reductionism of the more complex four senses or the more precise four senses.

[1:59:15] Bob Dobbs: But the description,

[1:59:18] Bob Dobbs: you can't get too bogged down in the description,

[1:59:19] Bob Dobbs: so you make it easy three.

[1:59:22] Bob Dobbs: And that was his favorite number,

[1:59:23] Bob Dobbs: three.

[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?

[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: That the eye,

[1:59:27] Bob Dobbs: ear,

[1:59:28] Bob Dobbs: and the tactile is a good way to summarize the archive of human experience.

[1:59:33] Bob Dobbs: and their extensions.

[1:59:37] Bob Dobbs: That's what McLuhan criticized and Don Theall criticized,

[1:59:40] Bob Dobbs: was that

[1:59:42] Bob Dobbs: Neil Postman and

[1:59:44] Bob Dobbs: Walter Ong and

[1:59:46] Bob Dobbs: Tom Wolfe didn't get the tactile factor.

[1:59:50] Bob Dobbs: They were stuck in the oral versus the visual,

[1:59:53] Bob Dobbs: the eye versus the ear.

[2:00:00] Cameron McEwen: I think you skipped over something there.

[2:00:02] Cameron McEwen: shouldn't be skipped over.

[2:00:04] Cameron McEwen: And that is that for McLuhan,

[2:00:06] Cameron McEwen: it's not the case that the eye,

[2:00:10] Cameron McEwen: ear,

[2:00:10] Cameron McEwen: and tactile constitute an archive of human experience.

[2:00:17] Cameron McEwen: Rather,

[2:00:19] Cameron McEwen: the eye,

[2:00:20] Cameron McEwen: ear,

[2:00:21] Cameron McEwen: and tactile are ways of talking about the archives,

[2:00:26] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[2:00:27] Cameron McEwen: of human experience.

[2:00:29] Cameron McEwen: So it's a question of figure and ground there.

[2:00:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Plurality.

[2:00:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:00:35] Bob Dobbs: And Olivia Pluribel.

[2:00:37] Cameron McEwen: There you go.

[2:00:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:00:39] Bob Dobbs: Who we started with,

[2:00:41] Bob Dobbs: Mr.

[2:00:42] Bob Dobbs: ALP.

[2:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:00:42] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[2:00:45] Cameron McEwen: But that Plura,

[2:00:46] Cameron McEwen: Plura is very important there.

[2:00:48] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:00:49] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[2:00:50] Bob Dobbs: remember,

[2:00:50] Bob Dobbs: for whom the bells toil.

[2:00:53] Bob Dobbs: B-E-L-L-E-S.

[2:00:55] Bob Dobbs: For whom the bells toil.

[2:00:57] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:00:57] Bob Dobbs: that's fantastic.

[2:00:58] Bob Dobbs: So I think,

[2:01:00] Bob Dobbs: wow,

[2:01:00] Bob Dobbs: we got a word we can...

[2:01:01] Bob Dobbs: wake up,

[2:01:02] Bob Dobbs: the archive.

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:01:04] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[2:01:04] Bob Dobbs: A missing word.

[2:01:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:01:06] Bob Dobbs: great.

[2:01:06] Bob Dobbs: Thanks a lot,

[2:01:07] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.

[2:01:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[2:01:09] Cameron McEwen: thank you.

[2:01:10] Bob Dobbs: Let's hope we got it all on tape.

[2:01:12] Bob Dobbs: It was a good discussion.

[2:01:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:01:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:01:15] Bob Dobbs: I'll talk to you in two weeks,

[2:01:17] Bob Dobbs: okay?

[2:01:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:01:18] Cameron McEwen: whatever.

[2:01:19] Cameron McEwen: Let me know.

[2:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:01:20] Bob Dobbs: great.

[2:01:20] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[2:01:21] Bob Dobbs: bye.

[2:01:22] Cameron McEwen: Ciao,

[2:01:22] Cameron McEwen: ciao.