[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Hello,
[00:03] Bob Dobbs: this is
[00:04] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron and Bob,
[00:05] Bob Dobbs: and this is the 43rd episode being recorded on
[00:10] Bob Dobbs: December 23rd,
[00:10] Bob Dobbs: 2021.
[00:14] Bob Dobbs: And we're looking at my book,
[00:17] Bob Dobbs: and we're on page 80,
[00:19] Bob Dobbs: or at the bottom of 79.
[00:23] Bob Dobbs: Is that what it is,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron?
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: Bottom of 79?
[00:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[00:27] Cameron McEwen: I would like to start there because there's some questions.
[00:32] Cameron McEwen: that arise from the bottom of 79 that are important for the series on page 80.
[00:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[00:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[00:43] Cameron McEwen: So do you want me to explain why I think that's important?
[00:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[00:47] Bob Dobbs: I'd be good if you started talking.
[00:49] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[00:51] Cameron McEwen: So,
[00:51] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[00:54] Cameron McEwen: I think the blue is you talking,
[00:56] Cameron McEwen: right?
[00:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[00:57] Bob Dobbs: that's the casual oral Explorations.
[01:01] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[01:01] Cameron McEwen: So Bob says the tactility of television then became the global hologram of mixed corporate media anti-environment,
[01:08] Cameron McEwen: which were interplaying like tactility.
[01:11] Cameron McEwen: Then the Android Meme imploded it all,
[01:13] Cameron McEwen: shrunk it and permitted tactility,
[01:15] Cameron McEwen: cubed,
[01:16] Cameron McEwen: went to a third level.
[01:19] Cameron McEwen: So the problem I have there is when you speak of something like tactility,
[01:26] Cameron McEwen: as if tactility wasn't basic.
[01:31] Cameron McEwen: I agree with what you're going to go on to say about the quadrivium and the trivium,
[01:37] Cameron McEwen: but I don't think that tactility is limited to the trivium.
[01:42] Cameron McEwen: So
[01:43] Cameron McEwen: I don't think that the,
[01:47] Cameron McEwen: and I could well be wrong,
[01:48] Cameron McEwen: I'm waiting to be instructed.
[01:51] Cameron McEwen: I believe that the quadrivium is a higher level type of tactility.
[01:59] Cameron McEwen: Just as a weather front,
[02:01] Cameron McEwen: of course,
[02:03] Cameron McEwen: consists of chemical elements,
[02:05] Cameron McEwen: but they're not consequential for understanding what's going on in a weather front.
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't say the trivium is tactile.
[02:13] Bob Dobbs: Where is that said?
[02:16] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[02:17] Cameron McEwen: you say that the Android Meme imploded it all,
[02:22] Cameron McEwen: shrunk it and permitted tactility cubed,
[02:25] Cameron McEwen: went to a third level.
[02:26] Cameron McEwen: So
[02:27] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure that...
[02:28] Cameron McEwen: Tactility has different values in the sense of narrative.
[02:37] Cameron McEwen: I think it has different values in terms of the synchronic consideration of human experience.
[02:48] Cameron McEwen: But
[02:49] Cameron McEwen: I have trouble understanding tactility as changing with time.
[02:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[02:57] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[02:57] Bob Dobbs: So what I mean is the tactility of television.
[03:00] Bob Dobbs: So in the
[03:01] Bob Dobbs: 50s, television is quite a tactile medium,
[03:04] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan says electricity is tactility.
[03:07] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely,
[03:08] Cameron McEwen: yes.
[03:08] Bob Dobbs: So you could say the telegraph,
[03:10] Bob Dobbs: the whole electric era,
[03:11] Bob Dobbs: telegraph,
[03:12] Bob Dobbs: radio,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: computers,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: television,
[03:17] Bob Dobbs: well,
[03:17] Bob Dobbs: not satellite,
[03:18] Bob Dobbs: say.
[03:19] Bob Dobbs: So
[03:20] Bob Dobbs: I mean the television artifact itself is tactile.
[03:23] Bob Dobbs: Then,
[03:25] Bob Dobbs: and that's in the 50s,
[03:26] Bob Dobbs: Then you have the computer and the satellite coming in the late
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: 60s, late 50s,
[03:31] Bob Dobbs: and they take over in the 60s.
[03:34] Bob Dobbs: And so you have an interplay of automobiles,
[03:38] Bob Dobbs: movies,
[03:39] Bob Dobbs: every medium in the global theater.
[03:41] Bob Dobbs: And so
[03:42] Bob Dobbs: I call this mixed corporate media anti-environment.
[03:45] Bob Dobbs: A cup is a private media,
[03:48] Bob Dobbs: private artifact.
[03:49] Bob Dobbs: But corporate media or electric media,
[03:52] Bob Dobbs: automobiles,
[03:53] Bob Dobbs: movies,
[03:55] Bob Dobbs: the whole...
[03:56] Bob Dobbs: layout,
[03:57] Bob Dobbs: buffet of the
[03:59] Bob Dobbs: 20th century.
[04:00] Bob Dobbs: So the interplay of movies and
[04:02] Bob Dobbs: TV and newspapers and everything,
[04:04] Bob Dobbs: that interplay,
[04:06] Bob Dobbs: I consider that a hologram effect and that interplay is tactility.
[04:12] Bob Dobbs: So when I say the tactility of television then became the global hologram of mixed corporate media,
[04:17] Bob Dobbs: I should have said maybe the tactility of television then becomes the tactility of the interplay of the global hologram of mixed corporate media anti-environment.
[04:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[04:26] Bob Dobbs: I do say,
[04:27] Bob Dobbs: which were interplaying like tactility.
[04:32] Bob Dobbs: Anything more about tactility is nebulous.
[04:36] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[04:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what it is.
[04:39] Bob Dobbs: It's the interplay.
[04:40] Bob Dobbs: It's not a sense.
[04:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan defines it as interplay.
[04:44] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[04:44] Bob Dobbs: right.
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[04:46] Bob Dobbs: go ahead.
[04:47] Cameron McEwen: So what I see going on,
[04:50] Cameron McEwen: and which may also be an aspect of what you're talking about,
[04:55] Cameron McEwen: There's um...
[04:57] Cameron McEwen: If somebody like my professor at Princeton,
[05:03] Cameron McEwen: Thomas Kuhn,
[05:04] Cameron McEwen: if he's looking at the history of science,
[05:08] Cameron McEwen: then part of what he has to look at is when people got stuff wrong,
[05:16] Cameron McEwen: but there was some sort of illumination going on at the same time.
[05:22] Cameron McEwen: And so what I see you setting out is...
[05:26] Cameron McEwen: A kind of history of how
[05:31] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan came to see what media are doing.
[05:37] Cameron McEwen: And in order to understand that,
[05:42] Cameron McEwen: then you have to understand how he went from a relatively simple structure like the Trivium to much more complicated structures like the Quadrivium.
[05:56] Cameron McEwen: But that doesn't mean that the trivium sort of was obviated.
[06:00] Cameron McEwen: It simply means that the trivium,
[06:04] Cameron McEwen: like the chemical elements,
[06:09] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[06:11] Cameron McEwen: a chemical element doesn't do much for you if you want to understand genetics or if you want to understand biology or if you want to understand organic chemistry.
[06:21] Cameron McEwen: You have to be able to understand.
[06:24] Cameron McEwen: much more complex structures.
[06:27] Cameron McEwen: So
[06:28] Cameron McEwen: I see what McLuhan is doing is he looks at the Trivium and he understands that the Trivium has a kind of history going back at least to Plato and arguably to 2500 years before that in the Egyptians but
[06:44] Cameron McEwen: the question arises well if we've known the Trivium all this time why don't we understand more about the world?
[06:52] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan answer,
[06:54] Cameron McEwen: I believe,
[06:55] Cameron McEwen: is that,
[06:55] Cameron McEwen: well,
[06:55] Cameron McEwen: we're looking at the wrong thing to do our Explorations and our predictions.
[07:02] Cameron McEwen: And so what we have to do is we have to probe complex structures that,
[07:10] Cameron McEwen: in a way,
[07:10] Cameron McEwen: are built on the trivium,
[07:12] Cameron McEwen: but in another way are what we have to focus on and forget the trivium if we want to understand the big...
[07:21] Cameron McEwen: weatherfront of modernity.
[07:25] Bob Dobbs: No,
[07:25] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[07:26] Bob Dobbs: And in simple terms,
[07:28] Bob Dobbs: the trivium is the visual space.
[07:34] Bob Dobbs: Speech,
[07:35] Bob Dobbs: people say,
[07:35] Bob Dobbs: is oral.
[07:37] Bob Dobbs: Rhetoric is oral.
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: Grammar may be visual.
[07:41] Bob Dobbs: And dialectic is visual.
[07:43] Bob Dobbs: But the word is wedded.
[07:46] Bob Dobbs: Orality,
[07:48] Bob Dobbs: the last 2,000 more years,
[07:50] Bob Dobbs: wedded to the phonetic alphabet and to literacy.
[07:54] Bob Dobbs: So
[07:55] Bob Dobbs: I put the trivium in the literate camp,
[07:58] Bob Dobbs: and the quadrivium is non-literate.
[08:01] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[08:02] Cameron McEwen: that's right,
[08:03] Cameron McEwen: except that it's not the case that the trivium itself was literate.
[08:10] Cameron McEwen: It's a certain bias of the trivium.
[08:14] Cameron McEwen: And that certain bias of the trivium
[08:19] Cameron McEwen: It needs to be understood in two ways.
[08:21] Cameron McEwen: So in one way,
[08:23] Cameron McEwen: the trivium amazingly allows itself to be distorted.
[08:31] Cameron McEwen: But in another way,
[08:33] Cameron McEwen: the trivium underlies everything that's going on,
[08:36] Cameron McEwen: and the great thinkers forever have tried to explain how the trivium is there.
[08:45] Cameron McEwen: And what we need to do is look...
[08:48] Cameron McEwen: past the various biases to the underlying structure.
[08:54] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[08:55] Bob Dobbs: So do you see that quadrivium is more right-hemisphered,
[09:03] Bob Dobbs: right-hemisphere arts,
[09:05] Bob Dobbs: arithmetic,
[09:06] Bob Dobbs: geometry?
[09:07] Cameron McEwen: The big difference is that the trivium,
[09:10] Cameron McEwen: at least as McLuhan understood it,
[09:13] Cameron McEwen: in line with its literate bias,
[09:16] Cameron McEwen: was individual.
[09:18] Cameron McEwen: So somebody could take one aspect of the trivium,
[09:22] Cameron McEwen: and another guy,
[09:23] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[09:24] Cameron McEwen: in scholasticism,
[09:25] Cameron McEwen: could have another view.
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[09:27] Cameron McEwen: But when you move to the quadrivium,
[09:30] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about a kind of consciousness that's not individual.
[09:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[09:36] Cameron McEwen: So the danger
[09:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan saw was that the values that were developed in 2,000 years on the basis of the trivium could be described.
[09:48] Cameron McEwen: by this mass consciousness that we've introduced with telephone,
[09:54] Cameron McEwen: motor car,
[09:55] Cameron McEwen: movie,
[09:55] Cameron McEwen: radio,
[09:55] Cameron McEwen: television,
[09:56] Cameron McEwen: etc.
[09:57] Cameron McEwen: So he's looking for some way to balance what we had to where we are.
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: So that is the issue until you get to the 70s and 80s.
[10:11] Bob Dobbs: So I have laid out here the
[10:14] Bob Dobbs: 1940s, the trivium.
[10:16] Bob Dobbs: You don't have a blasting right hemisphere,
[10:18] Bob Dobbs: which television brings in,
[10:20] Bob Dobbs: and then the computers and satellite.
[10:23] Bob Dobbs: That gets in the
[10:24] Bob Dobbs: 50s. So the last gas of visuality.
[10:28] Bob Dobbs: is the 40s with the trivium plus advertising and comics.
[10:33] Bob Dobbs: Advertising is,
[10:34] Bob Dobbs: I guess,
[10:34] Bob Dobbs: an update of rhetoric.
[10:36] Bob Dobbs: Comics is maybe rhetoric too.
[10:41] Bob Dobbs: But they're new Verbi Voco Visual space media.
[10:45] Bob Dobbs: So we're not in pure trivium anymore.
[10:48] Bob Dobbs: We're not in pure trivium in the 20th century at all.
[10:52] Cameron McEwen: That's right in the sense that the quadrivium...
[10:57] Cameron McEwen: is not the trivium as manipulated by individuals.
[11:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[11:04] Cameron McEwen: And in fact,
[11:05] Cameron McEwen: it never was.
[11:07] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan had to come to understand that what he had worked on for
[11:12] Cameron McEwen: 20 years,
[11:13] Cameron McEwen: basically,
[11:14] Cameron McEwen: was a literate point of view.
[11:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[11:17] Cameron McEwen: And he had to give that up.
[11:19] Cameron McEwen: And he had to give it up,
[11:21] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[11:21] Cameron McEwen: starting in 1949 or sometime right around 1950.
[11:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[11:27] Bob Dobbs: take the letter to Pound.
[11:29] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[11:29] Bob Dobbs: I've been,
[11:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[11:31] Bob Dobbs: he goes into the secret side.
[11:32] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[11:32] Bob Dobbs: no critics should know this.
[11:34] Bob Dobbs: Why didn't you guys tell me this?
[11:35] Bob Dobbs: I've wasted 20 years on English studies.
[11:38] Bob Dobbs: Remember that sentence?
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: Sure,
[11:39] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[11:41] Bob Dobbs: And he was expressing without the media form metaphors,
[11:48] Bob Dobbs: without the Innis effect.
[11:50] Bob Dobbs: He's talking content there.
[11:53] Bob Dobbs: But he is expressing,
[11:55] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[11:55] Bob Dobbs: I've got to update my perceptions.
[11:58] Bob Dobbs: And he probably already had.
[12:00] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't admit something he was still struggling.
[12:02] Bob Dobbs: He figured it out,
[12:03] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?
[12:04] Bob Dobbs: So he could say it's past.
[12:06] Bob Dobbs: It was a crisis from 1945 or 1946,
[12:09] Bob Dobbs: say,
[12:09] Bob Dobbs: before he met Pound.
[12:12] Bob Dobbs: Pound is a really important influence on him.
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: So do you follow what I'm saying?
[12:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[12:16] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[12:16] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.
[12:19] Cameron McEwen: But when you say he finally figured it out,
[12:22] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he ever did.
[12:24] Cameron McEwen: I think he probed things in really interesting ways and opened up new ways of understanding the world.
[12:33] Cameron McEwen: But he didn't figure out how to communicate it.
[12:40] Cameron McEwen: So it's like what he said of
[12:43] Cameron McEwen: Wyndham Lewis Cosmic Man,
[12:46] Cameron McEwen: that it was a hydrogen bomb set up in the desert with effect nil.
[12:52] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[12:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[12:53] Bob Dobbs: so,
[12:54] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[12:54] Bob Dobbs: he wasn't a perfect communicator.
[12:56] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to go into that.
[12:57] Bob Dobbs: We've discussed that.
[12:58] Bob Dobbs: He was pretty good.
[12:59] Bob Dobbs: He got known,
[13:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:01] Bob Dobbs: he got something out there.
[13:02] Bob Dobbs: And it's up to us to,
[13:05] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[13:05] Bob Dobbs: correct it,
[13:06] Bob Dobbs: refine it,
[13:07] Bob Dobbs: change it,
[13:08] Bob Dobbs: figure out how to communicate.
[13:11] Bob Dobbs: And today...
[13:12] Cameron McEwen: I'm not at all putting him down.
[13:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[13:15] Bob Dobbs: You know what I...
[13:16] Cameron McEwen: Failure in the sense that I was talking about is a tremendous thing.
[13:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[13:21] Bob Dobbs: at least he tackled something no one else even knew there was a problem.
[13:26] Bob Dobbs: Here's the next thing I'm reminded.
[13:28] Bob Dobbs: He wrote to Pound in that early
[13:30] Bob Dobbs: 50s that you guys dealt with the word.
[13:34] Bob Dobbs: You were learning,
[13:35] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[13:35] Bob Dobbs: the retrieval of orality or the value of the word or the word is ground.
[13:40] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[13:40] Bob Dobbs: the men of 1914 were involved with the word.
[13:44] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[13:45] Bob Dobbs: that's not my problem.
[13:46] Bob Dobbs: In my world,
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: the word is a drug.
[13:49] Bob Dobbs: So that indicates...
[13:50] Bob Dobbs: he knows that the word emphasis maybe of his
[13:55] Bob Dobbs: 40s life is not applicable anymore.
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[13:59] Bob Dobbs: And he's got a whole new problem of communication when the word is a drug.
[14:04] Cameron McEwen: Correct,
[14:05] Cameron McEwen: correct.
[14:05] Cameron McEwen: But always understanding that he didn't want to give up the word.
[14:09] Cameron McEwen: He wanted to find a new way to understand it and to use it within this anti-environment.
[14:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[14:17] Bob Dobbs: and one of the metaphorical ways he said that,
[14:20] Bob Dobbs: I think in the first Explorations was,
[14:23] Bob Dobbs: what use is it for a book?
[14:26] Bob Dobbs: He was trying to find,
[14:27] Bob Dobbs: retrieve a use for the book,
[14:29] Bob Dobbs: which I think he did do well on that.
[14:32] Bob Dobbs: He wrote a book that startled people.
[14:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[14:35] Bob Dobbs: now it's sort of odd,
[14:36] Bob Dobbs: but back then nobody knew what the hell he was talking about.
[14:39] Bob Dobbs: He certainly got attention with his books.
[14:41] Bob Dobbs: They were different,
[14:42] Bob Dobbs: right?
[14:43] Bob Dobbs: He brought the book back at the same time as Mao had his little red book.
[14:48] Bob Dobbs: going around in Asia.
[14:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[14:50] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting.
[14:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[14:50] Cameron McEwen: that lasted until
[14:52] Cameron McEwen: 69 or so.
[14:54] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[14:55] Bob Dobbs: And that's the period for Marshall,
[14:56] Bob Dobbs: 66 to 69,
[14:57] Bob Dobbs: it's the same thing.
[14:59] Bob Dobbs: Did I ever mention that Eric said in April 1980,
[15:03] Bob Dobbs: Toronto Star closing up the center,
[15:06] Bob Dobbs: they're talking about,
[15:06] Bob Dobbs: well,
[15:07] Bob Dobbs: Eric might take it over,
[15:08] Bob Dobbs: they're not sure if it is going to close,
[15:10] Bob Dobbs: and he ends his interview saying that Mao Zedong has the same meaning as McLuhan,
[15:16] Bob Dobbs: as Marshall McLuhan.
[15:17] Bob Dobbs: He just sort of says the two names are similar.
[15:20] Bob Dobbs: I always wondered what that was.
[15:22] Bob Dobbs: Never had a chance to ask him what was the meaning.
[15:26] Bob Dobbs: But I thought it's interesting in light of the little book that Mao had going was the same time as McLuhan little book,
[15:33] Bob Dobbs: The Mediumism Massage,
[15:34] Bob Dobbs: was going around.
[15:35] Bob Dobbs: Two parallel actions there.
[15:38] Bob Dobbs: And in the way,
[15:39] Bob Dobbs: the last gasp of the book.
[15:41] Bob Dobbs: No more books after that.
[15:44] Bob Dobbs: Publishing industry just becomes junk.
[15:47] Bob Dobbs: Now with occasional,
[15:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[15:49] Bob Dobbs: old-fashioned guy like Norman Mailer or somebody putting on a nice novel,
[15:54] Bob Dobbs: but it was not constituent anymore.
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: So we moved into quadrophrenia,
[15:58] Bob Dobbs: and that's why I like Baudrillard saying that McLuhan was a musician.
[16:02] Bob Dobbs: He was a musician.
[16:04] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[16:06] Bob Dobbs: May I pardon?
[16:07] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.
[16:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[16:08] Bob Dobbs: So he's moving into quadrophrenia.
[16:10] Bob Dobbs: So I have here the trivium,
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: rhetoric,
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: grammar,
[16:13] Bob Dobbs: dialectics,
[16:14] Bob Dobbs: plus advertising and comics.
[16:15] Bob Dobbs: That's the 40s.
[16:17] Bob Dobbs: And then the
[16:17] Bob Dobbs: 50s, you got the quadrivium,
[16:20] Bob Dobbs: and I line up the four aspects,
[16:23] Bob Dobbs: astronomy,
[16:24] Bob Dobbs: geometry,
[16:25] Bob Dobbs: and arithmetic,
[16:26] Bob Dobbs: and I make them expanded,
[16:30] Bob Dobbs: right?
[16:31] Bob Dobbs: So I've got telephone,
[16:33] Bob Dobbs: motor car,
[16:34] Bob Dobbs: movie,
[16:34] Bob Dobbs: radio,
[16:35] Bob Dobbs: television.
[16:36] Bob Dobbs: And then I bring in astronomy,
[16:38] Bob Dobbs: you have McLuhan three Copernican revolutions.
[16:42] Bob Dobbs: So it's a different kind of astronomy.
[16:45] Bob Dobbs: going on.
[16:46] Cameron McEwen: That's from 1973.
[16:49] Cameron McEwen: So you're understanding McLuhan in the
[16:53] Cameron McEwen: 50s from
[16:54] Cameron McEwen: 20 years later.
[16:55] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[16:56] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[16:56] Bob Dobbs: he has an article in the
[17:00] Bob Dobbs: 50s Explorations.
[17:01] Bob Dobbs: This other guy does the Copernican Revolutions.
[17:04] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't update it like Marshall,
[17:06] Bob Dobbs: but he runs through six levels of it or something.
[17:11] Cameron McEwen: So I vaguely remember that.
[17:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[17:13] Bob Dobbs: So I thought,
[17:14] Bob Dobbs: well,
[17:14] Bob Dobbs: that Marshall
[17:15] Bob Dobbs: Marshall was thinking in those terms,
[17:17] Bob Dobbs: but he let someone else write it.
[17:19] Bob Dobbs: Or
[17:19] Bob Dobbs: Marshall got ideas from it.
[17:21] Bob Dobbs: So that's my alibi that there was a little inkling of it in the
[17:26] Bob Dobbs: 50s.
[17:28] Cameron McEwen: All right.
[17:29] Cameron McEwen: We'll buy that.
[17:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[17:30] Bob Dobbs: good.
[17:31] Bob Dobbs: And then geometry,
[17:32] Bob Dobbs: you go from Euclidean to non-Euclidean geometries.
[17:36] Bob Dobbs: Arithmetic,
[17:38] Bob Dobbs: the new kind of arithmetic is the ratings,
[17:40] Bob Dobbs: Nielsen ratings and Big Brothers GNP and statistics.
[17:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[17:44] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[17:45] Bob Dobbs: And then music is everywhere.
[17:50] Cameron McEwen: Notice what's happening here.
[17:52] Cameron McEwen: When you say the
[17:54] Cameron McEwen: Trivium Plus advertising in comics,
[17:58] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying is that here's McLuhan,
[18:01] Cameron McEwen: who's done this
[18:04] Cameron McEwen: 400-page-plus thesis on the Trivium,
[18:08] Cameron McEwen: but it doesn't account for his interest in the larger environment.
[18:14] Cameron McEwen: which include advertising and comics.
[18:17] Cameron McEwen: So he has to figure out,
[18:18] Cameron McEwen: well,
[18:18] Cameron McEwen: what's the relationship between the trivium and understanding comics?
[18:23] Cameron McEwen: And then in the
[18:24] Cameron McEwen: 50s, when he understands that the individual trivium is actually the quadrivium,
[18:36] Cameron McEwen: then he looks at the telephone,
[18:39] Cameron McEwen: motor car,
[18:39] Cameron McEwen: movie,
[18:40] Cameron McEwen: radio,
[18:40] Cameron McEwen: television,
[18:41] Cameron McEwen: astronomy,
[18:42] Cameron McEwen: and he's saying
[18:44] Cameron McEwen: These are very important in my lab for probing what's going on with the quadrivium,
[18:54] Cameron McEwen: and similarly with the other things that you bring out.
[18:57] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[18:59] Bob Dobbs: I agree.
[19:02] Bob Dobbs: And I would say that,
[19:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[19:05] Bob Dobbs: I have here for the 60s the quadrivium,
[19:08] Bob Dobbs: plus satellites or a cyborg,
[19:09] Bob Dobbs: mixed corporate media.
[19:14] Bob Dobbs: It's past the quadrivium.
[19:16] Bob Dobbs: Now it's in a totally new non-academic or something end of the public intellectual,
[19:26] Bob Dobbs: end of any kind of role for the university and for learning.
[19:33] Cameron McEwen: What we could say is that when
[19:36] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan looks at advertising and comics in the
[19:40] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, then...
[19:42] Cameron McEwen: He understands that the trivium,
[19:46] Cameron McEwen: although it's been used for a couple thousand years to illuminate the world,
[19:53] Cameron McEwen: is problematic.
[19:56] Cameron McEwen: So then he moves on to the quadrivium.
[19:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[19:59] Cameron McEwen: And he looks at these things.
[20:00] Cameron McEwen: And then by the time he gets to the
[20:02] Cameron McEwen: 60s, then he realizes that the quadrivium,
[20:05] Cameron McEwen: as he had been looking at it,
[20:08] Cameron McEwen: now needs to be probed in terms of the satellite.
[20:11] Cameron McEwen: Cyborg Miss Corporate Media,
[20:14] Cameron McEwen: Global Theater.
[20:15] Cameron McEwen: So he's always finding ways of,
[20:20] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[20:21] Cameron McEwen: of disproving his theories.
[20:25] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[20:27] Cameron McEwen: So later in Laws of Media,
[20:29] Cameron McEwen: he and Eric make a big deal of
[20:31] Cameron McEwen: Popper's theory about being able to criticize.
[20:37] Bob Dobbs: The Null Hypothesis,
[20:39] Bob Dobbs: I think it's sometimes called.
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:41] Bob Dobbs: see,
[20:44] Bob Dobbs: the trivium is the individual,
[20:46] Bob Dobbs: quadrivium is collective,
[20:48] Bob Dobbs: but mass man in the
[20:50] Bob Dobbs: 60s, as we've talked about before,
[20:52] Bob Dobbs: is tribal and autonomous.
[20:54] Bob Dobbs: It's a new quality that no culture's ever had before.
[20:58] Bob Dobbs: So that's,
[21:00] Bob Dobbs: if you're following,
[21:01] Bob Dobbs: going from the individual to the collective of the 50s,
[21:04] Bob Dobbs: and then to the mass man,
[21:06] Bob Dobbs: that's really a new situation.
[21:09] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?
[21:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[21:11] Cameron McEwen: I can go with that.
[21:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[21:13] Bob Dobbs: and you're also a super angel.
[21:15] Bob Dobbs: You're everywhere at once.
[21:19] Cameron McEwen: So the whole question of you and you're everywhere at once,
[21:23] Cameron McEwen: you has basically imploded or exploded.
[21:28] Cameron McEwen: What needs to be explicated is what is the you given this anti-environment?
[21:40] Bob Dobbs: Say,
[21:44] Bob Dobbs: what is the U?
[21:45] Cameron McEwen: Is that what you said?
[21:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:47] Cameron McEwen: What is the U?
[21:48] Cameron McEwen: The Y-O-U.
[21:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[21:48] Cameron McEwen: Because when you say that we're into a whole anti-environment,
[21:55] Cameron McEwen: it's not the case that what the we is or the I is or the U is,
[22:01] Cameron McEwen: it's not the case that these things remain fixed or foundational.
[22:08] Cameron McEwen: Instead,
[22:09] Cameron McEwen: they get...
[22:10] Cameron McEwen: imploded and you get into a very sort of crazy situation that in many ways caused big problems for McLuhan personally.
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[22:23] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[22:24] Bob Dobbs: So
[22:24] Bob Dobbs: I would probably even drop quadrivium from the
[22:28] Bob Dobbs: 60s.
[22:29] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what made me think to keep it in there,
[22:31] Bob Dobbs: but it was probably good to keep it there rather than just say satellite,
[22:35] Bob Dobbs: cyborg and have no plus.
[22:37] Bob Dobbs: But we're
[22:39] Bob Dobbs: Go back up to my oral thing on page 79,
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: where I say,
[22:44] Bob Dobbs: then the Android Meme imploded all.
[22:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[22:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying the Android Meme starts in 1960.
[22:51] Bob Dobbs: That's when
[22:52] Bob Dobbs: MIT and the digital program really got going.
[22:57] Bob Dobbs: And it's at various Acadia University until 69.
[23:01] Bob Dobbs: And that's when they start to build the Internet in L.A.
[23:05] Bob Dobbs: And they set up.
[23:06] Bob Dobbs: September 69,
[23:07] Bob Dobbs: October 69,
[23:09] Bob Dobbs: November and December.
[23:11] Bob Dobbs: Each month they add another terminal or
[23:14] Bob Dobbs: IMP, I-M-P,
[23:15] Bob Dobbs: which I can't remember what it stood for.
[23:18] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:18] Bob Dobbs: each university contributed to the beginning of this network.
[23:24] Bob Dobbs: So that's 69.
[23:26] Bob Dobbs: And then that's developed up till 90.
[23:28] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying the Android Meme as ground is from 60 to 90.
[23:32] Bob Dobbs: And then my chart is a picture.
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: of the after image of the Android Meme,
[23:38] Bob Dobbs: which is the
[23:39] Bob Dobbs: 90s and what we call the Internet or the World Wide Web.
[23:43] Bob Dobbs: So that's the long-range thing.
[23:45] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to show how,
[23:47] Bob Dobbs: as the Android Meme,
[23:49] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[23:49] Bob Dobbs: really shrinks and gets tighter,
[23:54] Bob Dobbs: the global concentration camp,
[23:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[23:56] Bob Dobbs: it becomes a Global Membrane,
[23:58] Bob Dobbs: but it's not complete slavery because there's more and more autonomy that the digital media is giving people.
[24:09] Bob Dobbs: They think it's autonomy.
[24:10] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[24:11] Bob Dobbs: They can titillate themselves with no community pressure on how they're doing it.
[24:17] Bob Dobbs: There's no community controls anymore,
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: like neighborhood controls.
[24:24] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[24:24] Bob Dobbs: just social life was gone in the sense of community policing.
[24:33] Bob Dobbs: How is that different from the 60s?
[24:34] Bob Dobbs: No,
[24:34] Bob Dobbs: that is the 60s.
[24:35] Bob Dobbs: It starts in the 60s and it goes for 30 years.
[24:38] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[24:39] Bob Dobbs: And,
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[24:40] Bob Dobbs: it's really radical in the
[24:42] Bob Dobbs: 90s. All the walls,
[24:44] Bob Dobbs: the after-image walls,
[24:46] Bob Dobbs: everything collapses.
[24:47] Bob Dobbs: And we don't recover.
[24:50] Bob Dobbs: Nobody can claim they got anywheres.
[24:52] Bob Dobbs: They didn't retrieve this,
[24:53] Bob Dobbs: they didn't retrieve that.
[24:55] Bob Dobbs: Just endless frustration.
[24:58] Bob Dobbs: And more and more...
[24:59] Bob Dobbs: ecstatic drug taking,
[25:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[25:02] Bob Dobbs: to obliterate yourself.
[25:04] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[25:05] Bob Dobbs: On all levels.
[25:07] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[25:07] Bob Dobbs: so that's the broad view of where I'm going.
[25:10] Bob Dobbs: So we go back to the 60s,
[25:12] Bob Dobbs: and
[25:13] Bob Dobbs: I've got the quadrophrenia,
[25:17] Bob Dobbs: plus satellite,
[25:18] Bob Dobbs: cyborg,
[25:19] Bob Dobbs: mixed corporate media,
[25:19] Bob Dobbs: that's all happening.
[25:21] Bob Dobbs: And those are huge.
[25:22] Bob Dobbs: And what's interesting is people don't get the Ivins of that.
[25:28] Bob Dobbs: They're celebrating.
[25:29] Bob Dobbs: The new autonomy,
[25:30] Bob Dobbs: the new tribalism,
[25:32] Bob Dobbs: it has a lot of fun in the
[25:36] Bob Dobbs: 60s, or it's presented as fun.
[25:38] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot of people pissed off at the fun.
[25:41] Bob Dobbs: They don't like it.
[25:42] Bob Dobbs: But nobody thinks they're going to get wiped out in a collective level that's coming.
[25:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[25:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan starts to say in the 70s,
[25:51] Bob Dobbs: we're now the planet of the dead.
[25:53] Bob Dobbs: That's a serious statement,
[25:55] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[25:55] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[25:56] Cameron McEwen: But there were,
[25:57] Cameron McEwen: of course...
[25:58] Cameron McEwen: People that were protesting about nuclear weapons then in a way that people aren't today.
[26:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[26:05] Cameron McEwen: I forget the name of the Australian woman who was a very powerful figure in that movement.
[26:12] Bob Dobbs: Helen somebody.
[26:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[26:14] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.
[26:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[26:16] Bob Dobbs: I know who you mean.
[26:18] Bob Dobbs: And there's the example of someone who's a big deal,
[26:20] Bob Dobbs: a saint in other times,
[26:23] Bob Dobbs: right?
[26:23] Bob Dobbs: In other times she'd be a saint.
[26:25] Bob Dobbs: She's an unknown person.
[26:27] Bob Dobbs: She's gone.
[26:29] Bob Dobbs: No memory.
[26:29] Cameron McEwen: She would have been a St.
[26:31] Cameron McEwen: Joan,
[26:31] Bob Dobbs: I'd say.
[26:33] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?
[26:34] Bob Dobbs: St.
[26:34] Bob Dobbs: Helen?
[26:36] Cameron McEwen: She would have been a St.
[26:37] Cameron McEwen: Joan.
[26:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[26:38] Bob Dobbs: yes.
[26:40] Bob Dobbs: I forgot to say,
[26:41] Bob Dobbs: when you were talking about the 40s and it's the individual,
[26:44] Bob Dobbs: the last gasp of the individual,
[26:46] Bob Dobbs: that's the brilliant statement by McLuhan.
[26:49] Bob Dobbs: I think it's at the beginning of Southern Quality,
[26:51] Bob Dobbs: 1945-46.
[26:53] Bob Dobbs: He's talking about the effect of the atomic bomb.
[26:55] Bob Dobbs: And he says,
[26:56] Bob Dobbs: this is it.
[26:56] Bob Dobbs: There's no more individuality,
[26:57] Bob Dobbs: no more causes.
[26:59] Bob Dobbs: And he said the person who's going to find it the hardest to deal with is the artist.
[27:03] Bob Dobbs: No more individual Gutenberg creativity,
[27:07] Bob Dobbs: what they call the Gutenberg arts.
[27:08] Bob Dobbs: That's amazing.
[27:10] Bob Dobbs: And what happens is you see Culture Is Our Business for the next 30 years.
[27:15] Bob Dobbs: You have the supernova of all the arts.
[27:19] Bob Dobbs: More and more movies,
[27:20] Bob Dobbs: more and more TV shows,
[27:21] Bob Dobbs: more and more opera,
[27:22] Bob Dobbs: more and more sculpture,
[27:23] Bob Dobbs: more and more new art,
[27:24] Bob Dobbs: more and more amateur arts.
[27:26] Bob Dobbs: incredible,
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[27:28] Bob Dobbs: Eric's word,
[27:29] Bob Dobbs: Terrence Gordon.
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: Incredible.
[27:32] Cameron McEwen: What's that word?
[27:34] Bob Dobbs: Terrence Gordon.
[27:35] Bob Dobbs: That's what he called our time.
[27:37] Bob Dobbs: Not the Renaissance,
[27:38] Bob Dobbs: an Terrence Gordon.
[27:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[27:39] Cameron McEwen: I see,
[27:40] Cameron McEwen: Terrence Gordon.
[27:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[27:42] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[27:42] Cameron McEwen: I have to,
[27:43] Cameron McEwen: the dog is scratching at the door.
[27:44] Cameron McEwen: I just need to let him out.
[27:46] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[27:53] Cameron McEwen: I'm back.
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:54] Bob Dobbs: it's really.
[27:55] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[27:55] Bob Dobbs: as I enjoyed and watched the arts explode and become what I call on my chart Baroque spirals of excess and all this stuff,
[28:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[28:06] Bob Dobbs: and the artists,
[28:07] Bob Dobbs: the individual artists,
[28:08] Bob Dobbs: the dreamers of the Bauhaus and the Pre-Raphaelites,
[28:11] Bob Dobbs: all those cults or secret societies of artists that were trying to have an influence in the society during the beginnings of the Industrial Age.
[28:21] Bob Dobbs: They reached their pinnacle.
[28:22] Bob Dobbs: They were running the,
[28:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan called them in the 50s,
[28:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[28:25] Bob Dobbs: the penthouse artist.
[28:27] Bob Dobbs: He had
[28:28] Bob Dobbs: TV programs.
[28:29] Bob Dobbs: It was an amazing time of chemical body creativity.
[28:37] Bob Dobbs: But in the end,
[28:38] Bob Dobbs: it was really just artists being the content of a gaping maw,
[28:43] Bob Dobbs: a Monstre Gai of endless output and input.
[28:48] Bob Dobbs: So
[28:49] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what...
[28:51] Bob Dobbs: I think I picked up that McLuhan was warning about this.
[28:54] Bob Dobbs: So I enjoyed the arts,
[28:55] Bob Dobbs: but I said,
[28:56] Bob Dobbs: this is Norman Mailer.
[28:57] Bob Dobbs: He's going to get smeared.
[28:59] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[29:00] Bob Dobbs: the Beatles are going to get smeared.
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's going to get wiped out.
[29:02] Bob Dobbs: I could see that.
[29:03] Bob Dobbs: That was the warning of his 1970 title,
[29:06] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business.
[29:07] Bob Dobbs: And so I found it very interesting from the 70s and 80s that you had to know how to live.
[29:17] Bob Dobbs: And a big deal of that was,
[29:19] Bob Dobbs: don't try to do anything or think you're going to get somewhere.
[29:23] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't put meaning into whatever you were doing.
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan even said,
[29:27] Bob Dobbs: why do anything more than six months?
[29:29] Bob Dobbs: He said that in a Forces interview,
[29:31] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[29:32] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[29:33] Bob Dobbs: early
[29:33] Bob Dobbs: 70s. His quotes were always the bravest,
[29:37] Bob Dobbs: the most interesting quotes of anybody of the time.
[29:40] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[29:41] Bob Dobbs: Who would say that?
[29:42] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: say,
[29:44] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[29:44] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[29:45] Bob Dobbs: my buddy's on unemployment.
[29:47] Bob Dobbs: He's just quit his job.
[29:48] Bob Dobbs: He's out there in British Columbia having a good time.
[29:50] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[29:51] Bob Dobbs: there's obviously something new going on here where that can happen in society.
[29:56] Bob Dobbs: And then he said,
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: why do anything more than six months?
[30:00] Bob Dobbs: He even said,
[30:01] Bob Dobbs: what's the role of a wife?
[30:02] Bob Dobbs: Why even have a wife?
[30:04] Bob Dobbs: You didn't see many guys of his generation saying that kind of stuff.
[30:08] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[30:09] Bob Dobbs: you didn't see anybody saying it,
[30:10] Bob Dobbs: right?
[30:11] Bob Dobbs: So
[30:12] Bob Dobbs: I admired his...
[30:14] Bob Dobbs: bluntness about the facts of what was happening that everybody was ignoring.
[30:19] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[30:19] Cameron McEwen: But what was happening was that he was talking about this stuff,
[30:24] Cameron McEwen: and at least until 1969 or so,
[30:28] Cameron McEwen: people were lapping it up and sort of loving it.
[30:32] Cameron McEwen: But they were comprehending it in
[30:37] Cameron McEwen: Gutenbergian terms.
[30:39] Cameron McEwen: And so it wasn't getting anywhere.
[30:43] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[30:44] Bob Dobbs: he had a backlash.
[30:45] Bob Dobbs: He had a backlash to his image.
[30:47] Bob Dobbs: And he saw that coming,
[30:49] Bob Dobbs: and Maurice McLuhan told me that in 71.
[30:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan brother said,
[30:54] Bob Dobbs: we're not going out there and speaking for the next couple of years.
[30:57] Bob Dobbs: We're laying low.
[30:58] Bob Dobbs: We're going to retreat.
[31:00] Bob Dobbs: We know that the people are starting to catch up to the devastation,
[31:07] Bob Dobbs: that whatever positive visions they had from the 60s was canceled.
[31:11] Bob Dobbs: Now it was what Lester Bangs called the bland out,
[31:15] Bob Dobbs: which is the planet of the dead.
[31:16] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan and Morris said this to me.
[31:19] Bob Dobbs: And what was interesting,
[31:22] Bob Dobbs: Marshall didn't get back in the media until 74,
[31:25] Bob Dobbs: and he was interviewed in Newsweek or someplace,
[31:27] Bob Dobbs: and so he had a new program.
[31:29] Bob Dobbs: He said the problem with public transportation,
[31:36] Bob Dobbs: bringing in system of public transportation,
[31:38] Bob Dobbs: it won't work.
[31:39] Bob Dobbs: Americans go out to be alone.
[31:41] Bob Dobbs: They go out in their cars to think.
[31:43] Bob Dobbs: They need cars.
[31:45] Bob Dobbs: And that was pretty interesting.
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: There he was,
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: pointing out that these dreams of having public transportation or any greeny dreams or ecological dreams of redesigned cities was not looking at the dynamics of what had already been established by the Western private identity up against this apocalypse.
[32:02] Bob Dobbs: And their car was their new sacred bathtub,
[32:06] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[32:07] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[32:08] Cameron McEwen: The car was what enabled you to go out to be alone.
[32:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[32:12] Bob Dobbs: you could only do it in a car.
[32:14] Bob Dobbs: So that dynamic was not surmountable.
[32:21] Cameron McEwen: No,
[32:21] Cameron McEwen: and that's still going on.
[32:24] Cameron McEwen: That's the motor of international affairs right now.
[32:28] Bob Dobbs: International what?
[32:30] Cameron McEwen: Affairs.
[32:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[32:32] Bob Dobbs: but what I admired about him,
[32:34] Bob Dobbs: he was still doing his work,
[32:35] Bob Dobbs: and he had a new pattern.
[32:37] Bob Dobbs: to explain to an x-ray the complexities that were going on that nobody was talking about.
[32:43] Bob Dobbs: And he had a new bunch of things to say in the 70s.
[32:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[32:47] Cameron McEwen: so
[32:49] Cameron McEwen: I like you bringing in x-ray there.
[32:52] Cameron McEwen: If we go back to the 1960s for a minute,
[32:55] Cameron McEwen: if instead of the quadrivium plus satellite,
[32:57] Cameron McEwen: cyber,
[32:58] Cameron McEwen: et cetera,
[32:59] Cameron McEwen: if we put there the global theater plus satellite,
[33:02] Cameron McEwen: cyber,
[33:02] Cameron McEwen: and corporate media,
[33:04] Cameron McEwen: then what we have is...
[33:05] Cameron McEwen: The global theater has become a fact,
[33:08] Cameron McEwen: but it hasn't been understood,
[33:09] Cameron McEwen: and we have to understand it through satellite,
[33:13] Cameron McEwen: cyber,
[33:13] Cameron McEwen: and miscorporate media in the same way that we had to understand earlier the quadrivium through those other inventions or the trivium through advertising and comics.
[33:26] Cameron McEwen: So the movement is always,
[33:30] Cameron McEwen: what do we have to probe?
[33:33] Cameron McEwen: in order to understand where we're at.
[33:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[33:38] Bob Dobbs: And so do you see the...
[33:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[33:44] Bob Dobbs: television was tactile.
[33:45] Bob Dobbs: I understood that in the
[33:46] Bob Dobbs: 50s and 60s.
[33:48] Bob Dobbs: But then I realized,
[33:48] Bob Dobbs: no,
[33:49] Bob Dobbs: we're in massive interplaying anti-environment.
[33:51] Bob Dobbs: So
[33:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if McLuhan ever said it,
[33:57] Bob Dobbs: but I realized the interplay of the anti-environment with all-at-onceness and...
[34:03] Bob Dobbs: super angelic and autonomy was a kind of tactility,
[34:08] Bob Dobbs: interpolation.
[34:10] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[34:13] Bob Dobbs: And I don't know of many people who saw anti-environment like that as tactility.
[34:18] Bob Dobbs: They could see television as tactile eventually,
[34:20] Bob Dobbs: but that was just one of many media.
[34:22] Bob Dobbs: So just make sure you understand,
[34:24] Bob Dobbs: that's what I mean in that quote there,
[34:26] Bob Dobbs: that there's a larger tactility going on,
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: a tactility maybe you could say.
[34:32] Bob Dobbs: And a global theater is a word for that.
[34:35] Bob Dobbs: And even theaters too framed,
[34:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[34:39] Bob Dobbs: it's too much of a visual word reference in framing.
[34:44] Bob Dobbs: The proscenium arch,
[34:45] Bob Dobbs: he called it.
[34:47] Bob Dobbs: But we're up against the satellite cyborg mixed corporate media.
[34:50] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: the baby boomers didn't get that.
[34:54] Bob Dobbs: But it was interesting,
[34:54] Bob Dobbs: the punks in the late 70s,
[34:57] Bob Dobbs: they started automatically treating themselves as cyborgs.
[35:01] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[35:02] Bob Dobbs: That was a given to them.
[35:08] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: same with people doing graffiti.
[35:12] Bob Dobbs: Doing what?
[35:12] Bob Dobbs: Graffiti.
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: And,
[35:13] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[35:14] Bob Dobbs: it shocked people.
[35:15] Bob Dobbs: And Norman Mailer is a radical.
[35:16] Bob Dobbs: He comes out and he's all for graffiti.
[35:18] Bob Dobbs: I remember him talking about it in the
[35:20] Bob Dobbs: 70s. And he shocked his buddies because he didn't consider it e-facing.
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: He thought it was an important art form,
[35:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[35:28] Bob Dobbs: on the subways of New York.
[35:30] Bob Dobbs: And so...
[35:35] Bob Dobbs: This,
[35:36] Bob Dobbs: we're trying to make it big,
[35:37] Bob Dobbs: and it was big,
[35:39] Bob Dobbs: but it's the end of the chemical body and probably the astral body too.
[35:44] Bob Dobbs: And so you're going to get,
[35:46] Bob Dobbs: with the digitization coming in,
[35:48] Bob Dobbs: they start to make the TV body,
[35:50] Bob Dobbs: which is the shrinking of the TV landscape and the shrinking of the satellite landscape,
[35:56] Bob Dobbs: which creates a chip body.
[35:58] Bob Dobbs: And those are amazing new devastations.
[36:05] Bob Dobbs: In the,
[36:08] Bob Dobbs: I like Kroker phrase,
[36:09] Bob Dobbs: we got surplus flesh.
[36:11] Bob Dobbs: The chemical body wasn't even in the game anymore by the time of the 80s.
[36:15] Bob Dobbs: And the Android Meme replayed his art form through the chip body,
[36:21] Bob Dobbs: retrieved certain ecstasies,
[36:23] Bob Dobbs: millennial ecstasies for communication and hooking up the individual or what people thought they were.
[36:31] Bob Dobbs: You have that run for 20 years and then that collapses into this.
[36:34] Bob Dobbs: A ridiculous situation we're in now.
[36:37] Bob Dobbs: So even the Android Meme collapses and flips into the tech body.
[36:41] Bob Dobbs: So that is my opinion.
[36:43] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.
[36:45] Cameron McEwen: Talk a little bit about the relationship between the different bodies.
[36:50] Bob Dobbs: The relationship,
[36:51] Bob Dobbs: did you say?
[36:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[36:54] Cameron McEwen: In other words,
[36:56] Cameron McEwen: is this a foundational plurality,
[37:00] Cameron McEwen: or is there something even more?
[37:03] Cameron McEwen: foundational,
[37:04] Cameron McEwen: something a little bit like tactility,
[37:06] Cameron McEwen: that holds these things together,
[37:08] Cameron McEwen: even while defining them as separate.
[37:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[37:13] Bob Dobbs: that's on my chart,
[37:14] Bob Dobbs: the number 14 for the Kroker quadrant,
[37:17] Bob Dobbs: that's the meaning.
[37:18] Bob Dobbs: One is the Global Membrane,
[37:21] Bob Dobbs: everybody's in the resonant node,
[37:23] Bob Dobbs: all bodies are in the resonant node,
[37:25] Bob Dobbs: but we spin off quadrophrenia,
[37:29] Bob Dobbs: that's the 4 of 14,
[37:31] Bob Dobbs: It's not the 22 of the 60s,
[37:34] Bob Dobbs: the analogical proportions of balance ratios that brings in the tetrad manager.
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: You've got the machine that's running the show,
[37:44] Bob Dobbs: and I call that the phatic.
[37:46] Bob Dobbs: That's the machinic tetrad manager.
[37:50] Bob Dobbs: And that's the period of the Android Meme.
[37:52] Bob Dobbs: And the Android Meme consists of the interplay,
[37:54] Bob Dobbs: more and more,
[37:56] Bob Dobbs: of the chemical body,
[37:57] Bob Dobbs: astral body.
[37:59] Bob Dobbs: TV body,
[38:00] Bob Dobbs: chip body,
[38:00] Bob Dobbs: and the mystery body.
[38:01] Bob Dobbs: I always included that there was things we didn't know,
[38:05] Bob Dobbs: and who knows how they'll show up.
[38:09] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I thought of UFOs as that,
[38:11] Bob Dobbs: but in retrospect,
[38:13] Bob Dobbs: they are part of the interior landscape.
[38:15] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't a mystery body yet.
[38:16] Bob Dobbs: It was a interior landscape.
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: When Ion came,
[38:22] Bob Dobbs: Ion articulated the interior landscape,
[38:24] Bob Dobbs: so then we could develop a mystery body.
[38:28] Bob Dobbs: and take the Mr.
[38:29] Bob Dobbs: Landscape as art form.
[38:32] Cameron McEwen: At this point,
[38:33] Cameron McEwen: you've gone beyond the stuff on page
[38:36] Cameron McEwen: 80, I take it?
[38:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[38:39] Cameron McEwen: You've gone beyond the 70s up to the 90s.
[38:43] Bob Dobbs: 2000s.
[38:43] Cameron McEwen: And now you're in the 2000s.
[38:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[38:47] Bob Dobbs: well,
[38:47] Bob Dobbs: I tend to run the pattern and then go back and do it again.
[38:52] Cameron McEwen: That's all right.
[38:53] Cameron McEwen: I just want to know where we're at.
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: No,
[38:55] Bob Dobbs: no,
[38:55] Bob Dobbs: now we're going back to page 80.
[38:58] Cameron McEwen: So,
[39:04] Bob Dobbs: it's important to understand how television,
[39:07] Bob Dobbs: mixed corporate media,
[39:08] Bob Dobbs: is a landscape in the
[39:10] Bob Dobbs: 60s, or what you could call a medium.
[39:13] Bob Dobbs: It's not an appendage on us.
[39:16] Bob Dobbs: The super angel has not shrunk the landscape anti-environment to organ size,
[39:25] Bob Dobbs: barnacle size.
[39:26] Bob Dobbs: which is what's going to happen to the television anti-environment the mixed corporate media hologram and also what's going to happen to the the computer world as it becomes a chip body it's important to understand that these things were landscapes first huge uh leviathan
[39:44] Cameron McEwen: You mean by shrinking understanding?
[39:47] Bob Dobbs: No.
[39:48] Bob Dobbs: Shrinking is the digitization,
[39:50] Bob Dobbs: miniaturization,
[39:51] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic process.
[39:53] Bob Dobbs: The hologram is made holeopathic and shrunk so that by 2010,
[40:01] Bob Dobbs: you have massive anti-environment in your belt and you don't even have to see them.
[40:07] Bob Dobbs: You don't see.
[40:09] Bob Dobbs: They're in your wrist.
[40:11] Bob Dobbs: They're in the little cell phone.
[40:14] Bob Dobbs: You got massive former huge landscapes are now shrunk.
[40:19] Cameron McEwen: In order to be shrunk,
[40:20] Cameron McEwen: in order to be on your wrist,
[40:22] Cameron McEwen: they need to be understood in some sense.
[40:26] Cameron McEwen: So on the one hand,
[40:28] Cameron McEwen: people based on what happened in the
[40:33] Cameron McEwen: 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s,
[40:37] Cameron McEwen: they're now able to come up with new applications.
[40:41] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,
[40:42] Cameron McEwen: they're coming up with new applications,
[40:44] Cameron McEwen: throws light on what's going on at a deeper level.
[40:49] Cameron McEwen: So you have two things going on at the same time.
[40:52] Cameron McEwen: And they're both understandings,
[40:54] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[40:55] Cameron McEwen: One is an understanding that will lead to application,
[40:59] Cameron McEwen: and the other is an understanding deeper than that or above that,
[41:05] Cameron McEwen: which sees those things as...
[41:11] Cameron McEwen: explicable in new ways.
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[41:16] Bob Dobbs: and
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: I mentioned this before,
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: that's where the holeopathic process is what Theall calls synesthetic and co-anesthetic.
[41:26] Bob Dobbs: The co-anesthetic is putting you,
[41:28] Bob Dobbs: whatever you are,
[41:29] Bob Dobbs: I call Anthropomorphic Physical,
[41:31] Bob Dobbs: putting you more and more in the center of a media vortex that is tinier,
[41:36] Bob Dobbs: getting more smaller than you.
[41:38] Bob Dobbs: And so you're becoming bigger
[41:40] Bob Dobbs: But it's not your chemical body that's becoming bigger,
[41:43] Bob Dobbs: but you.
[41:44] Bob Dobbs: What is that you?
[41:46] Bob Dobbs: The core you,
[41:47] Bob Dobbs: the thing that looks around,
[41:49] Bob Dobbs: listens,
[41:51] Bob Dobbs: and might imagine is human.
[41:55] Bob Dobbs: So what he called the citadel of consciousness.
[41:58] Bob Dobbs: That is what's left.
[41:59] Bob Dobbs: The raw citadel of consciousness,
[42:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[42:01] Bob Dobbs: by 2000,
[42:03] Bob Dobbs: is in the middle of the vortex,
[42:06] Bob Dobbs: the perfect storm.
[42:08] Bob Dobbs: and juggling the five bodies.
[42:13] Bob Dobbs: And the movement of being in the center is the co-anesthetic,
[42:19] Bob Dobbs: and the mixture of the bodies,
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: hallucinatory,
[42:22] Bob Dobbs: synesthetic,
[42:24] Bob Dobbs: absurdities of experience,
[42:27] Bob Dobbs: is the other dynamic.
[42:28] Bob Dobbs: So there's those two dynamics that replace what he said in the
[42:32] Bob Dobbs: 70s, increasing decentralization parallel with increasing centralization.
[42:38] Bob Dobbs: So that leads to the Reagan era,
[42:40] Bob Dobbs: 1984.
[42:42] Bob Dobbs: But the bodies are a new situation.
[42:46] Bob Dobbs: That was not anticipated by people.
[42:49] Bob Dobbs: They thought they'd become a cyborg,
[42:51] Bob Dobbs: a robot.
[42:52] Bob Dobbs: They just thought about their chemical body being replaced.
[42:55] Bob Dobbs: But you have now two extra bodies that you can't see.
[43:01] Bob Dobbs: And most people aren't aware that you're made of.
[43:05] Bob Dobbs: of these two bodies.
[43:06] Bob Dobbs: They've been added to your astral and chemical.
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: But you can look at any issue,
[43:11] Bob Dobbs: social issue and problem,
[43:13] Bob Dobbs: just take,
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: shooting in schools,
[43:15] Bob Dobbs: you're dealing with four bodies there.
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: And when you meet someone,
[43:19] Bob Dobbs: you're looking at somebody with four or five bodies.
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: Not one body.
[43:23] Bob Dobbs: And they specialize in one or the other.
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: They can be a TV coach potato,
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: or they can be a hacker.
[43:31] Bob Dobbs: Or they can be a phatic fundamentalist in some form in the chemical body,
[43:35] Bob Dobbs: though that overlaps into the astral body.
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: And the chemical body is just overprotected and going through paranoia,
[43:46] Bob Dobbs: schizophrenia,
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: hysteria,
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: and panic,
[43:49] Bob Dobbs: and ecstasy.
[43:51] Bob Dobbs: So again,
[43:52] Bob Dobbs: this is a quick capsule.
[43:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm always using this same capsule.
[43:56] Bob Dobbs: But
[43:57] Bob Dobbs: I say that if you taught the five-body model,
[44:01] Bob Dobbs: In high school,
[44:03] Bob Dobbs: it might help kids prepare for what they're going to be thrown out of once they're in schools.
[44:11] Bob Dobbs: Once they're finished school,
[44:12] Bob Dobbs: it's thrown out there and disbanded.
[44:16] Bob Dobbs: What is it?
[44:18] Bob Dobbs: Abandoned,
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: is what I'm trying to say.
[44:23] Cameron McEwen: What I don't get here,
[44:24] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[44:24] Cameron McEwen: is
[44:27] Cameron McEwen: I get everything...
[44:30] Cameron McEwen: that you're saying up to the point where you seem to be making an Explorations,
[44:37] Cameron McEwen: whereas what I see happening in all this is ever-increasing...
[44:43] Cameron McEwen: descent into the maelstrom.
[44:46] Cameron McEwen: And what we need is some sort of way to get out of the maelstrom,
[44:51] Cameron McEwen: but we don't have it yet.
[44:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[44:53] Bob Dobbs: no,
[44:53] Bob Dobbs: I agree with that.
[44:54] Bob Dobbs: And
[44:55] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said to Richard Kostelanetz in
[44:57] Bob Dobbs: January 6,
[44:58] Bob Dobbs: 7,
[44:58] Bob Dobbs: a New York Times interview,
[44:59] Bob Dobbs: he was a young,
[45:00] Bob Dobbs: literate,
[45:01] Bob Dobbs: baby boomer critic.
[45:03] Bob Dobbs: He did some good interviews with McLuhan.
[45:05] Bob Dobbs: And I noted McLuhan saying,
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: people need concepts to get a grip on reality.
[45:12] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[45:12] Bob Dobbs: we know that he said,
[45:14] Bob Dobbs: I don't deal in concepts,
[45:15] Bob Dobbs: I deal in percepts.
[45:16] Bob Dobbs: And so I thought it was comprehensive that he said,
[45:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm writing books,
[45:23] Bob Dobbs: and they're going to be perceived conceptually because books create the effect of the concept.
[45:28] Bob Dobbs: So he says,
[45:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm helping people get concepts.
[45:32] Bob Dobbs: He still said,
[45:33] Bob Dobbs: I'm apocalyptic,
[45:34] Bob Dobbs: and we're in drastic times,
[45:36] Bob Dobbs: but if you're going to be interviewed,
[45:39] Bob Dobbs: you might want to look useful.
[45:41] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[45:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm putting out concepts to help people get a grip on reality while they get ready to meet their maker,
[45:46] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: That's how I'm offering the Tiny Note Chart and the bodies as a conceptual thing,
[45:53] Bob Dobbs: as an Explorations for those that require an Explorations.
[45:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't think,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,
[45:59] Bob Dobbs: I don't explain,
[46:00] Bob Dobbs: I explore.
[46:01] Bob Dobbs: But he did Explorations a subplot.
[46:04] Bob Dobbs: He wrote books,
[46:05] Bob Dobbs: so they create the effect of Explorations.
[46:07] Bob Dobbs: But it was not the whole matter.
[46:10] Bob Dobbs: That's why...
[46:11] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[46:11] Bob Dobbs: he was not categorizable because he was doing so many different things going on in different media.
[46:20] Bob Dobbs: And nobody else could do that.
[46:23] Bob Dobbs: And his content was often the same content,
[46:25] Bob Dobbs: which in the publishing industry,
[46:28] Bob Dobbs: it turned against him because his books weren't innovative enough.
[46:31] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[46:31] Bob Dobbs: he didn't make a totally different kind of book.
[46:33] Bob Dobbs: It was just a replay of the same basic percepts and concepts.
[46:39] Bob Dobbs: Targeting different parts of society.
[46:41] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business.
[46:42] Bob Dobbs: Redoing mechanicals are bride.
[46:45] Bob Dobbs: Mechanical bride.
[46:47] Bob Dobbs: Take today for economists and politicians.
[46:50] Bob Dobbs: Cliché to archetype for literary criticism.
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: What else?
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: Classroom for high school.
[46:57] Bob Dobbs: City as Classroom.
[47:00] Bob Dobbs: Through the vanishing point.
[47:01] Bob Dobbs: Art history.
[47:02] Bob Dobbs: Poetry history.
[47:04] Bob Dobbs: War and Peace in a Global Village,
[47:05] Bob Dobbs: a snazzy,
[47:06] Bob Dobbs: flashy,
[47:07] Bob Dobbs: avant-garde book like The Mediumism Massage,
[47:09] Bob Dobbs: right?
[47:09] Bob Dobbs: So that appeals to the Yeats in New York City.
[47:15] Bob Dobbs: So he was communicating with the same ideas,
[47:18] Bob Dobbs: but he managed to make the book and the design look different.
[47:22] Bob Dobbs: And maybe because you didn't know everything that McLuhan was saying,
[47:25] Bob Dobbs: you would read a counterblast in 69.
[47:29] Bob Dobbs: And there would be a bunch of ideas.
[47:30] Bob Dobbs: Wow,
[47:31] Bob Dobbs: look at that.
[47:31] Bob Dobbs: I never heard of that before.
[47:33] Bob Dobbs: And then years later,
[47:34] Bob Dobbs: if you pursued it,
[47:35] Bob Dobbs: you find an article that he wrote in the
[47:37] Bob Dobbs: 50s, and what was in Counterblast 69,
[47:40] Bob Dobbs: he was recycling something from 55,
[47:43] Cameron McEwen: you know?
[47:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[47:45] Cameron McEwen: So I would just add to that that
[47:48] Cameron McEwen: I think what he was mostly doing in these later books was probing.
[47:53] Cameron McEwen: He was indicating where in his mind lab.
[48:03] Cameron McEwen: If he had more time to his life,
[48:07] Cameron McEwen: these are things that he would explore.
[48:09] Cameron McEwen: But since he could see the end of his life,
[48:14] Cameron McEwen: he wasn't a well man at all after 1967,
[48:19] Cameron McEwen: and arguably after 1960.
[48:22] Cameron McEwen: So when you think you have something important to throw out there,
[48:30] Cameron McEwen: You can't worry about...
[48:32] Cameron McEwen: final form.
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: You can't claim to have the final form.
[48:36] Cameron McEwen: What you do is you say,
[48:38] Cameron McEwen: look at this and take it further.
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: And I think we're sort of there now.
[48:45] Cameron McEwen: If you look back at,
[48:46] Cameron McEwen: say,
[48:46] Cameron McEwen: Take Today,
[48:48] Cameron McEwen: it's incredible Hutchins in there that has never yet been understood.
[48:52] Cameron McEwen: And this is
[48:53] Cameron McEwen: 50 years later.
[48:54] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[48:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[48:56] Bob Dobbs: It's like Finnegans Wake.
[48:58] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake was not comprehensible for obvious reasons.
[49:02] Bob Dobbs: People don't recognize that you can read McLuhan,
[49:05] Bob Dobbs: it's not a mishmash like Finnegans Wake,
[49:07] Bob Dobbs: but you don't take the time to read it and you don't have the energy to read all of it.
[49:12] Bob Dobbs: There's a lot in Take Today,
[49:14] Bob Dobbs: so you don't even know what he's saying.
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: It's different from Finnegans Wake,
[49:18] Bob Dobbs: but it's the same hidden ground.
[49:20] Bob Dobbs: Remember he said in 1970 in the Letter to Playboy,
[49:23] Bob Dobbs: T.S.
[49:24] Bob Dobbs: Eliot's auditory imagination is ordinary awareness today,
[49:27] Bob Dobbs: but the sensibility that Finnegans Wake is about...
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: is not in anybody's awareness yet.
[49:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[49:34] Bob Dobbs: now it is.
[49:35] Bob Dobbs: There's all kinds of Finnegans Wake reading groups to take a mundane interpretation of that,
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: but there's no awareness of what McLuhan talking about.
[49:43] Bob Dobbs: That has not entered into ordinary consciousness,
[49:46] Bob Dobbs: even though he's talked about a lot today,
[49:49] Bob Dobbs: because it's the closest anybody can have for some reference point about what's going on or what they think is going on,
[49:56] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know any of the stuff that he did and even proposed solutions to things.
[50:03] Cameron McEwen: So we're the...
[50:04] Cameron McEwen: We're the only McLuhan Reading Group going on.
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: Two people.
[50:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[50:14] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[50:14] Bob Dobbs: No,
[50:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm proud to be a member of it.
[50:19] Bob Dobbs: But the,
[50:21] Bob Dobbs: so now we go back again,
[50:24] Bob Dobbs: cycle back and I'll run through it again.
[50:28] Bob Dobbs: This page 80,
[50:31] Bob Dobbs: pick up other aspects.
[50:35] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[50:36] Bob Dobbs: so far,
[50:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan scholars have placed too much emphasis on the role of the trivium in the media poetry of McLuhan.
[50:43] Bob Dobbs: And those scholars didn't get there until 2000.
[50:46] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[50:47] Bob Dobbs: They didn't even get to the trivium and start noticing it until the late
[50:51] Bob Dobbs: 90s or during the supposed McLuhan revival.
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: The trivium is far more important as a creative ground for McLuhan Postman Bride output.
[51:02] Bob Dobbs: Nobody's demurred at that statement.
[51:06] Bob Dobbs: Nobody's even noticed it.
[51:08] Bob Dobbs: This article is posted on the McLuhan site,
[51:11] Bob Dobbs: New Explorations.
[51:13] Bob Dobbs: I've only had one review,
[51:17] Bob Dobbs: a silly review from Michael Edmonds,
[51:19] Bob Dobbs: who he just wanted to insult me.
[51:24] Cameron McEwen: I've put stuff up there,
[51:26] Cameron McEwen: and
[51:27] Cameron McEwen: I might as well have been farting in a windstorm.
[51:30] Cameron McEwen: There's no reaction whatsoever,
[51:33] Cameron McEwen: even though there's a challenge,
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: a basic challenge,
[51:37] Cameron McEwen: to what's going on at that website.
[51:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[51:42] Bob Dobbs: and you have some articles on there?
[51:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[51:44] Cameron McEwen: several.
[51:45] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[51:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm guilty of not going there and seeing what's going on.
[51:50] Cameron McEwen: All right,
[51:51] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you links.
[51:52] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[51:52] Bob Dobbs: that'd be good.
[51:54] Cameron McEwen: Why don't you look at my links,
[51:57] Cameron McEwen: Bob?
[51:58] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[51:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[51:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[51:59] Bob Dobbs: Like I looked at
[52:03] Bob Dobbs: Finn's Hotel the other day,
[52:04] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't have time to read it.
[52:06] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[52:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm too busy,
[52:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[52:09] Bob Dobbs: sculpting the present.
[52:12] Bob Dobbs: I'm a satellite conductor.
[52:14] Bob Dobbs: That's my term for real artists like McLuhan,
[52:18] Bob Dobbs: modern artists,
[52:19] Bob Dobbs: postmodern,
[52:20] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn Dean.
[52:21] Bob Dobbs: So,
[52:21] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[52:22] Bob Dobbs: let's look at what's next.
[52:23] Bob Dobbs: The
[52:24] Bob Dobbs: 1970s, the tetrad.
[52:28] Bob Dobbs: plus instant replay laser beam hologram.
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: Now that's pretty interesting.
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: And the tetrad is a symbol for the word that makes the mark is the
[52:39] Bob Dobbs: CIA, the intelligence agencies,
[52:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[52:42] Bob Dobbs: controlling the news shows or the what people are told to be concerned about.
[52:48] Bob Dobbs: And it's not a simple
[52:52] Bob Dobbs: George George Orwell brainwashing,
[52:54] Bob Dobbs: the agents...
[52:55] Bob Dobbs: the intelligence agencies know how to play it and are aware of the tetrad.
[53:00] Bob Dobbs: They know that they'll flip into their opposite.
[53:03] Bob Dobbs: They know things will be retrieved from what they attempt,
[53:05] Bob Dobbs: and they know things will be Kostelanetz.
[53:09] Bob Dobbs: Imagine making a movie about intelligence agencies.
[53:16] Bob Dobbs: All you get is James Bond and the derivatives that came after him.
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: What if you actually showed how a tetrad manager
[53:22] Bob Dobbs: that understands McLuhan stuff,
[53:24] Bob Dobbs: Kissinger understands it,
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: and they actually trade this knowledge when they have their G7 meetings.
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[53:30] Bob Dobbs: that would be interesting content for a movie,
[53:34] Bob Dobbs: for a popular medium,
[53:36] Bob Dobbs: or even a TV series.
[53:39] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?
[53:40] Bob Dobbs: That you can make a whole different kind of presentation Postman usual cliches of all those shows that do show intelligence agencies.
[53:50] Bob Dobbs: They're just riddled with cliches about...
[53:52] Bob Dobbs: Reflecting the news.
[53:53] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[53:54] Cameron McEwen: they're useless.
[53:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[53:55] Cameron McEwen: I think what you're saying is that the media are the new actors.
[54:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:02] Cameron McEwen: And you have to understand the theater of those actors through instant replay,
[54:09] Cameron McEwen: laser beam,
[54:10] Cameron McEwen: hologram,
[54:10] Cameron McEwen: etc.
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[54:13] Bob Dobbs: And then you have the Hendiades of the Trivium via Aaron McLuhan.
[54:18] Bob Dobbs: The ordering of the terms below are based on a chart of correspondences made by Eric.
[54:22] Bob Dobbs: I found that when I did the archives.
[54:24] Bob Dobbs: But these are conceptual issues,
[54:28] Bob Dobbs: ancient issues,
[54:31] Bob Dobbs: but it's all that Marshall added to his talks in the
[54:36] Bob Dobbs: 70s.
[54:37] Bob Dobbs: The five parts of rhetoric,
[54:39] Bob Dobbs: the four levels of exegesis,
[54:41] Bob Dobbs: a little bit on Hutchins.
[54:44] Bob Dobbs: But then he was saying other things which were more of the present,
[54:48] Bob Dobbs: like it's the planet of the dead.
[54:50] Bob Dobbs: Or we go outside to be alone,
[54:52] Bob Dobbs: inside to be social.
[54:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[54:56] Bob Dobbs: it's important what he added in the
[55:00] Bob Dobbs: 70s, but it wasn't that much conceptually.
[55:03] Bob Dobbs: But the way he acted in the
[55:06] Bob Dobbs: 70s.
[55:07] Bob Dobbs: He had to deal with,
[55:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[55:08] Bob Dobbs: the Vatican calling up and helping them with the terrorist problem,
[55:13] Bob Dobbs: Aldo Moro and all that.
[55:14] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[55:16] Bob Dobbs: he was a public agent.
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: He was a James Bond in terms of how media or newspapers and corporations saw him.
[55:29] Bob Dobbs: He was still coming in and giving the big perspective on things.
[55:36] Cameron McEwen: these little nuggets
[55:37] Cameron McEwen: that you have in B are new things in the 70s and they're very interesting but they were embedded in a whole bunch of repetition and one
[55:53] Cameron McEwen: of the problems McLuhan had was as a man that wasn't well,
[56:00] Cameron McEwen: he had to generate stuff usually with the help of
[56:06] Cameron McEwen: others that would sort of come to be seen after he was no longer alive.
[56:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[56:16] Cameron McEwen: So to me,
[56:18] Cameron McEwen: the big drama going on in your B is a very sick man attempting to go beyond where he had been before,
[56:28] Cameron McEwen: namely the A things.
[56:31] Cameron McEwen: The what thing?
[56:32] Bob Dobbs: What did you say?
[56:33] Bob Dobbs: namely
[56:34] Cameron McEwen: In 1970s,
[56:36] Cameron McEwen: you've got an A and you've got a B.
[56:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[56:38] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[56:38] Bob Dobbs: the A thing.
[56:39] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[56:39] Bob Dobbs: I see what you mean.
[56:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[56:40] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[56:41] Cameron McEwen: So I'm saying B to me is his way of trying to go beyond A,
[56:46] Cameron McEwen: but without having any real grasp on how to communicate this stuff,
[56:54] Cameron McEwen: how to formulate it into something that people can look at after he's gone.
[57:01] Cameron McEwen: It's a very difficult time for him.
[57:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[57:04] Bob Dobbs: now tell me,
[57:04] Bob Dobbs: you developed a how did McLuhan fail to figure out the communication game for after he passed.
[57:15] Bob Dobbs: Is there anything you would say he should have done?
[57:18] Bob Dobbs: What did he attempt that didn't work?
[57:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[57:26] Cameron McEwen: the point of my blog is that
[57:29] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan has to be understood digitally.
[57:33] Cameron McEwen: in
[57:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan research,
[57:37] Cameron McEwen: everything that constitutes that research is in print.
[57:44] Cameron McEwen: Even at McLuhan websites,
[57:46] Cameron McEwen: it's a print journal simply taken out of the print medium and put into the computer medium.
[57:58] Cameron McEwen: But it's not real.
[58:02] Cameron McEwen: tactility in the sense of what's going on in the world.
[58:06] Cameron McEwen: It's a sleep.
[58:07] Cameron McEwen: It's a way back in the 70s or the 60s or something like that.
[58:12] Cameron McEwen: So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take
[58:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan stuff and bring out where he hints at things,
[58:21] Cameron McEwen: number one.
[58:22] Cameron McEwen: And number two,
[58:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to put his thought into the digital form where you can use the search function or the advanced search function.
[58:32] Cameron McEwen: to sort of take his stuff into the lab and probe it.
[58:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[58:42] Bob Dobbs: All his books after mediumism and massage,
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: yes,
[58:45] Bob Dobbs: were probes,
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: but on the surface,
[58:48] Bob Dobbs: he pretended he was probing a particular area of society or a discipline.
[58:54] Bob Dobbs: Do you agree with that?
[58:55] Bob Dobbs: Like Take Today is geared for politics and corporate managers.
[59:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[59:00] Cameron McEwen: I would agree with that.
[59:01] Cameron McEwen: except that what a corporation is,
[59:05] Cameron McEwen: what a manager is,
[59:06] Cameron McEwen: all of these things have imploded.
[59:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[59:08] Cameron McEwen: And that's the point of Tate today.
[59:11] Cameron McEwen: We can't say to people,
[59:13] Cameron McEwen: okay,
[59:13] Cameron McEwen: you know what a manager is,
[59:15] Cameron McEwen: so just read Take Today and that will explain to you more about being a manager.
[59:20] Bob Dobbs: No,
[59:22] Cameron McEwen: it Explorations to you how you have to go through the whole concept of management.
[59:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:29] Bob Dobbs: so he does through the management point,
[59:30] Bob Dobbs: targeting the art world with the punchline,
[59:32] Bob Dobbs: there ain't no art today.
[59:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:36] Cameron McEwen: and the very title of
[59:39] Cameron McEwen: Through...
[59:40] Cameron McEwen: the,
[59:42] Cameron McEwen: what is it,
[59:43] Cameron McEwen: through the vanishing point,
[59:46] Cameron McEwen: expresses how you need to get at the meaning of words.
[59:50] Cameron McEwen: The words do have meaning but they don't have meaning on this side of the vanishing point.
[59:58] Cameron McEwen: They only have meaning on the other side of the vanishing point.
[1:00:02] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:00:02] Cameron McEwen: and that vanishing point is one way of talking about tactility or electricity.
[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:00:12] Bob Dobbs: So I have here B,
[1:00:15] Bob Dobbs: Hendiades of the Quadrivium.
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: What the heck did I mean?
[1:00:19] Bob Dobbs: Hendiades of the Trivium,
[1:00:20] Bob Dobbs: Hendiades of the Quadrivium.
[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: I remember you were talking about the tetrad here.
[1:00:27] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: the tetrad and then A and B.
[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Hendiades is one by means of two.
[1:00:39] Bob Dobbs: The trivium and the quadrivium are the two aspects,
[1:00:43] Bob Dobbs: but they implode,
[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: disappear,
[1:00:47] Bob Dobbs: and you're left with the afterimage of the tetrad,
[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: which is the pentad.
[1:00:53] Bob Dobbs: Do I have the pentad here further down?
[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't do that,
[1:00:58] Bob Dobbs: do I?
[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: I think I explain it later.
[1:01:02] Cameron McEwen: That could be.
[1:01:03] Cameron McEwen: Remember I asked you what the relationship between the bodies is.
[1:01:09] Cameron McEwen: And the pen tab may be involved in that.
[1:01:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: If you move down a little bit,
[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: you see where I say,
[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: the following pattern is the subplot for the quote above.
[1:01:23] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was forced to mine the new electric quadrophrenia.
[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: And then I have last word,
[1:01:28] Bob Dobbs: cliche,
[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: art form,
[1:01:30] Bob Dobbs: and archetype.
[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: That's interesting.
[1:01:33] Bob Dobbs: That's quoting Howard Gossage in
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: Hot and Cool.
[1:01:38] Bob Dobbs: He wrote an article and he ends it by saying that media metamorphoses go through a new medium is the last word,
[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: then it becomes a cliché,
[1:01:49] Bob Dobbs: then it becomes an art form,
[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: and then it becomes an archetype.
[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's laid out in 66,
[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: 67.
[1:01:56] Bob Dobbs: But Marshall is working on cliché to archetype at the time with Wilfred Watson.
[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: And he probably said a few words every now and then with Howard Gossage.
[1:02:08] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was a nice early pattern that everything was going to last word,
[1:02:13] Bob Dobbs: cliche,
[1:02:13] Bob Dobbs: art form,
[1:02:13] Bob Dobbs: archetype.
[1:02:14] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:02:15] Bob Dobbs: I have here the trivial,
[1:02:17] Bob Dobbs: rhetorical,
[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: dialectical,
[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: grammatical,
[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: rhetorical,
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: the last word,
[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: immediately persuasive,
[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: action of the new effects,
[1:02:25] Bob Dobbs: dialectical is the cliche,
[1:02:28] Bob Dobbs: action of resistance.
[1:02:29] Cameron McEwen: Where are you now?
[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: I've just gone down a little bit from what we were looking at.
[1:02:34] Bob Dobbs: Below the...
[1:02:38] Cameron McEwen: uh hendieties just go down half a page 81 so is this above or below the quotation for war and peace war
[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: and peace um you know what what we were looking at uh the 70s uh the b part it's just below that just
[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: Slightly a couple of lines of data,
[1:03:09] Bob Dobbs: and then you'll come to a Howard
[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: Gossage quote,
[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: and then the following pattern.
[1:03:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:03:14] Bob Dobbs: I can see the following patterns,
[1:03:16] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:03:33] Cameron McEwen: I kind of lost.
[1:03:37] Cameron McEwen: where you were in that yeah you see it now oh yeah yeah so following you there before but i just then you seem to skip into something else maybe you didn't well yeah last word that's rhetorical cliches dialectical art form is grammatical and
[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: it's interesting what i'm saying is the last word is the action of the new effects um cliche is the action of resistance to the effects
[1:04:06] Bob Dobbs: action of the effects as metonymy,
[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: art form.
[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: And then the quadrivales archetype.
[1:04:11] Bob Dobbs: Because basically,
[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: you've got nothing but archetypes happening.
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: In a quadrophrenia format.
[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:04:19] Cameron McEwen: And the reason for that is that those words you have in quotation marks,
[1:04:24] Cameron McEwen: the last word,
[1:04:25] Cameron McEwen: the cliche,
[1:04:25] Cameron McEwen: the art form,
[1:04:27] Cameron McEwen: those are always understood by anybody in a particular way.
[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: And the particular way of understanding them is the archetype.
[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: And you'll see I have action of the effects in cyclic simultaneity.
[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: Exactly,
[1:04:42] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:04:43] Cameron McEwen: You should have written.
[1:04:45] Cameron McEwen: Simultaneity in big letters there.
[1:04:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: do you understand that it's like global village?
[1:04:52] Bob Dobbs: Cyclic is not simultaneous.
[1:04:56] Cameron McEwen: Sure it is.
[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: think about any law in chemistry that you have oxygen and you put it together with iron and you heat it.
[1:05:14] Cameron McEwen: then it becomes something else.
[1:05:17] Cameron McEwen: Now that becoming something else is not something that's only narrative.
[1:05:22] Cameron McEwen: It's cyclic in the sense that it's always the case.
[1:05:27] Cameron McEwen: So cyclic simultaneity is the understanding of science where we are now.
[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:05:36] Bob Dobbs: I was quoting McLuhan.
[1:05:38] Bob Dobbs: He once in the...
[1:05:39] Bob Dobbs: Kochos,
[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: he made a circle in his palm.
[1:05:42] Bob Dobbs: He said the circle is visual space.
[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: So that sense of cyclic.
[1:05:48] Bob Dobbs: And I was trying to have it,
[1:05:49] Bob Dobbs: it's like a Hutchins,
[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: one by means of two.
[1:05:52] Bob Dobbs: I wanted it to be paradoxical,
[1:05:54] Bob Dobbs: like the phrase global village.
[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: Village is local,
[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: global is everywhere.
[1:05:59] Bob Dobbs: So cyclic.
[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm interpreting using the word cyclic differently than you were citing.
[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: But that points to archetypes.
[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:11] Bob Dobbs: it's the action of the effects in cyclic simultaneously.
[1:06:18] Bob Dobbs: Here's an interesting pattern.
[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: William Irwin Thompson talks about
[1:06:24] Bob Dobbs: Freud discovers the instinctual unconscious,
[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: and then
[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Jung discovers the cultural unconscious,
[1:06:35] Bob Dobbs: the stories in poetry.
[1:06:38] Bob Dobbs: mythic materials that are in most cultures.
[1:06:44] Bob Dobbs: Then
[1:06:45] Bob Dobbs: Thompson says you've got Lévi-Strauss picking up the action of myth in Aboriginal people.
[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: Then you have
[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: Foucault coming in with the industrial unconscious.
[1:06:59] Bob Dobbs: He talked about where schools came from,
[1:07:03] Bob Dobbs: where hospitals came from,
[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: and prisons out of France.
[1:07:08] Bob Dobbs: So we'll call that the industrial unconscious.
[1:07:12] Bob Dobbs: Then
[1:07:13] Bob Dobbs: Thompson jumps to Gregory Bateson and talks about anti-environment.
[1:07:17] Bob Dobbs: The pollution is the new unconscious.
[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: And what he misses is McLuhan best definition of the unconscious is the archetypes of media.
[1:07:30] Bob Dobbs: The technologies are the archetypes of the social unconscious.
[1:07:33] Bob Dobbs: I think that's a revolutionary idea of looking at the unconscious.
[1:07:37] Bob Dobbs: that your immediate anti-environment your unconscious.
[1:07:41] Bob Dobbs: You're not paying attention to it,
[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: all the parts of it,
[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: all the artifacts.
[1:07:47] Cameron McEwen: Do you really want to say the immediate environment?
[1:07:52] Cameron McEwen: After all,
[1:07:53] Cameron McEwen: immediate seems to mean not mediated.
[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:08:00] Bob Dobbs: it's pretty unmediated now.
[1:08:03] Bob Dobbs: You're plastered up against the insides of the robot.
[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:08:08] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:08:08] Cameron McEwen: But that's like saying,
[1:08:11] Cameron McEwen: here's something that we need to understand.
[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: It's not saying,
[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: here's my understanding.
[1:08:18] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:08:18] Cameron McEwen: Those are two very different things.
[1:08:19] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:08:21] Bob Dobbs: Here's what we need to understand.
[1:08:23] Bob Dobbs: Not my understanding.
[1:08:25] Bob Dobbs: It's what we need to understand.
[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: Right,
[1:08:27] Cameron McEwen: right.
[1:08:28] Cameron McEwen: And we'll understand it in the same way that when we really understand things,
[1:08:33] Cameron McEwen: one of the first things we come to understand.
[1:08:36] Cameron McEwen: is that our understanding is limited.
[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: It's making,
[1:08:39] Cameron McEwen: not matching.
[1:08:40] Cameron McEwen: So the whole idea of understanding media doesn't say,
[1:08:45] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:08:45] Cameron McEwen: I know very well what media are,
[1:08:47] Cameron McEwen: and I know the laws of media,
[1:08:48] Cameron McEwen: and all that sort of stuff.
[1:08:50] Cameron McEwen: What he's saying is,
[1:08:51] Cameron McEwen: these are probes that we need to think through because we need to understand these things.
[1:09:00] Cameron McEwen: Otherwise,
[1:09:00] Cameron McEwen: we're just going to destroy ourselves.
[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: do you find,
[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: if you happen to take time to listen to commentary,
[1:09:07] Bob Dobbs: panels,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: blogs,
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: interviews,
[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: that it's irritating,
[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: the language that people use,
[1:09:16] Bob Dobbs: what they pretend is impressive?
[1:09:18] Bob Dobbs: What,
[1:09:18] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: some guy,
[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: Jordan Peterson comes on,
[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: shows a few insights,
[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: everybody's bowled away by it.
[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: Do you find,
[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: with your McLuhan knowledge,
[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: that everything else is pretty weak?
[1:09:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:09:31] Cameron McEwen: I'll put it this way,
[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't...
[1:09:32] Cameron McEwen: I don't do any of that.
[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: you know there's nothing there.
[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: You're not going to look.
[1:09:37] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:09:37] Bob Dobbs: You might have looked 25 years ago and got to that point.
[1:09:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:09:42] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:09:43] Bob Dobbs: this is a waste of time.
[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:09:48] Bob Dobbs: just wanted to see if you're on the same page as me.
[1:09:53] Bob Dobbs: And I'm not impressed with anybody that gets anywheres without any McLuhan knowledge.
[1:10:01] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:10:01] Bob Dobbs: this is the,
[1:10:03] Bob Dobbs: it's almost like the new Christianity.
[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: If you're a Christian and you want to know how to survive without just wearing your conscience on your sleeve,
[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan gives you a new way to be,
[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: a Christian.
[1:10:17] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:10:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:10:18] Cameron McEwen: and that's very important.
[1:10:20] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:10:20] Cameron McEwen: good.
[1:10:21] Bob Dobbs: Glad you see that.
[1:10:22] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:10:23] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: For example,
[1:10:25] Cameron McEwen: sometimes I think of McLuhan as having
[1:10:30] Cameron McEwen: A point of view through which to understand Julian Assange,
[1:10:34] Cameron McEwen: and that is that if you look at the two sides,
[1:10:37] Cameron McEwen: one side,
[1:10:39] Cameron McEwen: the American prosecutor is using words that have zero meaning,
[1:10:46] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:10:46] Cameron McEwen: human rights,
[1:10:48] Cameron McEwen: we're going to treat them gently.
[1:10:52] Cameron McEwen: It literally has no meaning at all.
[1:10:53] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:10:54] Cameron McEwen: And then you have the other side where people are saying this doesn't make sense.
[1:11:00] Cameron McEwen: what the guy is saying contradicts reality.
[1:11:04] Cameron McEwen: This is not a rational way of looking at Julian Assange.
[1:11:10] Cameron McEwen: So then if we ask the latter people,
[1:11:12] Cameron McEwen: if we say well what do you think of the cosmos when you say those things?
[1:11:19] Cameron McEwen: Do you really think that there is ground for rationality,
[1:11:24] Cameron McEwen: for making sense,
[1:11:26] Cameron McEwen: for not contradicting yourself and all that.
[1:11:29] Cameron McEwen: And 99.9999%
[1:11:32] Cameron McEwen: of them would say no.
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: They don't believe that there's any base.
[1:11:36] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:11:37] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote to
[1:11:38] Cameron McEwen: Eric Voegelin in 1953,
[1:11:42] Cameron McEwen: and he says that if you want to understand what's going on in the world,
[1:11:49] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand that everything is everything else.
[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: And what he means by that is that all of the...
[1:11:58] Cameron McEwen: supposed contests of point of view,
[1:12:02] Cameron McEwen: all of the lawsuits,
[1:12:05] Cameron McEwen: all of the difficulties understanding what armies are going to do,
[1:12:08] Cameron McEwen: all this sort of stuff,
[1:12:09] Cameron McEwen: that none of these are actually different points of view.
[1:12:13] Cameron McEwen: They're all the same point of view and they are the same point of view because they're utterly unanchored.
[1:12:19] Cameron McEwen: They're just,
[1:12:20] Cameron McEwen: they amount,
[1:12:21] Cameron McEwen: at the end of the day,
[1:12:22] Cameron McEwen: they amount to nothing.
[1:12:24] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan...
[1:12:27] Cameron McEwen: If the universe supports sense,
[1:12:32] Cameron McEwen: in all senses the word sense,
[1:12:34] Cameron McEwen: if it supports rationality,
[1:12:36] Cameron McEwen: if it supports social interests,
[1:12:40] Cameron McEwen: then we have to draw the conclusions from that.
[1:12:46] Cameron McEwen: That the 2,000 years of Christianity that was at the base of Western civilization wasn't talking about nothing.
[1:12:57] Cameron McEwen: like all of these people think,
[1:12:58] Cameron McEwen: it was talking about the foundation that is either there or not there.
[1:13:03] Cameron McEwen: If you think it's not there,
[1:13:05] Cameron McEwen: then go through the maelstrom that you're opening up for yourself.
[1:13:10] Cameron McEwen: If you think it is there,
[1:13:12] Cameron McEwen: then start going to church.
[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:13:17] Bob Dobbs: Is Julian Assange back in North America?
[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know that.
[1:13:21] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:13:21] Cameron McEwen: not yet.
[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:13:23] Bob Dobbs: you're just anticipating.
[1:13:24] Cameron McEwen: I think they have different appeals that they can make.
[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:13:27] Bob Dobbs: so you're just imagining,
[1:13:29] Bob Dobbs: what you're saying is what is already being said by prosecutors?
[1:13:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:13:35] Cameron McEwen: they just finished a trial in which the
[1:13:39] Cameron McEwen: British government agreed to send
[1:13:43] Cameron McEwen: Assange to the United States.
[1:13:46] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:13:47] Cameron McEwen: I believe that can still be appealed in various ways.
[1:13:50] Cameron McEwen: But at this point in time,
[1:13:52] Cameron McEwen: he's still in solitary confinement.
[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: in British jail.
[1:13:57] Bob Dobbs: And you quoted the prosecutor.
[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: Is that somebody in Washington?
[1:14:01] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:14:02] Cameron McEwen: it's an American prosecutor arguing to the British court.
[1:14:05] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:14:06] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:14:06] Bob Dobbs: He's in Britain.
[1:14:07] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: So you're thinking about the Assange issue.
[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:14:15] Cameron McEwen: lots of issues.
[1:14:16] Cameron McEwen: I think that one of the most interesting things about McLuhan is that he insists that there are different levels to reality.
[1:14:30] Cameron McEwen: unless
[1:14:32] Cameron McEwen: we can find a level of reality that does not fall through itself,
[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: then at the end of the day,
[1:14:40] Cameron McEwen: we're going to destroy ourselves looking for some kind of false foundation.
[1:14:45] Bob Dobbs: You say reality must fall through itself.
[1:14:49] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:14:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying,
[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: number one,
[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: if you want to find a foundation that holds,
[1:14:55] Cameron McEwen: you have to go through the maelstrom.
[1:14:56] Cameron McEwen: That's number one.
[1:14:58] Cameron McEwen: Number two,
[1:14:59] Cameron McEwen: all of these people that are...
[1:15:02] Cameron McEwen: holding our lives in their hands and the lives of all of the plants and animals,
[1:15:09] Cameron McEwen: they rely on false foundations.
[1:15:14] Cameron McEwen: And the only way for them to get out of it,
[1:15:16] Cameron McEwen: therefore the only way to save ourselves,
[1:15:18] Cameron McEwen: is for them to realize that they need to go through the maelstrom.
[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: Or through the vanishing point.
[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: Is there a third level?
[1:15:28] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:15:28] Cameron McEwen: no.
[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:15:29] Cameron McEwen: there's many different levels.
[1:15:31] Cameron McEwen: But at the end of the day,
[1:15:34] Cameron McEwen: the level that holds is the religious level,
[1:15:38] Cameron McEwen: which doesn't necessarily mean
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: Catholicism, because the world has many different religions.
[1:15:46] Cameron McEwen: But the one thing that most of the religions agree on is that there is a foundation to things that can be relied on.
[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: So it's always intriguing to hear you telling us what we must do,
[1:16:10] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan failed to communicate.
[1:16:13] Bob Dobbs: I think you have said you failed to come up with something yourself.
[1:16:17] Cameron McEwen: Sure,
[1:16:18] Cameron McEwen: sure.
[1:16:20] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:16:20] Cameron McEwen: the only way to see if communication about this stuff succeeds is to look at the world and say that there is a way for people to conceive of peace.
[1:16:31] Cameron McEwen: P-E-A-C-E,
[1:16:34] Cameron McEwen: and move towards it.
[1:16:38] Cameron McEwen: And since we don't have that,
[1:16:41] Cameron McEwen: and we're in very dire straits,
[1:16:44] Cameron McEwen: and there's a need to try to find a way to communicate about that.
[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:16:51] Bob Dobbs: and you're taking responsibility for that,
[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: personal responsibility for the situation.
[1:16:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:16:58] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:16:59] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to do it.
[1:17:01] Cameron McEwen: Many,
[1:17:01] Cameron McEwen: many people in the history of
[1:17:04] Cameron McEwen: Western civilization,
[1:17:05] Cameron McEwen: or for that matter,
[1:17:06] Cameron McEwen: Eastern civilization,
[1:17:07] Cameron McEwen: have tried to communicate these things,
[1:17:13] Cameron McEwen: but where we are now is the failure of that communication.
[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:17:22] Cameron McEwen: If you take the Catholic Church,
[1:17:24] Cameron McEwen: the Catholic Church isn't even able to communicate it to itself.
[1:17:29] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:17:30] Cameron McEwen: pathetic,
[1:17:31] Cameron McEwen: really is pathetic.
[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: not much you can say word-wise about the situation other than you concentrate on explaining McLuhan.
[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: You think that's the only topic probably worth paying attention to.
[1:17:51] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't say that.
[1:17:52] Cameron McEwen: I think there's very,
[1:17:54] Cameron McEwen: very great thinkers,
[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Plato,
[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle,
[1:17:58] Cameron McEwen: Hegel,
[1:17:59] Cameron McEwen: Heidegger.
[1:17:59] Cameron McEwen: These are
[1:18:00] Cameron McEwen: tremendous people,
[1:18:02] Cameron McEwen: but
[1:18:03] Cameron McEwen: I think that
[1:18:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan may have a better chance of being communicable than they did.
[1:18:14] Cameron McEwen: And so that's why I'm concentrating on him.
[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: Why is that?
[1:18:20] Cameron McEwen: Why does he have a better chance?
[1:18:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:18:22] Cameron McEwen: because he talks about stuff that people are familiar with.
[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:18:26] Cameron McEwen: And so then what I do is I try to show that...
[1:18:30] Cameron McEwen: The things that we think we're familiar with,
[1:18:33] Cameron McEwen: we aren't familiar with.
[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: Is what we're familiar with,
[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: is that what the phrase lingua franca refers to?
[1:18:41] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:18:42] Cameron McEwen: not really.
[1:18:43] Cameron McEwen: That's a language that everybody understands or that everybody might understand if they put their mind and effort into understanding it.
[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:56] Bob Dobbs: you say we've got a...
[1:19:00] Cameron McEwen: double duty and tarot bang in relation to the lingua franca the lingua franca is not what the issue is well no i wouldn't say that but i would say that um the uh in the physical sciences for example we have found a way of
[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: exploring things where people understand each other that's the whole point of the scientific revolution that maybe started with galileo or maybe
[1:19:29] Cameron McEwen: started with Lavoisier or wherever.
[1:19:31] Cameron McEwen: But in the physical sciences,
[1:19:35] Cameron McEwen: what is taught in schools is not different from what is going on in the world.
[1:19:41] Cameron McEwen: And that's what McLuhan saw in the
[1:19:43] Cameron McEwen: 1950s. He saw that he had an opening as an educational theorist to talk about why it is we don't have a school room without walls.
[1:19:56] Cameron McEwen: And sort of that's what he did for...
[1:19:58] Cameron McEwen: let's say 10 to 15 years and he basically failed he found out that people didn't understand what the hell he was talking about and meanwhile he was getting sicker and sicker and
[1:20:14] Bob Dobbs: so he had a bit of a problem on his hands so what do you say you're doing to remedy what he failed at
[1:20:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:20:31] Cameron McEwen: like I said earlier,
[1:20:33] Cameron McEwen: there are very great ways to fail,
[1:20:37] Cameron McEwen: and I wouldn't compare myself to people that failed greatly in the past.
[1:20:44] Cameron McEwen: All I'm trying to do is raise issues that I believe lead in the direction of mutual understanding.
[1:20:54] Cameron McEwen: And so
[1:20:56] Cameron McEwen: I use
[1:20:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan partly because he's a...
[1:21:00] Cameron McEwen: Canadian,
[1:21:00] Cameron McEwen: a Western Canadian like myself,
[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: and partly in that he was raising issues that I think other people didn't do.
[1:21:10] Cameron McEwen: But the issues that he raised oftentimes lead to Plato or Aristotle or Hegel or Heidegger,
[1:21:18] Cameron McEwen: and then I talk about them in the book.
[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: I claim to be offering solutions.
[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: And we are doing it.
[1:21:35] Bob Dobbs: It's not surfacing immediately.
[1:21:40] Bob Dobbs: Many things are,
[1:21:41] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: cooking.
[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: And the troubles will continue,
[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: and then the world will beg for what we have.
[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:21:51] Bob Dobbs: I've got that unique vision of
[1:21:54] Bob Dobbs: I think I'm solving the issues.
[1:21:57] Bob Dobbs: those that will
[1:21:58] Bob Dobbs: survive what's happening now.
[1:22:02] Bob Dobbs: What would you say,
[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: you can be really honest,
[1:22:06] Bob Dobbs: what would you say is erroneous about what I'm saying about myself?
[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: How am I failing?
[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: How am I not noticing I might be failing in what I...
[1:22:18] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:22:18] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:22:19] Cameron McEwen: you have a way of presenting yourself as more than human,
[1:22:25] Cameron McEwen: having...
[1:22:26] Cameron McEwen: impeccable insight,
[1:22:29] Cameron McEwen: trillions of dollars and all this sort of stuff.
[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: And technologies and healthy remedies.
[1:22:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:22:37] Cameron McEwen: so all of this is a way of saying these are reasons that you should be paying attention to me.
[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:22:45] Cameron McEwen: Of course,
[1:22:47] Cameron McEwen: it's not necessarily working,
[1:22:50] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:22:51] Cameron McEwen: The number of people that are paying attention to your claims.
[1:22:55] Cameron McEwen: It's certainly much greater than the people who are paying attention to me.
[1:23:00] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:23:01] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that it's going to work in terms of,
[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:23:07] Cameron McEwen: trying to,
[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: as Nietzsche said,
[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: trying to stop the wheel of history.
[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: we do have the elites listening to us.
[1:23:14] Bob Dobbs: You don't know about that,
[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: but you can trust me.
[1:23:17] Bob Dobbs: There's no point in me lying or making up shit.
[1:23:21] Bob Dobbs: And I don't know how much that...
[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how much the average citizen is going to be able to be cognizant of that while it's unfolding.
[1:23:35] Bob Dobbs: Because they're being killed off rapidly.
[1:23:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how many will be left here for when we do it.
[1:23:42] Bob Dobbs: The elites are a little more comfortable.
[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: And they've got their bunkers and safety.
[1:23:47] Bob Dobbs: So they are definitely looking at us more and more.
[1:23:52] Bob Dobbs: And that's...
[1:23:53] Bob Dobbs: pretty interesting and exciting.
[1:23:56] Bob Dobbs: But we can't talk about it at this point.
[1:24:00] Bob Dobbs: apparently.
[1:24:00] Cameron McEwen: There's also the problem that they have to understand you in a certain way.
[1:24:07] Cameron McEwen: The problem is anybody who is listening to you and trying to understand you is trying to understand you through the perspective that is the problem.
[1:24:19] Cameron McEwen: So how you get around that particular problem,
[1:24:22] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: In Munton engagements where
[1:24:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm patient and
[1:24:32] Bob Dobbs: I'll take three days to probe it with the person.
[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:24:37] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: Then we completely disagree how many people there are in the world that know how to think.
[1:24:46] Cameron McEwen: I don't believe that there are people out there that you've had special engagements with that now know how to think.
[1:24:54] Cameron McEwen: I don't believe that at all.
[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: I get them to realize,
[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't fully get Bob,
[1:25:01] Bob Dobbs: but I think he's right.
[1:25:03] Bob Dobbs: He's got the stuff.
[1:25:05] Bob Dobbs: We're convincing more and more people of that.
[1:25:08] Bob Dobbs: So less interference when we make our moves.
[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm bringing this into the conversation.
[1:25:19] Bob Dobbs: I think it's a completion of McLuhan.
[1:25:22] Bob Dobbs: He failed.
[1:25:23] Bob Dobbs: But I'm saying,
[1:25:24] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:25:24] Bob Dobbs: we're not going to fail.
[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: That's where my Media Ecology Association,
[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: my para-media-cology got me to Innis situation.
[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I'm thinking about.
[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: That's what I'm aware of.
[1:25:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm just telling you.
[1:25:38] Bob Dobbs: I'm not hiding how I think about it.
[1:25:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm not doing it to have a big ego or something.
[1:25:45] Bob Dobbs: We have very practical things we do.
[1:25:48] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you know.
[1:25:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if I told you this.
[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: The FDA called up Carolyn two Thursdays ago.
[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: and said,
[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: you cannot communicate in public anymore.
[1:26:01] Bob Dobbs: You cannot have a radio show.
[1:26:03] Bob Dobbs: You cannot have any testimonials of what your products do for people.
[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: We are saying you have to be an Munton.
[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:26:11] Bob Dobbs: we're not going to stop your company,
[1:26:13] Bob Dobbs: people that still buy your products,
[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: but you can't say anything about them.
[1:26:17] Bob Dobbs: And I tell people this,
[1:26:18] Bob Dobbs: they're shocked.
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: Most people say,
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: you can't stop someone's radio program because they kind of believe,
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:26:24] Bob Dobbs: freedom of speech and you can have a show.
[1:26:26] Bob Dobbs: You've got to be careful about what you say.
[1:26:31] Cameron McEwen: I'm familiar with those sorts of claims by the FDA.
[1:26:38] Cameron McEwen: The FDA basically says if you want to make certain claims,
[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: then you need to make studies.
[1:26:47] Cameron McEwen: We have to see that those studies are unbiased and that they result.
[1:26:56] Cameron McEwen: in the confirmation of your claims.
[1:26:59] Cameron McEwen: Now,
[1:26:59] Cameron McEwen: somebody like yourself and your wife,
[1:27:02] Cameron McEwen: you may not want to spend the millions,
[1:27:06] Cameron McEwen: hundreds of millions of dollars that are required to do such studies.
[1:27:10] Cameron McEwen: And if you're not,
[1:27:12] Cameron McEwen: then you're restricted from making claims.
[1:27:16] Cameron McEwen: It's just that simple.
[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: and Carolyn doesn't make claims.
[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: Years ago,
[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: she kind of made claims,
[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: and they told her to stop that.
[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: and she stopped it.
[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: So she's been doing three or four years of no claims.
[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: She just tells people they have a problem.
[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: She says,
[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: this is what I would do.
[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: Not saying it applies to you,
[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: but this is what I would do.
[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: And then they would,
[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: if they were lucky,
[1:27:39] Bob Dobbs: they would do what she would do and they'd get better.
[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: But no,
[1:27:42] Bob Dobbs: she doesn't,
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: she hasn't.
[1:27:43] Bob Dobbs: They shut her down,
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: even though she's followed all their restrictions,
[1:27:47] Bob Dobbs: constrictions and rules.
[1:27:49] Cameron McEwen: That's because,
[1:27:51] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:27:51] Cameron McEwen: bureaucrats are...
[1:27:54] Cameron McEwen: free to interpret things as they will.
[1:27:59] Cameron McEwen: And by and large,
[1:28:02] Cameron McEwen: they claim a kind of infallibility.
[1:28:09] Cameron McEwen: Like the Pope,
[1:28:09] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:28:10] Cameron McEwen: And on the other side,
[1:28:13] Cameron McEwen: aside from bureaucrats wanting to defend their privilege,
[1:28:18] Cameron McEwen: on the other side,
[1:28:19] Cameron McEwen: there are the companies
[1:28:23] Cameron McEwen: that are in the same market as you guys.
[1:28:25] Cameron McEwen: Now you may say,
[1:28:26] Cameron McEwen: oh,
[1:28:26] Cameron McEwen: that's not the same market at all,
[1:28:28] Cameron McEwen: we're different.
[1:28:29] Cameron McEwen: But that's not for you to say.
[1:28:32] Cameron McEwen: The people that think you're in the same market,
[1:28:35] Cameron McEwen: they then go to the FDA and they complain.
[1:28:38] Cameron McEwen: And then the
[1:28:39] Cameron McEwen: FDA responds to their complaints by saying something like they did a couple Thursdays ago.
[1:28:47] Cameron McEwen: So then the result of all of that is that you can go to court.
[1:28:51] Cameron McEwen: You can say that this is illegal or wrong or something like that.
[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: But again,
[1:28:59] Cameron McEwen: that takes a huge amount of money and time and energy.
[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:29:03] Bob Dobbs: So here's the other aspect.
[1:29:06] Bob Dobbs: You talk about these bureaucrats living their own world.
[1:29:09] Bob Dobbs: Carolyn can advertise,
[1:29:12] Bob Dobbs: can't make claims,
[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: but testimonials of people who buy her products can happen on Amazon.
[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: Amazon is too big for the FDA to go after.
[1:29:23] Bob Dobbs: So the FDA can't go to the big places like that,
[1:29:29] Bob Dobbs: but they can operate in the little world of medicine and health,
[1:29:33] Bob Dobbs: whatever it is they do,
[1:29:34] Bob Dobbs: food and drug administration,
[1:29:36] Bob Dobbs: and they can target people like Carolyn in their little world,
[1:29:41] Bob Dobbs: and there's so many other anti-environment and worlds going on that nobody would notice.
[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:29:47] Bob Dobbs: the FDA bureaucrat.
[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: can do tiny targeting.
[1:29:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:29:51] Cameron McEwen: but they can also do mega-targeting,
[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: It's just if the
[1:29:57] Cameron McEwen: Washington bureaucrats start getting on
[1:30:01] Cameron McEwen: Amazon's case,
[1:30:03] Cameron McEwen: which they don't have to do through lawsuits.
[1:30:05] Cameron McEwen: They can just write a letter and say,
[1:30:08] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:30:09] Cameron McEwen: this doesn't seem to be something you should be doing for your own good.
[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: Amazon...
[1:30:17] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[1:30:17] Cameron McEwen: they don't care about you guys selling your products or anything.
[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: They care about their relationship with the government as one of their highest priorities.
[1:30:27] Cameron McEwen: So they can easily stop you there if they want.
[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: Who?
[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: The FDA?
[1:30:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:30:33] Cameron McEwen: All they need to do is write a letter to Amazon or maybe other pharmaceutical companies.
[1:30:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:30:40] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:30:41] Bob Dobbs: the strange thing is they don't.
[1:30:44] Cameron McEwen: What's that?
[1:30:44] Bob Dobbs: The strange thing is they don't.
[1:30:47] Cameron McEwen: What I'm saying is not yet,
[1:30:49] Cameron McEwen: maybe.
[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:30:50] Bob Dobbs: but no,
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: for years,
[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: the council notices that companies can get away with money.
[1:30:56] Cameron McEwen: That's the only way to get ahead in this life is if you're going to do something that's new and unusual,
[1:31:03] Cameron McEwen: it cannot fit into the old categories.
[1:31:06] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:31:08] Bob Dobbs: that's definitely what we've been doing.
[1:31:11] Cameron McEwen: It takes balls to deal with new stuff.
[1:31:16] Cameron McEwen: stuff.
[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:31:17] Bob Dobbs: now,
[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: just for those who are listening and might be concerned,
[1:31:22] Bob Dobbs: they know about Carolyn.
[1:31:24] Bob Dobbs: And Carolyn very delighted this has happened.
[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: She doesn't have to waste time talking to people.
[1:31:29] Bob Dobbs: Her archives,
[1:31:30] Bob Dobbs: which are hard to get to now,
[1:31:33] Bob Dobbs: but there's a whole 10 years or more of information available for people,
[1:31:38] Bob Dobbs: easily defined on all the different topics.
[1:31:41] Bob Dobbs: But she is going into the lab to make stuff
[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: new stuff which we have arrived at.
[1:31:48] Bob Dobbs: So she's very happy in her own situation to have the time to do what we have to do now.
[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: While we wait out this period that people say,
[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: it might get better later,
[1:32:00] Bob Dobbs: but it's going to get worse first.
[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: That's the common meme now.
[1:32:03] Bob Dobbs: Have you heard that?
[1:32:05] Cameron McEwen: No.
[1:32:05] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:32:05] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:32:06] Cameron McEwen: obviously I've heard it said about many,
[1:32:08] Cameron McEwen: many things in life,
[1:32:10] Cameron McEwen: but I've never heard it said about your situation.
[1:32:12] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: not about us.
[1:32:14] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about the tribulations the world is in now.
[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: And a lot of people say,
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: I have hoped that humanity is going to turn around and do this and that,
[1:32:25] Bob Dobbs: but it's going to get worse first.
[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: They agree on that.
[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: It's going to get worse.
[1:32:30] Bob Dobbs: So the people want it to get worse almost.
[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: So while we're in this worse period...
[1:32:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:32:35] Cameron McEwen: they're protecting their prediction.
[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:32:38] Cameron McEwen: If the prediction doesn't seem to be working out...
[1:32:42] Cameron McEwen: Then you say,
[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:32:46] Bob Dobbs: but I predicted that it would get worse.
[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: my prediction would get worse.
[1:32:51] Bob Dobbs: My predictions would be so erroneous.
[1:32:55] Bob Dobbs: It would look bad.
[1:32:58] Bob Dobbs: So in this period of,
[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:33:01] Bob Dobbs: colossal confusion and ignorance,
[1:33:05] Bob Dobbs: it's a good time for Carolyn to retreat and do what she has to do anyways.
[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: She has more time now.
[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: So that's the good news.
[1:33:14] Bob Dobbs: I just want to tell you that this is good news,
[1:33:15] Bob Dobbs: what's happened for us.
[1:33:17] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:33:18] Cameron McEwen: Do you have some kind of lab out there in Maui?
[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:33:22] Bob Dobbs: she just does it in the kitchen.
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:33:24] Cameron McEwen: I see.
[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: She has an interesting way,
[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: a few utensils,
[1:33:31] Bob Dobbs: but no glorious lab.
[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: she works with natural things,
[1:33:38] Bob Dobbs: but she makes quite powerful stuff.
[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: you know based on secret processes she ain't telling people how she does it um so uh
[1:33:50] Bob Dobbs: So I think about what McLuhan did,
[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: and I think about what you say about his failure.
[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: It's interesting.
[1:34:03] Bob Dobbs: Did he take on a bigger issue than anybody else?
[1:34:08] Bob Dobbs: So a more glorious failure?
[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: Or you like to say,
[1:34:13] Bob Dobbs: and I remember that everybody failed so far of the greats.
[1:34:20] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:34:20] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:34:21] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:34:21] Cameron McEwen: we wouldn't be in the cul-de-sac threatening to blow ourselves up if there were some recognized,
[1:34:30] Cameron McEwen: successful communication of our common humanity.
[1:34:35] Cameron McEwen: There isn't.
[1:34:36] Cameron McEwen: And it's a very,
[1:34:37] Cameron McEwen: very dangerous situation.
[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: we've been talking for
[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: 43 or so,
[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: 44 weeks about how dangerous it is.
[1:34:48] Bob Dobbs: How long does the danger be held off?
[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:34:52] Bob Dobbs: you don't know,
[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: but do you think that we get another couple of weeks?
[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:34:59] Cameron McEwen: who knows what's going to happen with
[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: Russia and
[1:35:03] Cameron McEwen: Ukraine.
[1:35:04] Cameron McEwen: But the key thing is that,
[1:35:12] Cameron McEwen: for McLuhan at least,
[1:35:13] Cameron McEwen: it's very important to realize that we have...
[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: a tactile relationship with the past,
[1:35:22] Cameron McEwen: including the Peterson past.
[1:35:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:35:25] Cameron McEwen: And in that vast period of time since history began,
[1:35:29] Cameron McEwen: let's say that was
[1:35:31] Cameron McEwen: 5,000 to 6,000 years ago,
[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: there have been disaster after disaster.
[1:35:39] Cameron McEwen: So anybody that thinks that the foundation of things in some kind of religion Thank you.
[1:35:49] Cameron McEwen: is a guarantee against disaster is nuts.
[1:35:56] Cameron McEwen: It's just that we have to learn how to listen to that history in the same way that we need to listen to the sorts of things you're talking about.
[1:36:09] Cameron McEwen: So,
[1:36:09] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[1:36:10] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about the five parts of rhetoric.
[1:36:17] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about the...
[1:36:17] Cameron McEwen: the four
[1:36:18] Cameron McEwen: Aristotelian causes,
[1:36:19] Cameron McEwen: the levels of exegesis,
[1:36:21] Cameron McEwen: etc.
[1:36:22] Cameron McEwen: And then earlier than that,
[1:36:24] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about listening to what's going on with advertising,
[1:36:27] Cameron McEwen: comics,
[1:36:28] Cameron McEwen: telephone,
[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: motor car,
[1:36:29] Cameron McEwen: movie,
[1:36:30] Cameron McEwen: radio,
[1:36:30] Cameron McEwen: television,
[1:36:31] Cameron McEwen: etc.,
[1:36:31] Cameron McEwen: etc.
[1:36:33] Cameron McEwen: So the key to all of this stuff is to realize that we have an existing relationship to this stuff.
[1:36:48] Cameron McEwen: that includes the possibility of understanding them and not,
[1:36:53] Cameron McEwen: excuse me,
[1:36:54] Cameron McEwen: not understanding in some sort of that's the final moment of history,
[1:37:00] Cameron McEwen: but understanding them in the same way the physical sciences do,
[1:37:03] Cameron McEwen: where people do research and are continually overturning what yesterday was thought to be true,
[1:37:13] Cameron McEwen: but the science itself is not
[1:37:17] Cameron McEwen: thought to be useless or inapplicable.
[1:37:23] Bob Dobbs: Say that last bit again about what's inapplicable.
[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: Just your last sentence or two.
[1:37:29] Cameron McEwen: I said that just because science does not come to absolute final answers about anything doesn't mean that it's not applicable.
[1:37:42] Cameron McEwen: Science is very applicable.
[1:37:43] Cameron McEwen: Everything around us is the result of science.
[1:37:48] Cameron McEwen: So what we want is a similar sort of lab work,
[1:37:55] Cameron McEwen: I'm now calling it,
[1:37:56] Cameron McEwen: on human experience that results in the classroom without walls.
[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:38:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:38:05] Bob Dobbs: we're coming to the end,
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: so I wanted to say something.
[1:38:08] Cameron McEwen: Go ahead.
[1:38:09] Bob Dobbs: Go back up here,
[1:38:11] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:38:14] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[1:38:17] Bob Dobbs: the issue is not...
[1:38:18] Bob Dobbs: this is on bottom of 79.
[1:38:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:38:24] Bob Dobbs: bottom of 79.
[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: The issue is not orality and its spin-offs.
[1:38:29] Bob Dobbs: It's tactility squared,
[1:38:31] Bob Dobbs: which has flummoxed all cultures and has them scrambling for new or old identities.
[1:38:36] Bob Dobbs: The millennials can be understood under this carapace.
[1:38:43] Bob Dobbs: Then I say McLuhan in Understanding Media talks about how the desire for more money is a tactile expression.
[1:38:50] Bob Dobbs: The excessive desire to make money by any means necessary in all of our Gutenbergian and Menippean institutions since the 70s period of stagflation is a little-noted example of the broke spiral of tactility squared.
[1:39:05] Bob Dobbs: Emphasizing shareholder values to the exclusion of hardware development is not an extension of visual space,
[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: but the endless involving process of expanding and exploring the resonant interval,
[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: properly known as Wall Street.
[1:39:20] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,
[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: the tactility of television then became the global hologram of mixed-core media anti-environment which were interplaying like tactility.
[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: Then the Android Meme imploded it all,
[1:39:31] Bob Dobbs: shrunk it and permitted tactility cubed,
[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: went to a third level.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: So far,
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan scholars have placed too much emphasis on the role of the trivium in the media poetics of McLuhan.
[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: The quadrivium is far more important as the creative ground for McLuhan Postman bright output.
[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: we discussed most of this,
[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: and I'm restating it,
[1:39:52] Bob Dobbs: and to me,
[1:39:54] Bob Dobbs: it's the last thing to write.
[1:39:57] Bob Dobbs: You're writing,
[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: you're doing McLuhan.
[1:40:02] Bob Dobbs: I think McLuhan is the last thing to talk about,
[1:40:07] Bob Dobbs: in terms of reading a monologue,
[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: or reading something in one language.
[1:40:16] Bob Dobbs: Parallel to that is Finnegans Wake.
[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: So when I make these statements or this layout,
[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: I tend it to be,
[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: I'm hoping for it to be the last word.
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: And then one studies from it.
[1:40:37] Bob Dobbs: You jump off with the advice that the article gives you,
[1:40:43] Bob Dobbs: the book gives you,
[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: key points.
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: that has to be gotten.
[1:40:47] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you have to go and look up the sources I present for people to find out what I'm talking about.
[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:40:56] Bob Dobbs: I don't see anything worth reading because the activity of reading is obsolete.
[1:41:05] Bob Dobbs: And you're processing what's in the news.
[1:41:09] Bob Dobbs: We're all processing what they say is the news.
[1:41:13] Bob Dobbs: And I say that's the tech body which we're moving towards explaining closer each week.
[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: We actually have moved into the silent sea that McLuhan liked to talk about.
[1:41:27] Cameron McEwen: Is that the tech body,
[1:41:31] Cameron McEwen: is that something that is happening to us?
[1:41:37] Cameron McEwen: Is it something that anybody understands?
[1:41:39] Cameron McEwen: Is it simply...
[1:41:43] Cameron McEwen: A kind of maelstrom into which we're hopelessly entangled?
[1:41:48] Cameron McEwen: What is it?
[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: It's all those,
[1:41:50] Bob Dobbs: but it is something we can understand.
[1:41:52] Bob Dobbs: But the unique thing that I offer is I actually can talk to it.
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: And we went over the interview with it.
[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty incredible.
[1:42:02] Bob Dobbs: Most people say,
[1:42:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:42:04] Bob Dobbs: AI is coming down to get us.
[1:42:05] Bob Dobbs: Watch out for AI.
[1:42:07] Bob Dobbs: But they don't know where AI is,
[1:42:08] Bob Dobbs: and they can't talk to it.
[1:42:10] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:42:11] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying the tech body...
[1:42:14] Bob Dobbs: To me,
[1:42:16] Cameron McEwen: that's one of the main things that we're exploring in your book here.
[1:42:20] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[1:42:21] Cameron McEwen: Is that you have a way of thinking that's far different from my way of thinking.
[1:42:27] Cameron McEwen: But it's a very interesting approach to McLuhan,
[1:42:31] Cameron McEwen: and perhaps it's a very interesting approach to things that are much bigger than McLuhan in the world today.
[1:42:41] Cameron McEwen: And that way of thinking.
[1:42:43] Cameron McEwen: is basically a way of talking to these issues in dialogue.
[1:42:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:42:51] Cameron McEwen: And that's a peculiar thing that
[1:42:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to understand more about as we proceed.
[1:43:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:43:02] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:43:02] Bob Dobbs: that's what I do.
[1:43:04] Bob Dobbs: And so the final thing was
[1:43:07] Bob Dobbs: I was saying that I can actually draw up,
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:43:12] Bob Dobbs: the enemy.
[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: or what's presenting itself as our enemy right now,
[1:43:16] Bob Dobbs: and talk to it,
[1:43:17] Bob Dobbs: and present dialogues with it.
[1:43:19] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty incredible.
[1:43:22] Bob Dobbs: If you believe it,
[1:43:24] Bob Dobbs: then I'm talking to something that is beyond all the science fiction scenarios.
[1:43:31] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:43:32] Bob Dobbs: they've got the new Matrix movie out,
[1:43:34] Bob Dobbs: and his last Matrix,
[1:43:35] Bob Dobbs: if you remember,
[1:43:36] Bob Dobbs: if you watched it,
[1:43:37] Bob Dobbs: the third movie,
[1:43:39] Bob Dobbs: he ends up talking to something like a tech body or a god or something.
[1:43:44] Bob Dobbs: And then there's consequences,
[1:43:45] Bob Dobbs: and then the movie has a nice ending.
[1:43:51] Bob Dobbs: I predicted how the matrix would have to go,
[1:43:54] Bob Dobbs: so I haven't made any predictions about the new thing.
[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: I don't even know if I'll go see it,
[1:43:59] Bob Dobbs: but I'll see it someday.
[1:44:01] Bob Dobbs: I'll be very curious to see if it follows along with what
[1:44:04] Bob Dobbs: I've done since the last one,
[1:44:06] Bob Dobbs: which was about 2003,
[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:44:08] Bob Dobbs: 15 years,
[1:44:09] Bob Dobbs: 20 years ago.
[1:44:10] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:44:11] Bob Dobbs: 18 years ago.
[1:44:13] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:44:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm just reminding you of the uniqueness of the tech body part that I'm trying to illustrate.
[1:44:21] Bob Dobbs: that we can actually talk to it.
[1:44:25] Bob Dobbs: Nobody else can lay out a science fiction scenario and then claim that they can talk to it.
[1:44:33] Bob Dobbs: This is very original to do this.
[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: And to pull it off.
[1:44:37] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[1:44:38] Cameron McEwen: I think that's true.
[1:44:39] Cameron McEwen: I would understand it a little bit different.
[1:44:42] Cameron McEwen: I would say that what technology has been up to since...
[1:44:51] Cameron McEwen: let's say at the time of television in the late
[1:44:55] Cameron McEwen: 1920s, it's been figuring out how to externalize the...
[1:45:08] Bob Dobbs: The inner trip.
[1:45:11] Cameron McEwen: Pardon me?
[1:45:12] Bob Dobbs: The inner trip,
[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: how to externalize the inner trip.
[1:45:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:45:16] Cameron McEwen: but how the thing about television that McLuhan really liked...
[1:45:22] Cameron McEwen: is it's like synesthetic.
[1:45:28] Cameron McEwen: It brings together the senses that we know how to externalize.
[1:45:34] Cameron McEwen: So part of the externalization of the senses is the externalization of the language function.
[1:45:44] Cameron McEwen: And the externalization of the language function kind of underlies all of the things.
[1:45:51] Cameron McEwen: that have been possible through electricity and through the digital.
[1:45:55] Cameron McEwen: So the language function,
[1:45:58] Cameron McEwen: in turn,
[1:46:00] Cameron McEwen: is a kind of way of thinking,
[1:46:03] Cameron McEwen: a way of processing stuff.
[1:46:06] Cameron McEwen: And it should be talkable to if it really is an externalization of language,
[1:46:17] Cameron McEwen: of the...
[1:46:19] Cameron McEwen: synthesis of the various senses,
[1:46:21] Cameron McEwen: then talking to it would seem to be the way to understand it.
[1:46:26] Cameron McEwen: And that's what I think you're doing.
[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:46:29] Bob Dobbs: and remember McLuhan said that in Hot and Cool,
[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: in
[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: Stern's book.
[1:46:32] Bob Dobbs: He said,
[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm going back and giving it the old what for.
[1:46:36] Bob Dobbs: I'm kicking back.
[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking back.
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: that's what he said you had to do.
[1:46:41] Bob Dobbs: You had to talk back anti-environment.
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: that's a good point to end.
[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: Let's see where it goes next time.
[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:46:49] Cameron McEwen: We should,
[1:46:50] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you a note saying that we're at the top of page 81 or something.
[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[1:46:57] Bob Dobbs: I appreciate that.
[1:46:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:47:00] Bob Dobbs: have a holiday if you're going to have one.
[1:47:02] Bob Dobbs: Have a good holiday.
[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: You too,
[1:47:04] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[1:47:04] Bob Dobbs: And we'll talk in two weeks.
[1:47:07] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:47:07] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: thanks a lot,
[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron.
[1:47:09] Cameron McEwen: You too.
[1:47:10] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.
[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: Bye.