Dialogue 69 — Transcript

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: hello,

[00:03] Bob Dobbs: this is

[00:04] Bob Dobbs: Bob Dobbs and Cameron McEwen with episode 69 of an ongoing series of analyzing my booklet.

[00:16] Bob Dobbs: It's not a huge book,

[00:18] Bob Dobbs: but it's not tiny,

[00:20] Bob Dobbs: 200 pages or so.

[00:22] Bob Dobbs: And we're doing page 139 if you're following us in detail.

[00:27] Bob Dobbs: We're at the top of page 139.

[00:31] Bob Dobbs: Let's see what it says.

[00:33] Bob Dobbs: We are doing part four,

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: Android meme phase two.

[00:39] Bob Dobbs: But before we go into that,

[00:41] Bob Dobbs: Cameron was talking to me a few minutes ago about his approach as synchrony and my approach as diachrony.

[00:49] Bob Dobbs: So we talked about this at the beginning,

[00:52] Bob Dobbs: and it's a difference that Cameron said was happening with the two of us,

[00:57] Bob Dobbs: me being diachrony.

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: Cameron being synchrony.

[01:02] Bob Dobbs: So I thought after a couple years of talking,

[01:05] Bob Dobbs: I'd like to hear

[01:07] Bob Dobbs: Cameron say the difference now and see if it's changed by our talking.

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: Because we have sort of gotten closer and overlapped closer than how we started.

[01:19] Bob Dobbs: So what is the synchrony that you're doing with my charts and sequences,

[01:27] Bob Dobbs: phases?

[01:28] Bob Dobbs: which you're calling chronological or historical.

[01:32] Bob Dobbs: How is that not synchrony?

[01:37] Cameron McEwen: No,

[01:37] Cameron McEwen: it is synchronous.

[01:39] Cameron McEwen: For example,

[01:40] Cameron McEwen: your Tiny Note chart,

[01:42] Cameron McEwen: you don't believe that that's something that happened once upon a time and now it doesn't apply anymore.

[01:50] Cameron McEwen: You think that the Tiny Note chart applies all the time.

[01:54] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[01:56] Cameron McEwen: The only place where we have a marked difference is in what Marshall McLuhan calls pre-tribal awareness.

[02:04] Cameron McEwen: And you tend to cache that in terms of sort of isolated individuals strolling the earth,

[02:13] Cameron McEwen: and they don't yet belong to society.

[02:17] Cameron McEwen: Whereas

[02:18] Cameron McEwen: I say that pre-tribal awareness is how experience gets generated.

[02:26] Cameron McEwen: at every moment of time,

[02:29] Cameron McEwen: by every human qua being a human being.

[02:37] Cameron McEwen: That exercising pre-tribal awareness is simply creativity,

[02:43] Cameron McEwen: and creativity is simply the fact that humans are at every moment exposed to various possibilities of reaction.

[02:56] Bob Dobbs: So if we imagine that before social groupings,

[03:00] Bob Dobbs: these isolated individuals,

[03:02] Bob Dobbs: they encounter each other,

[03:04] Bob Dobbs: they don't have a common language,

[03:06] Bob Dobbs: they communicate in some way,

[03:08] Bob Dobbs: Zappa called them the grunt people,

[03:11] Bob Dobbs: they grunt.

[03:13] Bob Dobbs: How is the grunting synchronous?

[03:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[03:17] Cameron McEwen: you see,

[03:18] Cameron McEwen: you're putting that in historical terms.

[03:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[03:21] Cameron McEwen: So you could say that...

[03:24] Cameron McEwen: insofar as individuals meet each other and grunt and don't have a common language,

[03:31] Cameron McEwen: then they're not yet human.

[03:33] Cameron McEwen: And as McLuhan often says,

[03:38] Cameron McEwen: the ability to use language and the fact of human being,

[03:42] Cameron McEwen: those are the same things.

[03:44] Cameron McEwen: There's no such thing as human beings that don't have language.

[03:47] Cameron McEwen: So the human beings are inherently social.

[03:55] Cameron McEwen: in the sense that they are constantly visiting the possibilities of expression.

[04:07] Cameron McEwen: And by expression,

[04:08] Cameron McEwen: I don't just mean words.

[04:10] Cameron McEwen: I mean how people experience.

[04:14] Cameron McEwen: For McLuhan,

[04:14] Cameron McEwen: experience is an extension or an expression of a human being.

[04:27] Cameron McEwen: If you think of speaking language,

[04:31] Cameron McEwen: there's always a whole bunch of different words,

[04:33] Cameron McEwen: a whole bunch of different sounds,

[04:35] Cameron McEwen: a whole bunch of different gestures that a human being can utter.

[04:41] Cameron McEwen: So that collectivity is already there for all humans.

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: No such thing as?

[04:53] Cameron McEwen: There's no such thing as an isolated grunt being that is already a human.

[04:54] Bob Dobbs: thing as?

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[05:01] Bob Dobbs: so the grunt people meet,

[05:03] Bob Dobbs: and they're being creative in responding to each other.

[05:06] Bob Dobbs: interpreting each other,

[05:08] Bob Dobbs: but they haven't locked into any social agreed upon assumptions or,

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[05:15] Bob Dobbs: force enforcements.

[05:18] Bob Dobbs: So there's a difference.

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: When they do get into socialization,

[05:25] Bob Dobbs: they still have that,

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: alienation or separateness or whatever that private,

[05:32] Bob Dobbs: unreasonable part of the self,

[05:34] Bob Dobbs: the private sizzle of consciousness that...

[05:36] Bob Dobbs: media can't access.

[05:37] Bob Dobbs: That is there,

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: right?

[05:39] Bob Dobbs: It's always there.

[05:40] Bob Dobbs: And maybe it's always been the same.

[05:43] Bob Dobbs: So I include that.

[05:45] Bob Dobbs: Does that make me synchronous?

[05:48] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[05:50] Cameron McEwen: if you're seeing that all human experience is artistic,

[05:57] Cameron McEwen: and that's in the sense that it's the expression of that pre-tribal awareness.

[06:05] Cameron McEwen: Then,

[06:06] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[06:07] Cameron McEwen: right?

[06:08] Cameron McEwen: It's like if we say in Bob's Tiny Note chart are the different junctions between the five people in the chart and or the six people in the chart,

[06:23] Cameron McEwen: however you want to read it.

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:25] Cameron McEwen: Are the junctions between those people and in the different topics that they cover is are those things always.

[06:34] Cameron McEwen: possibilities for all humans?

[06:36] Cameron McEwen: And the answer is yes.

[06:39] Bob Dobbs: So once you start talking about the way creativity is limited by the social structures and McLuhan's simple chronology

[06:52] Bob Dobbs: is you have speech-based,

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: maybe audio-tactile,

[06:56] Bob Dobbs: then you have eye-based,

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: then you have kinetic-based with industry,

[07:00] Bob Dobbs: and then you have the software-based of the...

[07:03] Bob Dobbs: the electric environment uh that's a sequence is that die is that um diachrony yes now i would say we have the you know the ellie statement i got to use words when i talk to you but when i write a book back

[07:20] Bob Dobbs: in Marshall McLuhan day i got to make it diachronic or diachrony or logical that the book is sequential it's going to force that and he knew that and i knew that when i made my chart that this is just a visualization Thank you.

[07:33] Cameron McEwen: So it's not that chronological time doesn't exist.

[07:41] Cameron McEwen: The question is,

[07:43] Cameron McEwen: what is the structure of chronological time?

[07:47] Cameron McEwen: And the structure,

[07:48] Cameron McEwen: according to McLuhan,

[07:49] Cameron McEwen: is a kind of up and down wave.

[07:53] Cameron McEwen: It's like a light wave or a sound wave that moves through time,

[07:58] Cameron McEwen: but it does so having a vertical axis.

[08:04] Bob Dobbs: You mean like in the X and Y thing?

[08:09] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[08:09] Cameron McEwen: it could be graphed,

[08:11] Cameron McEwen: but I'm talking about if you imagine a radar screen.

[08:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[08:17] Cameron McEwen: And you've got this movement going up and down and up and down and up and down,

[08:22] Cameron McEwen: but it's also moving horizontally.

[08:25] Cameron McEwen: And so for McLuhan,

[08:28] Cameron McEwen: the difficulty that he constantly talked about is how do you get to...

[08:34] Cameron McEwen: people to what he calls inclusive consciousness,

[08:40] Cameron McEwen: as to say,

[08:41] Cameron McEwen: to a consciousness that's electric,

[08:43] Cameron McEwen: to a consciousness that has built-in tactility,

[08:48] Cameron McEwen: where there's different poles of the experience,

[08:52] Cameron McEwen: but those poles are not considered to be antagonistic.

[08:57] Cameron McEwen: They're differentiated,

[08:58] Cameron McEwen: but they're joined.

[09:00] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,

[09:02] Cameron McEwen: the great...

[09:02] Cameron McEwen: problem is to try to get people to understand what the possibilities and problems are of inclusive consciousness.

[09:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[09:15] Bob Dobbs: So

[09:16] Bob Dobbs: I have six phases or so,

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: Global Village,

[09:19] Bob Dobbs: global theater,

[09:20] Bob Dobbs: Global Membrane,

[09:21] Bob Dobbs: and or mean phase one and or mean phase two.

[09:25] Bob Dobbs: There are differences.

[09:26] Bob Dobbs: So I'm highlighting the differences.

[09:29] Bob Dobbs: And I'm

[09:31] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's

[09:32] Bob Dobbs: spent his time in Understanding Media chronologically pointing out the obsolescence of chronology.

[09:39] Bob Dobbs: So the tight paradox is he's writing a book at a time where books are very weak in impact,

[09:48] Bob Dobbs: but he prefers to do a book.

[09:50] Bob Dobbs: He's going to use other media when he gets the opportunity.

[09:53] Bob Dobbs: But he almost says,

[09:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to retrieve sequential thinking again.

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: through talking about the discontinuous simultaneous electric environments,

[10:04] Bob Dobbs: which is a new topic,

[10:06] Bob Dobbs: something people don't know about.

[10:08] Bob Dobbs: But

[10:09] Bob Dobbs: I do bring back the book experience,

[10:12] Bob Dobbs: he's saying.

[10:12] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[10:14] Cameron McEwen: And he even says that that's bringing,

[10:18] Cameron McEwen: well,

[10:20] Cameron McEwen: this is a very complicated topic.

[10:23] Cameron McEwen: So let's just,

[10:24] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[10:26] Cameron McEwen: first,

[10:26] Cameron McEwen: he certainly does.

[10:28] Cameron McEwen: try to retrieve the book experience,

[10:32] Cameron McEwen: as you just put it.

[10:34] Cameron McEwen: But when the book experience is retrieved and replayed,

[10:39] Cameron McEwen: it's not the same as what it was.

[10:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[10:43] Cameron McEwen: Right?

[10:43] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan says is that if we are to understand media,

[10:48] Cameron McEwen: we cannot understand them in isolation.

[10:51] Cameron McEwen: We have to understand them in their plurality.

[10:55] Cameron McEwen: So the...

[10:56] Cameron McEwen: If we were to get ourselves engaged only with the book,

[11:01] Cameron McEwen: then we're back in the Gutenberg Galaxy and we have all the problems of that galaxy,

[11:06] Cameron McEwen: namely,

[11:08] Cameron McEwen: ultimately,

[11:09] Cameron McEwen: an attack on the human personality,

[11:14] Cameron McEwen: a dedication to war.

[11:18] Cameron McEwen: So he wants to get away from that.

[11:20] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[11:21] Cameron McEwen: he says,

[11:22] Cameron McEwen: look,

[11:22] Cameron McEwen: if we go over to just.

[11:25] Cameron McEwen: The electric media,

[11:27] Cameron McEwen: they have their own problems,

[11:29] Cameron McEwen: and we end up with no mind if we go over there far enough.

[11:34] Cameron McEwen: So the only way to avoid the pitfalls of both is to have inclusive consciousness.

[11:42] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[11:43] Cameron McEwen: we understand media in its synchronic plurality,

[11:48] Cameron McEwen: and when we do that,

[11:49] Cameron McEwen: we can offset the weakness of all of the...

[11:53] Cameron McEwen: different individual media through the Understanding Media as a spectrum,

[12:01] Cameron McEwen: as a whole theater of possibilities.

[12:06] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[12:06] Bob Dobbs: So the many people,

[12:10] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan has been retrieved a lot the last 25 years,

[12:13] Bob Dobbs: say,

[12:13] Bob Dobbs: in journalism.

[12:14] Cameron McEwen: So they say.

[12:15] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?

[12:17] Cameron McEwen: So they say.

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: well,

[12:18] Bob Dobbs: let me qualify that.

[12:20] Bob Dobbs: So they bring his name up more than they did in the 80s.

[12:23] Bob Dobbs: And,

[12:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[12:25] Bob Dobbs: after the Berlin Wall went down and then the Internet comes in and they talk in a whole how well we know McLuhan said the medium is the message.

[12:35] Bob Dobbs: And we have a Global Village and media extensions of our senses.

[12:39] Bob Dobbs: They say a few principles.

[12:41] Bob Dobbs: But I can go into if I bring up McLuhan and start talking,

[12:45] Bob Dobbs: I can quote.

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: They won't know I'm quoting.

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: I'll just start saying ideas that I got from McLuhan.

[12:51] Bob Dobbs: For example...

[12:52] Bob Dobbs: I remember talking to this woman,

[12:54] Bob Dobbs: an art professor in Halifax in the

[12:58] Bob Dobbs: 70s, and I was telling her the reason black power happened,

[13:02] Bob Dobbs: or civil rights,

[13:04] Bob Dobbs: or just the preference,

[13:07] Bob Dobbs: the popularity of the black image,

[13:10] Bob Dobbs: black power and all that,

[13:11] Bob Dobbs: was due to color television.

[13:15] Bob Dobbs: She was outraged.

[13:16] Bob Dobbs: What are you talking about?

[13:17] Bob Dobbs: It was,

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: kids going down there,

[13:19] Bob Dobbs: college kids going down there getting shot.

[13:21] Bob Dobbs: and registering to vote,

[13:22] Bob Dobbs: all this practical voting stuff.

[13:25] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[13:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[13:25] Bob Dobbs: but the face of the black was way more charismatic on color TV than the white face.

[13:32] Bob Dobbs: The white face was chiaroscuro.

[13:34] Bob Dobbs: That was okay on black and white TV,

[13:36] Bob Dobbs: but not on color TV.

[13:38] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[13:39] Bob Dobbs: she thought I was nuts.

[13:41] Bob Dobbs: She didn't know McLuhan said that.

[13:43] Bob Dobbs: But to me,

[13:44] Bob Dobbs: it was always an example.

[13:45] Bob Dobbs: People have no clue how McLuhan applied himself to all kinds of topics that is never talked about.

[13:51] Bob Dobbs: like that.

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[13:53] Bob Dobbs: civil rights will be a red herring.

[13:55] Bob Dobbs: He says that in Cultures Are Business.

[13:58] Bob Dobbs: And that's what

[13:59] Bob Dobbs: Cornel West and those guys are saying,

[14:00] Bob Dobbs: like,

[14:01] Bob Dobbs: well,

[14:01] Bob Dobbs: 10 years ago,

[14:02] Bob Dobbs: we have a new wealthy middle class,

[14:05] Bob Dobbs: black middle class,

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: black bourgeois,

[14:07] Bob Dobbs: but they have left their tribe back in the ghettos.

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: there's something wrong here.

[14:13] Bob Dobbs: We got the vote,

[14:13] Bob Dobbs: we got access to jobs and that,

[14:15] Bob Dobbs: but we're actually a fragmented people now,

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: worse.

[14:20] Bob Dobbs: And I think that's what McLuhan was warning people about,

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: that there would be a charisma for the black face,

[14:27] Bob Dobbs: but then it would be tetraded and flip,

[14:29] Bob Dobbs: and then it would be a reaction,

[14:30] Bob Dobbs: and then there would be a white backlash and all those problems.

[14:34] Bob Dobbs: So there's any topic in the world.

[14:38] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[14:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan like Ann Landers,

[14:39] Bob Dobbs: right?

[14:39] Bob Dobbs: He discusses every problem of social dating or social relationships in all aspects through history and today.

[14:49] Bob Dobbs: That's what I liked about it.

[14:50] Bob Dobbs: you wanted to find out what do you think about streaking say he had a quote on it so um

[14:58] Bob Dobbs: What is that?

[15:00] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[15:01] Bob Dobbs: people aren't getting McLuhan.

[15:02] Bob Dobbs: They don't get what I'm talking about.

[15:06] Bob Dobbs: So why do people think they get McLuhan?

[15:10] Bob Dobbs: Because they don't have an inclination to read him.

[15:14] Bob Dobbs: It's almost like a boring idea or media extensions of our senses.

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[15:18] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[15:19] Bob Dobbs: that's a nice idea.

[15:21] Bob Dobbs: Maybe think about things a little bit,

[15:23] Bob Dobbs: but they don't get into the examples that he wrote about in many books.

[15:29] Bob Dobbs: And he actually solved every social problem,

[15:31] Bob Dobbs: at least as a statement,

[15:33] Bob Dobbs: an intellectualization of what the issues were,

[15:36] Bob Dobbs: clarified everything.

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: And that never got understood.

[15:40] Bob Dobbs: And you know that,

[15:41] Bob Dobbs: and you're trying to improve that situation.

[15:45] Bob Dobbs: But maybe I would ask,

[15:49] Bob Dobbs: why would you think he failed that way?

[15:54] Bob Dobbs: He never got his message across.

[15:56] Bob Dobbs: None of the great philosophers ever get it across what they're doing.

[16:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[16:00] Cameron McEwen: I think the latter.

[16:03] Cameron McEwen: But,

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[16:04] Cameron McEwen: it's not that McLuhan was without failures.

[16:07] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[16:07] Cameron McEwen: he was an individual human being who had a vocation to try to clarify certain ideas,

[16:20] Cameron McEwen: and he did his best.

[16:21] Cameron McEwen: And

[16:22] Cameron McEwen: I think he did a fantastic job.

[16:26] Cameron McEwen: job that people don't really appreciate.

[16:31] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[16:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan often screwed up by mixing up the principles of the sort of analysis that he was trying to do and the application.

[16:48] Cameron McEwen: And when people read McLuhan,

[16:49] Cameron McEwen: they get mixed up between those things.

[16:51] Cameron McEwen: They think that talking about um,

[16:56] Cameron McEwen: media,

[16:57] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[16:57] Cameron McEwen: means this TV or this

[17:01] Cameron McEwen: Walkman or whatever,

[17:04] Cameron McEwen: whereas he's using them as examples,

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: right?

[17:08] Cameron McEwen: And

[17:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is not very clear,

[17:11] Cameron McEwen: unless he's read closely,

[17:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is not very clear about the difference between an example and the principles that underlie that example.

[17:22] Cameron McEwen: So when

[17:23] Cameron McEwen: When you're talking about McLuhan,

[17:25] Cameron McEwen: you are constantly aware of the sort of differences that you set out in the Tiny Note chart.

[17:32] Cameron McEwen: You're aware that there's nothing that ever occurs that is without tactility.

[17:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[17:39] Cameron McEwen: but that's at the level of principle.

[17:43] Cameron McEwen: When people hear you and they hear you talking about tactility or they hear you talking about various events,

[17:50] Cameron McEwen: they don't understand.

[17:50] Cameron McEwen: that you're talking at two levels at once.

[17:55] Cameron McEwen: And so,

[17:56] Cameron McEwen: yes,

[17:57] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is being retrieved in a sense,

[17:59] Cameron McEwen: but he's being retrieved at a very simplistic reading.

[18:06] Cameron McEwen: So one of the things that's interesting in McLuhan is he says that there are solutions only in problems.

[18:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[18:16] Cameron McEwen: So if you consider the question,

[18:18] Cameron McEwen: what is a medium?

[18:21] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[18:22] Cameron McEwen: once medium is considered as a question,

[18:26] Cameron McEwen: it has become a message.

[18:29] Cameron McEwen: There could be no clarification of what is a medium except through some medium,

[18:36] Cameron McEwen: right?

[18:36] Cameron McEwen: And then if you say,

[18:37] Cameron McEwen: well,

[18:38] Cameron McEwen: what is that medium that's deeper?

[18:40] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[18:41] Cameron McEwen: now it's become a message.

[18:43] Cameron McEwen: So the problem that people have in understanding

[18:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is that

[18:51] Cameron McEwen: His understanding presupposes that we're grappling with very deep problems.

[18:58] Cameron McEwen: For example,

[18:59] Cameron McEwen: infinite regress when the question of what is a medium is put forward.

[19:05] Cameron McEwen: Or there's the question of,

[19:07] Cameron McEwen: you often quote,

[19:09] Cameron McEwen: Take Today,

[19:10] Cameron McEwen: where

[19:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan says that with the electric environment,

[19:17] Cameron McEwen: the whole system is...

[19:19] Cameron McEwen: blown up.

[19:21] Cameron McEwen: It implodes.

[19:22] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[19:24] Cameron McEwen: what does that mean for individual identity?

[19:27] Cameron McEwen: What does it mean for the family?

[19:29] Cameron McEwen: What does it mean for social identity?

[19:32] Cameron McEwen: All this sort of stuff.

[19:34] Cameron McEwen: When these things implode,

[19:37] Cameron McEwen: what's the implication?

[19:38] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[19:39] Cameron McEwen: these kinds of problems lie at the base of what McLuhan was doing and there's no solution in the

[19:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan sense.

[19:49] Cameron McEwen: that doesn't get back to those problems.

[19:53] Cameron McEwen: But the normal reading of McLuhan is to avoid those problems.

[19:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[19:59] Bob Dobbs: so...

[20:01] Bob Dobbs: So I come up with this idea of the Android meme.

[20:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to describe there's something different going on than what McLuhan described.

[20:11] Bob Dobbs: He got as far as software communism.

[20:13] Bob Dobbs: But then the speed up,

[20:17] Bob Dobbs: the perfecting of even more media communication and hoiking up the individual to have more access to everything leads to a whole bunch of new post-sensory ratios.

[20:29] Bob Dobbs: We don't even have the census happening anymore.

[20:32] Bob Dobbs: So I was saying that the technologies started to extend themselves,

[20:37] Bob Dobbs: not our census anymore.

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: So

[20:39] Bob Dobbs: I was saying,

[20:41] Bob Dobbs: I thought I had a new mandate to point out that Marshall McLuhan went so far,

[20:46] Bob Dobbs: but there's a whole new situation where you can't just apply his common principle,

[20:53] Bob Dobbs: that media extension of our census.

[20:55] Bob Dobbs: That doesn't apply in the new situation.

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[20:59] Bob Dobbs: Eric comes up in

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: 98 or so in his book,

[21:02] Bob Dobbs: Electric Language,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: that we are extending different parts of the brain with computers.

[21:09] Bob Dobbs: So he still brings it back to the human body.

[21:12] Bob Dobbs: But I thought I was going a bit further than that and not.

[21:17] Bob Dobbs: Because since people didn't really know anything about computers,

[21:20] Bob Dobbs: they just used them.

[21:22] Bob Dobbs: And there was a lot of confusion about them,

[21:24] Bob Dobbs: but that was suppressed.

[21:25] Bob Dobbs: People didn't talk about it.

[21:26] Bob Dobbs: They just typed away.

[21:28] Bob Dobbs: try to keep up with communication with the tribe.

[21:35] Bob Dobbs: But their confusion is that what are computers extending?

[21:40] Bob Dobbs: If you do it simply,

[21:43] Bob Dobbs: naively,

[21:43] Bob Dobbs: you'd say,

[21:43] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[21:43] Bob Dobbs: the central nervous system or something.

[21:46] Bob Dobbs: But there was something different being extended to the point people didn't know what was being extended.

[21:52] Bob Dobbs: They understood that books extend the eye.

[21:55] Bob Dobbs: But once we get into the area I call the Android meme,

[21:58] Bob Dobbs: It's a new situation.

[22:02] Bob Dobbs: So what do I,

[22:03] Bob Dobbs: is that,

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: am I trying to point out a historical difference?

[22:07] Cameron McEwen: Seems like.

[22:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[22:09] Cameron McEwen: It seems like when you emphasize historical difference,

[22:13] Cameron McEwen: you're saying that chronology has some sort of principal effect on human beings.

[22:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[22:21] Cameron McEwen: And my difference with that is that I say the...

[22:27] Cameron McEwen: the chronological expression of human beings always depends upon the interior landscape,

[22:37] Cameron McEwen: the Global Village within,

[22:39] Cameron McEwen: that is what gets expressed over time.

[22:44] Cameron McEwen: So the differences in time that you're talking about,

[22:49] Cameron McEwen: I see as qualities or properties of a prior dynamic.

[22:57] Cameron McEwen: civil war of media as you sometimes call it.

[23:01] Cameron McEwen: Whereas you say that the time factor is more important.

[23:09] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't call it the time factor.

[23:11] Bob Dobbs: I'd just say there's something different in the media.

[23:14] Bob Dobbs: Do you think there's something that we did phase one.

[23:20] Bob Dobbs: I was trying to describe something.

[23:22] Bob Dobbs: Was I always really just doing McLuhan?

[23:26] Bob Dobbs: properly in a deeper mode,

[23:29] Bob Dobbs: which is not done very much,

[23:31] Bob Dobbs: and we didn't need a new term,

[23:33] Bob Dobbs: Android meme,

[23:34] Bob Dobbs: for a new phase?

[23:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[23:40] Cameron McEwen: I guess I would just go back to

[23:42] Cameron McEwen: Sweeney. I've got to use words when I talk to you.

[23:45] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[23:47] Cameron McEwen: you're trying to grapple with deep issues.

[23:55] Cameron McEwen: How those issues get expressed,

[23:57] Cameron McEwen: how a person attempts to communicate them,

[24:02] Cameron McEwen: varies.

[24:03] Cameron McEwen: So what I see you doing is an engagement with McLuhan,

[24:13] Cameron McEwen: and there's nothing wrong with saying,

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: well,

[24:15] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to go beyond McLuhan or something.

[24:17] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[24:18] Cameron McEwen: that may be a helpful way to look at certain things.

[24:23] Cameron McEwen: Thanks.

[24:24] Cameron McEwen: I just say that when people are engaged with McLuhan,

[24:31] Cameron McEwen: they have to be engaged in these deeper issues.

[24:35] Cameron McEwen: And if they're engaged with these deeper issues,

[24:38] Cameron McEwen: as I believe you are,

[24:40] Cameron McEwen: then what is said on the basis of those issues and as an expression of those issues is interesting.

[24:50] Cameron McEwen: It's a way of trying to unfold what...

[24:53] Cameron McEwen: human beings need to unfold if they're going to get themselves out of the predicament that they've put themselves in.

[25:01] Cameron McEwen: We've painted ourselves in a corner.

[25:04] Cameron McEwen: We're in danger of wiping ourselves and everything else on that planet out.

[25:11] Cameron McEwen: So how are we going to get out of this?

[25:14] Cameron McEwen: And you're attempting to think through those issues.

[25:19] Cameron McEwen: I'm attempting to think through those issues.

[25:22] Cameron McEwen: And our conversation is,

[25:24] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[25:25] Cameron McEwen: sort of a dialogue around that topic.

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[25:28] Bob Dobbs: I coined the phrase Android meme in the late

[25:31] Bob Dobbs: 90s, so

[25:32] Bob Dobbs: 25 years ago.

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: Is it 25?

[25:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[25:36] Bob Dobbs: 25.

[25:40] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[25:41] Bob Dobbs: I was in this youth culture magazine called Flipside.

[25:45] Bob Dobbs: I put my diary entries in there and I called it Android Meme's Xenochrony.

[25:49] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knew what those terms were.

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: If I got to say them back then,

[25:54] Bob Dobbs: people would just,

[25:55] Bob Dobbs: what are you saying?

[25:56] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[25:56] Bob Dobbs: I don't know that stuff.

[25:58] Bob Dobbs: They wouldn't,

[25:59] Bob Dobbs: just like when McLuhan comes up with media in the

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: 50s, using that word,

[26:04] Bob Dobbs: people didn't use the word and he popularized it.

[26:07] Bob Dobbs: So then media became part of the...

[26:10] Bob Dobbs: I guess you call it the lingua franca,

[26:11] Bob Dobbs: right?

[26:12] Bob Dobbs: Just people were saying it.

[26:13] Bob Dobbs: They didn't really know what it meant,

[26:15] Bob Dobbs: but the word had resonance and seemed to point to something new that was going on.

[26:22] Bob Dobbs: So then I did Android meme,

[26:24] Bob Dobbs: and as I've said before,

[26:26] Bob Dobbs: I picked the right word.

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: Nobody thought,

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: I didn't think,

[26:29] Bob Dobbs: back in 1998,

[26:30] Bob Dobbs: that 25 years later,

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: the word meme would be a cliche and tossed around like McLuhan's media was eventually.

[26:38] Bob Dobbs: You know?

[26:39] Bob Dobbs: So I hit on the right word.

[26:40] Bob Dobbs: Now that's an interesting,

[26:41] Bob Dobbs: that's a poetic function,

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: isn't it?

[26:43] Bob Dobbs: I called it.

[26:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[26:44] Cameron McEwen: it is.

[26:45] Bob Dobbs: And it got the right name,

[26:46] Bob Dobbs: or the name did surface as the preferred name.

[26:51] Bob Dobbs: People don't say,

[26:51] Bob Dobbs: well,

[26:51] Bob Dobbs: we're doing this virtuality or that virtuality.

[26:54] Bob Dobbs: They say memeing.

[26:56] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[26:57] Bob Dobbs: I was talking to somebody,

[26:59] Bob Dobbs: and the meme is more in what I call the TV body.

[27:04] Bob Dobbs: It's iconic visuals.

[27:05] Bob Dobbs: So the kids see visual stuff.

[27:08] Bob Dobbs: Instagram stuff,

[27:09] Bob Dobbs: and they call it memes.

[27:11] Bob Dobbs: Whereas the chip world,

[27:14] Bob Dobbs: which would be maybe Android meme phase two,

[27:18] Bob Dobbs: they use the word algorithm.

[27:20] Bob Dobbs: We're trapped in the algorithm.

[27:21] Bob Dobbs: That's becoming a popular expression of replacing the matrix idea.

[27:26] Bob Dobbs: Have you noticed that?

[27:28] Cameron McEwen: No,

[27:29] Cameron McEwen: well,

[27:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't pay any attention to social media.

[27:35] Bob Dobbs: You're out of touch with the sequential actions.

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: You're in touch with the synchronized everything,

[27:39] Bob Dobbs: the big dope.

[27:43] Cameron McEwen: What I hear with the term algorithm is people beginning to tune into the idea of dynamics.

[27:53] Cameron McEwen: I've mentioned before how

[27:56] Cameron McEwen: Aristotle thought that people didn't understand

[28:00] Cameron McEwen: Plato properly because they didn't understand the dynamics.

[28:04] Cameron McEwen: of the ideas,

[28:06] Cameron McEwen: as to say Plato's ideas aren't abstract categories in the sky somewhere.

[28:14] Cameron McEwen: They're structures that express themselves inherently.

[28:19] Cameron McEwen: So it's like the difference between carbon as an element in Mendeleev's table and carbon as it expresses itself in diamonds or in graphite.

[28:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[28:33] Cameron McEwen: So,

[28:33] Cameron McEwen: um,

[28:35] Cameron McEwen: The idea with chemical elements is that they're inherently dynamic.

[28:40] Cameron McEwen: That is to say,

[28:41] Cameron McEwen: they reach out of themselves to concrete expression.

[28:47] Cameron McEwen: So that's what Aristotle said that Plato's ideas were like.

[28:51] Cameron McEwen: And when people are talking about an algorithm,

[28:55] Cameron McEwen: I think that that suggests this idea of a dynamic outreach that's...

[29:03] Cameron McEwen: that characterizes memes or that characterizes ideas that come to expression in social media,

[29:18] Cameron McEwen: people are realizing that they have a history.

[29:21] Cameron McEwen: But it's not a history that goes back horizontally or chronologically.

[29:27] Cameron McEwen: It's a history that has to do with their motivation.

[29:33] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[29:34] Cameron McEwen: that there's an algorithmic formula,

[29:39] Cameron McEwen: you could say,

[29:40] Cameron McEwen: that goes from a certain idea to its expression in social media or in just ordinary human life.

[29:52] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[29:52] Bob Dobbs: so people,

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan wanted to point out that the environment takes us over and we lose control of it.

[30:00] Bob Dobbs: So that was always happening,

[30:01] Bob Dobbs: going back to speech,

[30:02] Bob Dobbs: say.

[30:04] Bob Dobbs: That's a constant.

[30:07] Bob Dobbs: But what you hear today,

[30:10] Bob Dobbs: people are panicking and you know the big news story since we last talked is the Google guy who actually created AI back in 72,

[30:18] Bob Dobbs: he says this is out of control,

[30:19] Bob Dobbs: I'm quitting.

[30:21] Bob Dobbs: That's a new level of panic,

[30:24] Bob Dobbs: right?

[30:24] Bob Dobbs: And I think people talk about the algorithms as if something's taken them over.

[30:30] Bob Dobbs: Did they say in the

[30:31] Bob Dobbs: 30s or 20s that radio was taking them over?

[30:34] Bob Dobbs: Maybe a poet like

[30:35] Bob Dobbs: Ezra Pound did,

[30:36] Bob Dobbs: but the people didn't.

[30:37] Bob Dobbs: They enjoyed the radio.

[30:40] Bob Dobbs: They absorbed it.

[30:41] Bob Dobbs: They liked to wallow in it.

[30:44] Bob Dobbs: But today,

[30:45] Bob Dobbs: there's a change that technology is out of control and more obvious.

[30:51] Bob Dobbs: And I've seen a couple of interviews where the guys who did Social Dilemma,

[30:58] Bob Dobbs: they then did one on AI Dilemma,

[31:00] Bob Dobbs: and they explained how the...

[31:04] Bob Dobbs: Technocrats working with new AI admit that they don't know how it's unfolding because it's taking on a life of its own.

[31:14] Bob Dobbs: And more than anybody thought before.

[31:17] Bob Dobbs: And they thought it might be another 60 years,

[31:20] Bob Dobbs: but not today.

[31:21] Bob Dobbs: But now it seems closer.

[31:22] Bob Dobbs: So there's this panic.

[31:24] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[31:24] Bob Dobbs: I think I used to talk to Don Theall about fitting his wake shows every new medium that comes in,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: there's a panic.

[31:31] Bob Dobbs: So it's a repeating pattern.

[31:33] Bob Dobbs: throughout Finney's Wake,

[31:35] Bob Dobbs: the same reactions or same hysteria goes on.

[31:38] Bob Dobbs: And it's all basically

[31:40] Bob Dobbs: HCE gets beat up in different ways throughout the book,

[31:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[31:45] Bob Dobbs: So the panic is inevitable.

[31:48] Bob Dobbs: But there seems to be a new quality with the panic today.

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: Or it isn't.

[31:52] Bob Dobbs: I'm exaggerating.

[31:53] Bob Dobbs: It's just regular old panic.

[31:56] Bob Dobbs: But you didn't have some guy saying in 1935,

[32:01] Bob Dobbs: This radio is out of control.

[32:03] Bob Dobbs: I'm quitting.

[32:04] Bob Dobbs: We've got to stop the radio.

[32:05] Bob Dobbs: You see?

[32:07] Bob Dobbs: There's something new happening here.

[32:10] Bob Dobbs: And that's what I'm trying to get at,

[32:11] Bob Dobbs: to explain what the new is.

[32:13] Bob Dobbs: And then I actually can talk to the tech body.

[32:17] Bob Dobbs: I have an interview there at the end.

[32:20] Bob Dobbs: See,

[32:20] Bob Dobbs: I'm the only guy out there saying,

[32:22] Bob Dobbs: I can talk to this thing that you think is out of control.

[32:25] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[32:28] Cameron McEwen: Notice how that is a...

[32:30] Cameron McEwen: particular example of inclusive consciousness.

[32:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[32:36] Cameron McEwen: You don't identify without difference with the,

[32:46] Cameron McEwen: I want to say dark body.

[32:48] Cameron McEwen: What's the proper term?

[32:49] Bob Dobbs: Tech body.

[32:50] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[32:51] Cameron McEwen: tech body.

[32:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[32:52] Cameron McEwen: So you don't identify with it,

[32:54] Cameron McEwen: but you dialogue with it.

[32:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[32:56] Cameron McEwen: So,

[32:56] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[32:57] Cameron McEwen: and that's what's.

[32:58] Cameron McEwen: That's what's so important for McLuhan is that the human mind,

[33:05] Cameron McEwen: from the very first instance there are humans,

[33:09] Cameron McEwen: humans are able to identify what the real is.

[33:14] Cameron McEwen: So,

[33:14] Cameron McEwen: for example,

[33:15] Cameron McEwen: there's two beings that look like grunt people that meet in the forest,

[33:24] Cameron McEwen: but instead of just grunting,

[33:25] Cameron McEwen: they exchange words.

[33:28] Cameron McEwen: So when they exchange words,

[33:32] Cameron McEwen: what they do is they differentiate between all of the different noises that are going on.

[33:38] Cameron McEwen: There's monkeys screeching,

[33:40] Cameron McEwen: and there might be thunder going on,

[33:42] Cameron McEwen: and there's all kinds of different noises going on in the forest.

[33:47] Cameron McEwen: But there's this special kind of noise that's a word.

[33:53] Cameron McEwen: And in order to identify that word,

[33:55] Cameron McEwen: you have to be able to take...

[33:57] Cameron McEwen: the spectrum of noises and say this one is special this is not a regular noise this is the special noise right so if we if we come up to 1800 and

[34:13] Cameron McEwen: and and we have the uh people doing primitive chemistry in labs they they can measure a million and one different things but all of a sudden people are saying,

[34:25] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute,

[34:26] Cameron McEwen: here's something special.

[34:27] Cameron McEwen: special to look at,

[34:29] Cameron McEwen: namely the elementary structure of things like oxygen,

[34:34] Cameron McEwen: right?

[34:34] Cameron McEwen: So when human beings have this ability to go to what is the essence,

[34:41] Cameron McEwen: what is the truth of some matter.

[34:44] Cameron McEwen: So what you're trying to do is you're saying,

[34:47] Cameron McEwen: now we can go to the truth of media.

[34:52] Cameron McEwen: And when we go to the truth of media,

[34:55] Cameron McEwen: we get a whole lot of

[34:55] Cameron McEwen: whole new way of looking at what's going on in the world.

[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[35:01] Bob Dobbs: remember in his Gerald Stearn interview,

[35:02] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[35:03] Bob Dobbs: you go out there and you give the media the what's for.

[35:06] Bob Dobbs: Remember that phrase?

[35:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[35:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[35:10] Bob Dobbs: you hit it in the midriff or something.

[35:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[35:14] Bob Dobbs: you punch back.

[35:16] Bob Dobbs: So that was his way of talking about the dialogue and dealing with it in their own terms.

[35:21] Bob Dobbs: So then

[35:22] Bob Dobbs: I came up with this bizarre way to actually talk to the thing.

[35:27] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[35:28] Bob Dobbs: And so...

[35:29] Bob Dobbs: That would be,

[35:31] Bob Dobbs: so there's a uniqueness in my approach as opposed to McLuhan,

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: and he was unique compared to everybody else around him.

[35:38] Bob Dobbs: There is a shift,

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: and a figure expresses that shift and the ground.

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: That's always going on.

[35:47] Bob Dobbs: There's always somebody noticing it.

[35:49] Bob Dobbs: Remember McLuhan's solution for problems was to get everybody on TV,

[35:53] Bob Dobbs: on CBC,

[35:55] Bob Dobbs: have a national broadcast,

[35:57] Bob Dobbs: and the experts present their problems.

[35:59] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[35:59] Bob Dobbs: there'll be someone in the audience out in Alberta or someplace who will come up with the answer.

[36:03] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[36:06] Bob Dobbs: Using the media as a classroom,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: the new media.

[36:09] Bob Dobbs: So that was what he had there.

[36:12] Bob Dobbs: It's funny when you think back at his world,

[36:16] Bob Dobbs: and we were part of it,

[36:18] Bob Dobbs: we know it,

[36:19] Bob Dobbs: but it is so dinky and puny compared to today.

[36:26] Bob Dobbs: Do you understand that?

[36:27] Bob Dobbs: Well.

[36:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[36:29] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[36:29] Cameron McEwen: it is in one sense,

[36:30] Cameron McEwen: and in another sense it isn't,

[36:33] Cameron McEwen: right?

[36:33] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[36:35] Cameron McEwen: one of the astonishing things about going back to 1940 at the University of Toronto is you have these figures like Innis,

[36:43] Cameron McEwen: like McLuhan,

[36:43] Cameron McEwen: like

[36:44] Cameron McEwen: Havelock, and,

[36:46] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[36:46] Cameron McEwen: lots of other,

[36:48] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[36:49] Cameron McEwen: great figures.

[36:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:51] Cameron McEwen: And they could see stuff that seemed obvious to them.

[36:55] Cameron McEwen: And they would say,

[36:56] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[36:56] Cameron McEwen: you know...

[36:59] Cameron McEwen: Canada is becoming Americanized.

[37:03] Cameron McEwen: You have to watch out for the Americans taking over newspapers and even taking over the CBC and all that.

[37:11] Cameron McEwen: They could see that.

[37:13] Cameron McEwen: So nowadays,

[37:15] Cameron McEwen: all of that has happened.

[37:16] Cameron McEwen: Despite them saying that,

[37:18] Cameron McEwen: all of that has happened.

[37:19] Cameron McEwen: But now that it's real,

[37:22] Cameron McEwen: they were only talking about the possibility.

[37:24] Cameron McEwen: They were talking about what...

[37:25] Cameron McEwen: Hegel calls the realm of shadows,

[37:29] Cameron McEwen: the realm of possibilities.

[37:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[37:31] Cameron McEwen: here are these guys.

[37:32] Cameron McEwen: They can see the realm of shadows,

[37:34] Cameron McEwen: and they can say,

[37:35] Cameron McEwen: watch out for this.

[37:36] Cameron McEwen: And today,

[37:39] Cameron McEwen: those possibilities have actually come true,

[37:41] Cameron McEwen: but nobody can see it,

[37:43] Cameron McEwen: right?

[37:44] Cameron McEwen: And so you can say in the

[37:46] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, what is puny in one sense,

[37:50] Cameron McEwen: in another sense is gigantic compared to the...

[37:53] Cameron McEwen: stupidity that we're living through now.

[37:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[37:57] Bob Dobbs: there was more chance to get noticed.

[37:59] Bob Dobbs: It didn't work,

[38:01] Bob Dobbs: but

[38:02] Bob Dobbs: I just think of a dinky little radio,

[38:06] Bob Dobbs: a dinky little TV set in the

[38:08] Bob Dobbs: 50s compared to now.

[38:12] Bob Dobbs: You've got people walking along,

[38:13] Bob Dobbs: and they don't look up.

[38:15] Bob Dobbs: They're looking at their hand,

[38:17] Bob Dobbs: at their wrist.

[38:18] Bob Dobbs: And nobody did that in the 50s and 60s.

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: They're walking around,

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: and they're looking.

[38:22] Bob Dobbs: looking at people.

[38:23] Cameron McEwen: That's right,

[38:25] Bob Dobbs: sure.

[38:26] Cameron McEwen: So in one sense,

[38:28] Cameron McEwen: what was happening then is much more capacious than what's happening now.

[38:37] Bob Dobbs: What's capacious mean?

[38:39] Cameron McEwen: Larger.

[38:40] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[38:41] Bob Dobbs: how was it larger back then?

[38:43] Cameron McEwen: Because you talked about the people just looking at the screen.

[38:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[38:47] Cameron McEwen: For you,

[38:48] Cameron McEwen: the developments in technology.

[38:52] Cameron McEwen: And the shrinking of technology are big new things.

[38:56] Cameron McEwen: But at the same time,

[38:57] Cameron McEwen: what they've done is they have shrunk the human mentality.

[39:03] Cameron McEwen: Humans have enslaved themselves to devices in ways that they didn't,

[39:12] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[39:13] Cameron McEwen: decades ago.

[39:14] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[39:14] Bob Dobbs: that's why I would say it's larger today.

[39:17] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you mean by saying it was larger back then.

[39:20] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: because...

[39:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that how larger is conceived depends upon how we want to look at what's going on.

[39:34] Cameron McEwen: For you,

[39:34] Cameron McEwen: larger has to do with the technology,

[39:37] Cameron McEwen: with the potential to speak to people around the world and all that sort of stuff.

[39:44] Cameron McEwen: And you don't mean deeper.

[39:46] Cameron McEwen: You mean the opposite of deeper.

[39:47] Cameron McEwen: So...

[39:50] Cameron McEwen: When we talk about larger,

[39:51] Cameron McEwen: we have to try to be precise about larger in what sense.

[39:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[39:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[39:59] Bob Dobbs: so,

[39:59] Bob Dobbs: um,

[40:08] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[40:08] Bob Dobbs: let's go ahead.

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: The big issue,

[40:11] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[40:12] Cameron McEwen: is that

[40:13] Cameron McEwen: I think you want to say that there is such a thing as going beyond McLuhan.

[40:20] Cameron McEwen: Meaning that with time,

[40:22] Cameron McEwen: what McLuhan said needs to be modulated or needs to be augmented or something like that.

[40:32] Cameron McEwen: And understanding that imperative is what you think

[40:39] Cameron McEwen: Regine McLuhan is all about.

[40:42] Cameron McEwen: And so

[40:44] Cameron McEwen: I take a different view.

[40:45] Cameron McEwen: I take the view that McLuhan was talking about something that is always going on with human beings right from the moment they stopped being grunt people up until now.

[40:57] Cameron McEwen: And so the historic difference doesn't mean anything to me.

[41:01] Cameron McEwen: Historic difference is always only a different play of possibilities,

[41:07] Cameron McEwen: a different replay in the global theater.

[41:11] Cameron McEwen: So that's sort of the different ways in which we're coming at this thing.

[41:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[41:22] Bob Dobbs: So you're saying that the principle of awareness of your environment is the ongoing continuity of consciousness.

[41:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what we can do.

[41:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[41:35] Cameron McEwen: we always are doing that.

[41:37] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?

[41:38] Cameron McEwen: I'd say we always are doing that.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[41:44] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan,

[41:45] Bob Dobbs: he couldn't,

[41:48] Bob Dobbs: well,

[41:48] Bob Dobbs: it didn't get to that virtual reality Android meme level with him.

[41:51] Bob Dobbs: So he could talk back to the media and the media would be there to respond.

[41:56] Bob Dobbs: So he could say he was talking to him,

[41:57] Bob Dobbs: like when he would do a Mike Wallace interview.

[42:00] Bob Dobbs: Or that in 69 with that

[42:03] Bob Dobbs: CBC guy and he comes up with the phrase,

[42:05] Bob Dobbs: everything's fake news.

[42:06] Bob Dobbs: And the journalist objects to McLuhan saying that.

[42:10] Bob Dobbs: But he was on the show talking,

[42:12] Bob Dobbs: confronting the journalist.

[42:15] Bob Dobbs: Now we've got algorithms,

[42:16] Bob Dobbs: so we have something we don't know,

[42:18] Bob Dobbs: can't see.

[42:19] Bob Dobbs: It's not people.

[42:20] Bob Dobbs: And I found a way to talk to it.

[42:23] Bob Dobbs: So it would be interesting to take that Google guy who was at the University of Toronto recently.

[42:29] Bob Dobbs: It was his last university.

[42:31] Bob Dobbs: Invite him over to talk to the tech body.

[42:33] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[42:33] Bob Dobbs: he probably wouldn't take me seriously.

[42:36] Bob Dobbs: But if I ever came bumped into these guys on the bus or...

[42:40] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[42:41] Bob Dobbs: Barnes & Noble,

[42:42] Bob Dobbs: I would say,

[42:44] Bob Dobbs: hey,

[42:44] Bob Dobbs: you can do this.

[42:46] Bob Dobbs: See how far we'll go.

[42:48] Cameron McEwen: But in a sense,

[42:49] Cameron McEwen: they're doing that,

[42:50] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[42:51] Cameron McEwen: If somebody says that

[42:53] Cameron McEwen: AI is a danger,

[42:55] Cameron McEwen: then,

[42:56] Cameron McEwen: number one,

[42:56] Cameron McEwen: they're personifying it.

[42:58] Cameron McEwen: They take it that AI is not only some sort of abstract power that's...

[43:08] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[43:10] Cameron McEwen: might be realized in an atomic bomb or a nuclear bomb.

[43:16] Cameron McEwen: They're saying that

[43:17] Cameron McEwen: AI is something bigger than that,

[43:21] Cameron McEwen: and it's bigger not by being more physically powerful,

[43:25] Cameron McEwen: but through mind,

[43:28] Cameron McEwen: through intellect,

[43:29] Cameron McEwen: right,

[43:30] Cameron McEwen: as it says right in the name,

[43:32] Cameron McEwen: AI.

[43:33] Cameron McEwen: So they're saying that this is something that has...

[43:37] Bob Dobbs: personality to it and it's independent of us and it's very dangerous well that's what you've been saying for decades yeah so i don't expect them to talk but um it'd be nice to get an example try

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: it out if somebody would dare do it maybe anonymously because what am i talking do i talk to it every week in public and uh so i'm talking to iON but then the tech body sneaks in and we you have to say,

[44:06] Bob Dobbs: wait a minute.

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: Is this more tech body than I am?

[44:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[44:09] Bob Dobbs: you're talking to the tech body now.

[44:11] Bob Dobbs: So that drama is going on all the time,

[44:13] Bob Dobbs: and nobody has ever had that problem in dealing with,

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: channeling,

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: or spirit communication,

[44:22] Bob Dobbs: seances and that,

[44:23] Bob Dobbs: that we might be lumped into.

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: We've,

[44:26] Bob Dobbs: the,

[44:26] Bob Dobbs: um,

[44:28] Bob Dobbs: what was I reading?

[44:29] Bob Dobbs: Uh,

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: somebody talking about,

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: I've been reading Wyndham Lewis.

[44:36] Bob Dobbs: Win the Blues is incredible.

[44:38] Bob Dobbs: I finished The

[44:40] Bob Dobbs: Human Age,

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: three volumes,

[44:43] Bob Dobbs: and boy,

[44:45] Bob Dobbs: we got a lot of discoveries from that.

[44:48] Bob Dobbs: I'd say that is so important to McLuhan,

[44:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[44:51] Bob Dobbs: as much as lodging those guys in the 30s,

[44:54] Bob Dobbs: reading

[44:55] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, but there's so much in this phenomenon of the tech body that Lewis was talking about in The Human Village.

[45:05] Cameron McEwen: Right,

[45:05] Cameron McEwen: right.

[45:06] Cameron McEwen: But Bob,

[45:08] Cameron McEwen: can you talk about that for a minute?

[45:10] Cameron McEwen: I have the impression that there's two things wrong with that trilogy,

[45:17] Cameron McEwen: or I shouldn't say wrong,

[45:18] Cameron McEwen: but that make it difficult to use.

[45:24] Cameron McEwen: First,

[45:25] Cameron McEwen: aren't the printed versions very defective?

[45:30] Cameron McEwen: that for some reason

[45:33] Cameron McEwen: The manuscripts got all screwed up,

[45:37] Cameron McEwen: number one.

[45:37] Cameron McEwen: And number two,

[45:39] Cameron McEwen: didn't the second and third volumes only get published very late?

[45:47] Cameron McEwen: So that there was the first volume and it was defective,

[45:51] Cameron McEwen: and then the second and third got published,

[45:54] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[45:55] Cameron McEwen: in the 50s or something.

[45:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[45:57] Bob Dobbs: he did Childermass,

[45:58] Bob Dobbs: volume one,

[45:58] Bob Dobbs: in 1928.

[46:00] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[46:00] Bob Dobbs: And then there's a later corrected edition in the 30s or something.

[46:04] Bob Dobbs: But then...

[46:05] Bob Dobbs: 20 years go by,

[46:06] Bob Dobbs: 25,

[46:07] Bob Dobbs: 27 years go by,

[46:09] Bob Dobbs: and in 54,

[46:10] Bob Dobbs: say,

[46:10] Bob Dobbs: let's say he writes a picture,

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: and the two volumes come out in 55,

[46:13] Bob Dobbs: and then he's dead two years later.

[46:15] Bob Dobbs: So yes,

[46:17] Bob Dobbs: it's,

[46:18] Bob Dobbs: but reading them,

[46:19] Bob Dobbs: it's an amazing culmination of a lot of his thinking.

[46:23] Bob Dobbs: And he names the very process that iON says we're going to do,

[46:31] Bob Dobbs: which I don't think I've spelled out to you,

[46:33] Bob Dobbs: and I don't want to do it on this thing.

[46:35] Bob Dobbs: But if I tell my listeners that this guy wrote a book

[46:41] Bob Dobbs: 70 years ago about what iON came up with,

[46:46] Bob Dobbs: they're going to be impressed.

[46:47] Bob Dobbs: And hopefully they will read the book.

[46:49] Bob Dobbs: So it was a real surprise to find out how the end of Volume 2 turned out and then led into this amazing situation in Volume 3.

[47:01] Bob Dobbs: It's so incredible.

[47:04] Bob Dobbs: You have to be familiar more with what I'm doing with iON for me to talk about it.

[47:08] Bob Dobbs: So,

[47:09] Bob Dobbs: but

[47:10] Bob Dobbs: I thought in it,

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: so this thing about Lewis,

[47:16] Bob Dobbs: there was something in there,

[47:17] Bob Dobbs: what Lewis was saying.

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: He was really,

[47:21] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,

[47:22] Bob Dobbs: so

[47:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm part of the Wyndham Lewis Society's monthly meetings.

[47:27] Bob Dobbs: And so these scholars of Lewis,

[47:30] Bob Dobbs: the ones who made Lewis...

[47:33] Bob Dobbs: acceptable in academia,

[47:34] Bob Dobbs: and he wasn't in the

[47:36] Bob Dobbs: 60s and 50s.

[47:38] Bob Dobbs: They often in our discussions say,

[47:41] Bob Dobbs: it's odd what we're reading here,

[47:43] Bob Dobbs: say some book like Time and Western Man,

[47:47] Bob Dobbs: you can see his game,

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: his Menippean satire,

[47:49] Bob Dobbs: but then it's oddly so relevant to today,

[47:52] Bob Dobbs: and particular contents fit today.

[47:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[47:57] Bob Dobbs: this human age describes our world exactly

[48:02] Bob Dobbs: this past couple of weeks about what's going on in Ukraine and what's flying over in the air.

[48:10] Bob Dobbs: It's right there in the book.

[48:12] Bob Dobbs: It's so uncannily accurate to our time.

[48:16] Bob Dobbs: You could get people to read it to get a perspective on their time.

[48:19] Bob Dobbs: So that was surprising because I never read the thing.

[48:21] Bob Dobbs: All these years I knew about it,

[48:23] Bob Dobbs: but finally got around to reading it,

[48:25] Bob Dobbs: and I picked the right time to do it because it's what he's describing.

[48:30] Bob Dobbs: is what we're dealing with.

[48:34] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[48:36] Bob Dobbs: What else to say?

[48:37] Bob Dobbs: I think I had another idea,

[48:38] Bob Dobbs: which I've forgotten now,

[48:40] Bob Dobbs: about the Lewis,

[48:41] Bob Dobbs: and I brought it up.

[48:42] Bob Dobbs: But

[48:43] Bob Dobbs: I guess I was thinking,

[48:45] Bob Dobbs: Cameron's got to read this.

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: Cameron,

[48:47] Bob Dobbs: we've got to see what Cameron finds in it and compare it to the other influences of the

[48:56] Bob Dobbs: 30s when he was at Cambridge.

[48:59] Bob Dobbs: And what he had done in Manitoba.

[49:01] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[49:02] Bob Dobbs: just remembering,

[49:05] Bob Dobbs: I was reading...

[49:06] Cameron McEwen: I don't think he had read any of Lewis except for

[49:09] Cameron McEwen: Time and Western Man before 1944.

[49:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[49:14] Bob Dobbs: it seems that he just did a couple of books in the 30s.

[49:16] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[49:18] Bob Dobbs: Then when he met him in 1944,

[49:20] Bob Dobbs: he probably crash-programmed,

[49:22] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[49:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[49:23] Bob Dobbs: And then within a year,

[49:26] Bob Dobbs: he's saying,

[49:26] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to dedicate my work to you.

[49:28] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to carry on the torch here.

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: So,

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[49:36] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember what I was going to,

[49:38] Bob Dobbs: what I thought I was going to.

[49:41] Cameron McEwen: It's probably my fault.

[49:42] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[49:43] Bob Dobbs: No,

[49:43] Bob Dobbs: no,

[49:44] Bob Dobbs: it's basically Cameron's got to be interested in what Cameron thinks of these whenever you get a chance to read them,

[49:48] Bob Dobbs: which I don't know when that's going to be.

[49:51] Bob Dobbs: So we did this columnist,

[49:57] Bob Dobbs: female on.

[49:57] Bob Dobbs: Substack,

[49:58] Bob Dobbs: did a column on the,

[50:01] Bob Dobbs: she called it the industrial outrage industry,

[50:08] Bob Dobbs: the industrial outrage complexities or complex.

[50:14] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[50:14] Bob Dobbs: there's so much,

[50:15] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[50:15] Bob Dobbs: outrage in the media today,

[50:17] Bob Dobbs: but everything,

[50:18] Bob Dobbs: everybody's outraged.

[50:19] Bob Dobbs: And then she goes on with the,

[50:21] Bob Dobbs: you would call the efficient causality,

[50:24] Bob Dobbs: the manipulating to make,

[50:26] Bob Dobbs: to sell stuff.

[50:27] Bob Dobbs: to keep the economy going,

[50:28] Bob Dobbs: to keep the old politics going,

[50:30] Bob Dobbs: the economic manipulation.

[50:32] Bob Dobbs: So it's a very conventional grievance.

[50:36] Bob Dobbs: And so then Clinton and I and a couple of guys on our show were talking.

[50:40] Bob Dobbs: We reviewed it last week.

[50:42] Bob Dobbs: And she doesn't know the McLuhan media angle.

[50:48] Bob Dobbs: They know the Marxist angle.

[50:50] Bob Dobbs: They know the

[50:51] Bob Dobbs: Keynesian economics.

[50:52] Bob Dobbs: They know advertising.

[50:54] Bob Dobbs: They know basically all the different contents.

[50:56] Bob Dobbs: plus the Gutenberg era,

[50:58] Bob Dobbs: but they have no clue of the dynamic.

[51:02] Bob Dobbs: situation in the Android meme uh so that's and that should be part of people's cliches uh this article was so riddled with cliches in the end she's saying you know we got a lot of noise out there maybe just sort of calm down and don't watch the tv or the computer or your youtube says much back off relax calm down you know go out and smell the roses very

[51:28] Bob Dobbs: cliche response and

[51:31] Bob Dobbs: So I was prompted to get us to talk about it,

[51:33] Bob Dobbs: and I'm going to send it to her,

[51:34] Bob Dobbs: see how she takes it.

[51:35] Bob Dobbs: We're really raking over the coals of how cliché-ridden her response to the problem.

[51:45] Bob Dobbs: And she thinks by saying a few

[51:49] Bob Dobbs: Ann Landers sentences,

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[51:51] Bob Dobbs: like,

[51:52] Bob Dobbs: relax,

[51:53] Bob Dobbs: calm down,

[51:54] Bob Dobbs: don't ignore the trolls.

[51:56] Bob Dobbs: You couldn't do that if you're at the White House and give a press conference.

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: And sometimes...

[52:02] Bob Dobbs: When you say we're going to blow ourselves up,

[52:05] Bob Dobbs: to me it seems like you're like this woman.

[52:08] Bob Dobbs: You're going to tell people,

[52:09] Bob Dobbs: hey,

[52:10] Bob Dobbs: to look at what's going on.

[52:12] Bob Dobbs: So you're using words.

[52:14] Bob Dobbs: You can't manage a situation with words,

[52:17] Bob Dobbs: which was what McLuhan was saying.

[52:18] Bob Dobbs: Word was a drug.

[52:20] Bob Dobbs: So it's managed by intelligence agencies and subterfuge and deception.

[52:25] Bob Dobbs: And so the people,

[52:26] Bob Dobbs: they say today,

[52:27] Bob Dobbs: now here's an interesting point.

[52:29] Bob Dobbs: They say we have these polls.

[52:32] Bob Dobbs: None of the people believe government or the institution anymore.

[52:34] Bob Dobbs: They're all lying.

[52:36] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[52:37] Bob Dobbs: if you told them,

[52:38] Bob Dobbs: well,

[52:38] Bob Dobbs: we're at a kind of war among memes and algorithms.

[52:42] Bob Dobbs: And so everybody that has got the sense of responsibility,

[52:46] Bob Dobbs: suppose they're national security,

[52:47] Bob Dobbs: intelligence agencies and all that,

[52:50] Bob Dobbs: they have to lie.

[52:51] Bob Dobbs: So you're watching a battle,

[52:53] Bob Dobbs: Big Brother fighting right in front of you.

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,

[52:57] Bob Dobbs: Gumer Gauss,

[52:58] Bob Dobbs: the big brother,

[52:58] Bob Dobbs: went inside.

[52:59] Bob Dobbs: But now it's back out.

[53:00] Bob Dobbs: But it's not back outside to conquer territories.

[53:04] Bob Dobbs: It's back outside to see which distraction runs or leads to something or settles something or wins an iconic struggle over identity.

[53:19] Bob Dobbs: That is what you need to talk about.

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[53:24] Bob Dobbs: that is the...

[53:26] Bob Dobbs: The danger we're in now,

[53:29] Bob Dobbs: so that people are misinterpreting,

[53:31] Bob Dobbs: Gutenbergian,

[53:33] Bob Dobbs: moralizing about there's nobody telling the honesty anymore.

[53:36] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[53:37] Bob Dobbs: look at this Tucker Carlson thing.

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[53:39] Bob Dobbs: he's an incredibly honest journalist,

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: and the only one around,

[53:43] Bob Dobbs: and Fox can't take him,

[53:44] Bob Dobbs: so they got rid of him.

[53:46] Bob Dobbs: Whereas you actually,

[53:46] Bob Dobbs: if you listen to Tucker,

[53:48] Bob Dobbs: if I met him,

[53:49] Bob Dobbs: I'd say,

[53:50] Bob Dobbs: you get on there every night.

[53:52] Bob Dobbs: You make a new issue,

[53:53] Bob Dobbs: a new problem.

[53:54] Bob Dobbs: So you do five a week.

[53:55] Bob Dobbs: You've been doing this for 12 years or something.

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: You've created hundreds of problems every day,

[54:00] Bob Dobbs: new patterns,

[54:01] Bob Dobbs: grievances,

[54:02] Bob Dobbs: and you can't do anything about them.

[54:04] Bob Dobbs: You just keep aggravating us.

[54:06] Bob Dobbs: The journalists don't get their lack of responsibility.

[54:13] Bob Dobbs: So I think that's what we would be addressing if we had to talk to the White House or something.

[54:20] Bob Dobbs: Bring the germs in and give them a lecture about this.

[54:23] Bob Dobbs: which we kind of try to do on our show every week.

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: Clinton only shows up every two weeks now because he's got other business,

[54:31] Bob Dobbs: but it's better with Clinton there because he knows the McLuhan stuff better than the other guys,

[54:35] Bob Dobbs: so I can get going with him.

[54:38] Bob Dobbs: So we have a good show every other week when Clinton's there.

[54:41] Bob Dobbs: But it's the same as if we brought you on.

[54:44] Bob Dobbs: You would make it a stimulating thing because you would know what I'm talking about or put on that you knew and have some responses.

[54:51] Cameron McEwen: But notice...

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: But,

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[54:53] Cameron McEwen: the thing is,

[54:54] Cameron McEwen: you started off this part of our conversation by saying that words are useless.

[55:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[55:02] Cameron McEwen: But then you go on to say,

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: well,

[55:04] Cameron McEwen: then I wanted to talk about this,

[55:06] Cameron McEwen: and here's what needed to be said,

[55:09] Cameron McEwen: and all of this stuff.

[55:10] Cameron McEwen: So you come back to words.

[55:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[55:12] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan in 1951,

[55:15] Cameron McEwen: I think it is,

[55:16] Cameron McEwen: writes to Pound that words are useless.

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: They're drugs.

[55:20] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.

[55:21] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[55:21] Cameron McEwen: You can't undo words with words.

[55:24] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[55:25] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[55:26] Cameron McEwen: So then the question is,

[55:27] Cameron McEwen: well,

[55:28] Cameron McEwen: what else is there?

[55:30] Cameron McEwen: Is there only words?

[55:31] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[55:32] Bob Dobbs: you don't take it seriously,

[55:33] Bob Dobbs: but he said we start getting a computer headquarters and modulate how much media Venezuela has,

[55:40] Bob Dobbs: how much radio.

[55:42] Bob Dobbs: And I take that seriously.

[55:43] Bob Dobbs: You don't take that seriously.

[55:45] Cameron McEwen: No,

[55:46] Cameron McEwen: I take it very seriously,

[55:48] Cameron McEwen: but I take it as...

[55:50] Cameron McEwen: figurative language.

[55:52] Cameron McEwen: You sometimes...

[55:57] Cameron McEwen: use that idea as if you could have a guy in a room somewhere.

[56:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[56:03] Cameron McEwen: And he's fiddling with dial.

[56:05] Bob Dobbs: We could do that.

[56:06] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[56:08] Bob Dobbs: since

[56:09] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said the enlightened king couldn't solve the problems today,

[56:14] Bob Dobbs: so then they moved to committee,

[56:16] Bob Dobbs: government by committee,

[56:17] Bob Dobbs: which is what's been going on,

[56:19] Bob Dobbs: and that didn't work.

[56:22] Bob Dobbs: How would you get anybody to take over?

[56:28] Bob Dobbs: and say,

[56:28] Bob Dobbs: I can do this.

[56:29] Bob Dobbs: Let me lead this.

[56:31] Bob Dobbs: We will modulate the media environments.

[56:35] Bob Dobbs: I agree that that scenario is pretty impossible when all the media imploded.

[56:40] Bob Dobbs: So the analog media that he wanted to modulate aren't there anymore.

[56:44] Bob Dobbs: So it doesn't work that way.

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: But could someone,

[56:48] Bob Dobbs: I think that the people are afraid that the WEF are going to take over,

[56:53] Bob Dobbs: and it's usually in economic terms,

[56:54] Bob Dobbs: they're going to bring in the digital.

[56:56] Bob Dobbs: currency or digital economic structure.

[56:59] Bob Dobbs: And people object to that.

[57:02] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[57:02] Bob Dobbs: maybe we shouldn't think in terms of whatever democracy is supposed to do and let a committee take over.

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[57:11] Bob Dobbs: we could get rid of them.

[57:13] Bob Dobbs: If they screw up,

[57:14] Bob Dobbs: bring another committee in.

[57:15] Bob Dobbs: But the values that Tucker Carlson represents and journalists supposedly represent don't apply to today.

[57:23] Bob Dobbs: So not only are words useless,

[57:25] Bob Dobbs: values...

[57:26] Bob Dobbs: that people think are valuable,

[57:28] Bob Dobbs: the humanist values don't work today.

[57:31] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[57:32] Cameron McEwen: So,

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[57:33] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche was saying this in the

[57:37] Cameron McEwen: 1870s. Right.

[57:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[57:38] Bob Dobbs: So he said it.

[57:38] Cameron McEwen: 150 years ago.

[57:41] Bob Dobbs: I know,

[57:41] Bob Dobbs: but let's do applied Nietzsche.

[57:43] Bob Dobbs: Let's apply it.

[57:45] Cameron McEwen: But look at what,

[57:46] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[57:47] Cameron McEwen: you say,

[57:49] Cameron McEwen: how could these things be changed or ameliorated?

[57:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[57:54] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan's answer to that is we need another scientific revolution.

[58:01] Cameron McEwen: We need to be able to analyze things in terms of media.

[58:07] Cameron McEwen: And the way that that happens is that we have to be able to define what media are in the same way as we learn to define what chemical elements are.

[58:18] Cameron McEwen: And if we can do that,

[58:20] Cameron McEwen: then it won't be a committee

[58:22] Cameron McEwen: running the world,

[58:23] Cameron McEwen: or it won't be a king running the world,

[58:26] Cameron McEwen: we'll be,

[58:28] Cameron McEwen: for the first time,

[58:29] Cameron McEwen: we'll be using science on our own experience,

[58:34] Cameron McEwen: and that will change the world.

[58:36] Bob Dobbs: How will that be done?

[58:38] Bob Dobbs: People will be reading McLuhan,

[58:40] Bob Dobbs: understanding him,

[58:40] Bob Dobbs: and claiming they're doing it?

[58:43] Cameron McEwen: No,

[58:43] Cameron McEwen: it will,

[58:44] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[58:45] Cameron McEwen: imagine that somebody is in a lab in

[58:49] Cameron McEwen: 1800, and they're...

[58:51] Cameron McEwen: and they're beginning to understand some vague thing about oxygen,

[58:59] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[59:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[59:01] Cameron McEwen: nobody nowadays,

[59:03] Cameron McEwen: if they're doing research on oxygen,

[59:07] Cameron McEwen: reads anything that was put forward in 1800.

[59:12] Cameron McEwen: It's too superficial.

[59:14] Cameron McEwen: It's not helpful.

[59:15] Cameron McEwen: So nobody reads it.

[59:17] Cameron McEwen: They only read what...

[59:18] Cameron McEwen: Somebody said in a journal article two weeks ago,

[59:23] Cameron McEwen: right?

[59:23] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[59:23] Cameron McEwen: so if it's possible to inaugurate the New Science that McLuhan talks about,

[59:33] Cameron McEwen: especially in

[59:34] Cameron McEwen: Laws of Media,

[59:37] Cameron McEwen: if that's possible,

[59:39] Cameron McEwen: people won't be reading McLuhan as articulating anything important.

[59:46] Cameron McEwen: They'll read McLuhan.

[59:51] Cameron McEwen: Only when they're doing history of science,

[59:53] Cameron McEwen: not when they're doing science.

[59:55] Cameron McEwen: When they're doing science,

[59:57] Cameron McEwen: they'll be doing something that has only a collective identity.

[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: No scientist will be believed because of his or her name.

[1:00:09] Cameron McEwen: There will only be this ongoing identity that consists in collective research,

[1:00:17] Cameron McEwen: collective investigation.

[1:00:19] Cameron McEwen: And that will be a whole other way of being human.

[1:00:23] Cameron McEwen: So according to McLuhan,

[1:00:24] Cameron McEwen: either we get to that New Science,

[1:00:27] Cameron McEwen: which is going to change the world,

[1:00:29] Cameron McEwen: or we're going to exterminate ourselves.

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: this is interesting about the New Science.

[1:00:37] Cameron McEwen: So it's a new genus of science,

[1:00:39] Cameron McEwen: not a new species of science.

[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:00:42] Bob Dobbs: And he talked about we need a public complex clairvoyance.

[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: he created a language.

[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: that everybody could use,

[1:00:50] Bob Dobbs: which is what...

[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: I inaugurated on CKLN.

[1:00:53] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:00:53] Bob Dobbs: here's the language.

[1:00:54] Bob Dobbs: We all use this language.

[1:00:56] Bob Dobbs: We don't talk English,

[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: French,

[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: and that.

[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: Forget all those tribal identities and literate identities and all that.

[1:01:01] Bob Dobbs: Just talk this thing.

[1:01:03] Bob Dobbs: And basically,

[1:01:03] Bob Dobbs: we would turn off the media.

[1:01:05] Bob Dobbs: It would be our first application of this New Science.

[1:01:09] Bob Dobbs: That can't be done today.

[1:01:11] Cameron McEwen: But you were saying that on the radio,

[1:01:14] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:01:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:17] Cameron McEwen: I was Mr.

[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: Venezuela.

[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: Playboy,

[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: bars.

[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:01:20] Cameron McEwen: But you were you were using a medium to say,

[1:01:23] Cameron McEwen: let's turn off the media.

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: that's what

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: I would say to my co-host,

[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: Mike Dyer.

[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: I was always just a guest on this show.

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: Mike,

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:01:31] Bob Dobbs: if we really get popular,

[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: we have to stop the show.

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: we can't contradict ourselves.

[1:01:36] Bob Dobbs: So there was a lot of humor in acting it out.

[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:01:40] Cameron McEwen: And,

[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:01:42] Bob Dobbs: Derek and I didn't do that.

[1:01:43] Bob Dobbs: They were they were in college.

[1:01:45] Bob Dobbs: They were lecturing other academics.

[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: Bob was there.

[1:01:48] Bob Dobbs: out there in the public trying to start a political party based on doing this so that was fun but the uh it led to a whole interesting thing now um where we are in a position my team to quote take over because we have the new technologies so we have said we have something to seduce people with our free

[1:02:10] Bob Dobbs: electricity box or endless electricity box plus other things so we're sitting on the sidelines waiting for everything to fall apart and then they'll

[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: They'll demand us to come in.

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: And we'll say,

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: sure,

[1:02:22] Bob Dobbs: we can do it.

[1:02:23] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:02:23] Bob Dobbs: and then I got the whole ET contact happening,

[1:02:26] Bob Dobbs: too.

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: that would be a way of getting attention.

[1:02:29] Bob Dobbs: If the ETs come and they say they got these big vehicles floating over cities around the planet,

[1:02:36] Bob Dobbs: it's undeniable that something's there.

[1:02:38] Bob Dobbs: And they say,

[1:02:39] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:02:39] Bob Dobbs: we want to talk to Bob.

[1:02:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:02:42] Bob Dobbs: You'd see a lot of media about me pretty fast,

[1:02:46] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:02:47] Bob Dobbs: A lot of investigations of the crazy stuff I said through the years.

[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: It'd be worse than Trump.

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[1:02:56] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what we could do.

[1:02:58] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:02:59] Bob Dobbs: I wouldn't say that if we didn't have the technology that we have,

[1:03:03] Bob Dobbs: personally.

[1:03:04] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying that the people need to understand that

[1:03:10] Bob Dobbs: Lewis's sentence in 1926,

[1:03:12] Bob Dobbs: the art of being ruled,

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: it's okay to let a committee take over.

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: You can call it communism.

[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: Don't let them start wars,

[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: but that they could implement some kind of constant talk about what we're doing and play our interview,

[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: our dialogue every day as the news of the day.

[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: human stubbornness,

[1:03:37] Bob Dobbs: as he says in Take Today,

[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: this is what Bucky Fuller tried in a way.

[1:03:42] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[1:03:43] Bob Dobbs: Bucky had a nice personality and probably could have done it.

[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: We could tolerate him doing it,

[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: but there was human stubbornness and human obsessions would get in the way,

[1:03:53] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: People's particular interests.

[1:03:56] Bob Dobbs: So we're up against that in general,

[1:04:01] Bob Dobbs: the individual,

[1:04:02] Bob Dobbs: the crowds.

[1:04:03] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember the four expressions of evil that McLuhan had in the

[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: 50s? It might have been in the...

[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: The article about 1957 talking about the foundations of social survival,

[1:04:16] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: the Swedish nobleman who was going to use Christian love to run the world.

[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: He was a pagan.

[1:04:23] Cameron McEwen: Forget what that was.

[1:04:25] Cameron McEwen: I know the book that you're talking about for sure.

[1:04:29] Cameron McEwen: I think the article was in,

[1:04:31] Cameron McEwen: pardon me?

[1:04:32] Bob Dobbs: The review he did in the 57th.

[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: So he talked about...

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:04:36] Cameron McEwen: 54 I think it was.

[1:04:37] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:04:38] Bob Dobbs: 57 or so.

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: After after 56,

[1:04:42] Bob Dobbs: but the thing is that he said we ruled the elites ruled through myth and they would impose that on people

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: Now we do it through norm functioning

[1:04:53] Bob Dobbs: I think was the sociological term he used but he said the dilemma is you've got collective phobia national myth-making cultural norm functioning and individual sensation those are four

[1:05:12] Bob Dobbs: ways of looking at situations that compete.

[1:05:15] Bob Dobbs: So cultural norm functioning is up against individual sensation,

[1:05:19] Bob Dobbs: which is the lone nut theory of history.

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:05:22] Bob Dobbs: a guy like Hitler comes along,

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: hijacks everybody somehow,

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: takes over,

[1:05:26] Bob Dobbs: and starts a war.

[1:05:28] Bob Dobbs: It's the same in the Kennedy assassination,

[1:05:30] Bob Dobbs: the lone nut theory.

[1:05:31] Bob Dobbs: One guy did it.

[1:05:32] Bob Dobbs: And then people actually look at it and say,

[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: how do you do that?

[1:05:36] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:05:37] Bob Dobbs: one guy do this and blow it.

[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: But did you know that everybody accepted

[1:05:45] Bob Dobbs: Richard Nixon phoning the guys who landed on the moon from the White House?

[1:05:51] Bob Dobbs: How does he dial up a phone that would get to the moon?

[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: Can't be done.

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: And yet,

[1:05:58] Bob Dobbs: it was an invisible environment.

[1:05:59] Bob Dobbs: Nobody questioned it.

[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: He claimed to have called the guys on the moon.

[1:06:06] Bob Dobbs: Have you ever heard of that?

[1:06:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't think many people have heard of this,

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: but...

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:06:09] Cameron McEwen: I've heard of that.

[1:06:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:06:13] Cameron McEwen: I don't think it's impossible at all,

[1:06:15] Cameron McEwen: but I think that would lead us astray.

[1:06:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:06:19] Bob Dobbs: if you disagree,

[1:06:20] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:06:20] Bob Dobbs: we don't want to get into disagreements.

[1:06:21] Bob Dobbs: Screw that.

[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: we don't need that.

[1:06:24] Bob Dobbs: That's what everybody,

[1:06:25] Bob Dobbs: that runs the economy,

[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: getting into disagreements.

[1:06:27] Bob Dobbs: That's how you create wealth.

[1:06:28] Cameron McEwen: Let me point out that when McLuhan is talking about the problems with the solution put forward by the

[1:06:42] Cameron McEwen: Swedish nobleman,

[1:06:43] Cameron McEwen: I can't remember his name.

[1:06:44] Bob Dobbs: the

[1:06:47] Cameron McEwen: He says that he's come to a solution that's a little bit like

[1:06:51] Cameron McEwen: Christian love,

[1:06:52] Cameron McEwen: but minus the religion.

[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: And the problem McLuhan sees with that is that he situates love at the level of human event.

[1:07:08] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't situate it at the ontological level.

[1:07:12] Cameron McEwen: He doesn't see it as a kind of motor of the universe.

[1:07:16] Cameron McEwen: And if it's at the level of human event,

[1:07:19] Cameron McEwen: then it's just one more thing that can be manipulated.

[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:07:23] Cameron McEwen: Therefore,

[1:07:24] Cameron McEwen: it has the potential to be an evil,

[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:07:29] Cameron McEwen: So if we think about your committee recommendation in those terms,

[1:07:36] Cameron McEwen: you could say that human beings always relate to a committee,

[1:07:42] Cameron McEwen: namely the Global Village of...

[1:07:45] Cameron McEwen: possibilities that define the interior landscape.

[1:07:51] Cameron McEwen: So the committee is not something that could be in the future or that could take over or something like that.

[1:07:58] Cameron McEwen: The committee is what human beings always come from.

[1:08:03] Cameron McEwen: Human beings are always some sort of monarch or emperor like selection.

[1:08:12] Cameron McEwen: Those are terms that he uses in

[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: Take care.

[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: today that the executive is a kind of monarch,

[1:08:18] Cameron McEwen: a kind of emperor,

[1:08:19] Cameron McEwen: he says.

[1:08:20] Cameron McEwen: So when human beings go to the committee of possibilities,

[1:08:25] Cameron McEwen: it's their fate that they have to select one to live at any given moment,

[1:08:34] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:08:34] Cameron McEwen: So we've always come from the committee.

[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: It's not something that could be established in the future,

[1:08:41] Cameron McEwen: could take over,

[1:08:42] Cameron McEwen: something like that.

[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:08:44] Cameron McEwen: What McLuhan's New Science is,

[1:08:46] Cameron McEwen: is how to define that committee and how,

[1:08:50] Cameron McEwen: on the basis of that definition,

[1:08:53] Cameron McEwen: do we instigate the collective investigation of it.

[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: and people always do form committees.

[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: League of Nations,

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: United Nations,

[1:09:04] Bob Dobbs: Bilderbergers,

[1:09:05] Bob Dobbs: World Economic

[1:09:07] Cameron McEwen: Foundation. Those all have the same problem.

[1:09:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:09:12] Bob Dobbs: they're doing it backwards.

[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: They don't understand how the committee is like the original medium.

[1:09:17] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:09:19] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:09:19] Cameron McEwen: Or we should say a media because committee is inherently plural.

[1:09:23] Cameron McEwen: You can't have a committee of one.

[1:09:25] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:09:25] Cameron McEwen: So the committee is plural,

[1:09:27] Cameron McEwen: so it's not medium,

[1:09:28] Cameron McEwen: it's media.

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:09:30] Cameron McEwen: When you have media,

[1:09:31] Cameron McEwen: you have a civil war of media.

[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:09:33] Cameron McEwen: And the question is,

[1:09:34] Cameron McEwen: how is the civil war of media that dominates human being?

[1:09:40] Cameron McEwen: How are we to understand?

[1:09:42] Cameron McEwen: that and correspond to that in a way that,

[1:09:48] Cameron McEwen: excuse me,

[1:09:48] Cameron McEwen: is the expression of our vocation.

[1:09:53] Cameron McEwen: Our human beings,

[1:09:55] Cameron McEwen: those beings that are held out towards that committee in a way that no other beings are.

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: so we talked about free tribal awareness,

[1:10:05] Bob Dobbs: and once you get into tribal awareness,

[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: that's committee.

[1:10:07] Bob Dobbs: And so all tribes with different...

[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: flexibility of how the members operate it because i always like the story of many tribes way back there the aboriginal level they would uh when when they went fishing the best fisherman would lead for

[1:10:26] Bob Dobbs: a couple hours that activity then if they went hunting the best hunter would do it so they would rotate somebody based on their skills so they would have a committee just social interaction and agreeing to live together you set up a committee

[1:10:39] Bob Dobbs: In how you allot people's talents and skills.

[1:10:44] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[1:10:45] Bob Dobbs: And then there's always an asshole in there.

[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:47] Bob Dobbs: what is it?

[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: There's always a rotten apple in there who will just say,

[1:10:50] Bob Dobbs: screw you,

[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: I am the best fisherman.

[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: cause a few fights.

[1:10:54] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: that's the individual sensation.

[1:10:59] Bob Dobbs: aspect.

[1:11:00] Bob Dobbs: But the committee tries to look at cultural norm functioning or a collective phobia,

[1:11:05] Bob Dobbs: what to worry about,

[1:11:07] Bob Dobbs: or a national or tribal myth-making.

[1:11:10] Bob Dobbs: So do you remember those four points?

[1:11:12] Bob Dobbs: I make a lot out of those.

[1:11:13] Bob Dobbs: I use those four points.

[1:11:17] Bob Dobbs: What is evil?

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: Is it national myth-making?

[1:11:19] Bob Dobbs: Is it collective phobia?

[1:11:21] Bob Dobbs: Is it cultural norm functioning,

[1:11:22] Bob Dobbs: the modern sociological stuff in the

[1:11:25] Bob Dobbs: 50s? Or is it individual sensation?

[1:11:29] Cameron McEwen: And the answer is that in all of those things,

[1:11:33] Cameron McEwen: there is the all-too-human attempt to consolidate human reality at one level instead of allowing a plurality of levels.

[1:11:45] Bob Dobbs: In other words,

[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: have a committee,

[1:11:48] Bob Dobbs: but don't make it so formal.

[1:11:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:53] Cameron McEwen: but it's not have a committee.

[1:11:56] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:11:57] Bob Dobbs: you wouldn't get to the have a committee.

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: That's making it formal.

[1:12:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:12:00] Cameron McEwen: it's acknowledging the committee that's already there.

[1:12:04] Cameron McEwen: And it can never be formalized in the sense of defined forever because that committee is dynamic.

[1:12:15] Cameron McEwen: It's always expressing itself through the mechanism of pre-tribal awareness.

[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:12:25] Bob Dobbs: Marshall would come in,

[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: and I'll quote him,

[1:12:27] Bob Dobbs: in the early

[1:12:28] Bob Dobbs: 70s, he says,

[1:12:29] Bob Dobbs: we now have a situation where it's government by committee.

[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: So he used the words that way to point out a new pattern that was interfering with the old committee,

[1:12:40] Bob Dobbs: which thought it had to have a leader,

[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: a president or something,

[1:12:43] Bob Dobbs: or a speaker of the House.

[1:12:45] Bob Dobbs: There was always that individualistic extra dimension or wrinkle they'd add to the committee.

[1:12:50] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan said,

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: we don't have that individual dominant anymore.

[1:12:54] Bob Dobbs: We're back to this anonymous committee.

[1:12:56] Bob Dobbs: And he might say that was a secret society or Freemasons or something.

[1:13:03] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:13:04] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:13:06] Cameron McEwen: He wouldn't endorse it.

[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: he'd be there to bug the committee,

[1:13:11] Bob Dobbs: point out what they're not doing,

[1:13:14] Bob Dobbs: not recognizing.

[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: So the...

[1:13:20] Bob Dobbs: So I would say that you're waiting,

[1:13:22] Bob Dobbs: you seem to be waiting around for us to solve it.

[1:13:26] Bob Dobbs: Are you thinking that some kind of solution to,

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: on the edge of nuclear war,

[1:13:31] Bob Dobbs: is going to,

[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: what's that word in poesis,

[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: self-reflexive,

[1:13:38] Bob Dobbs: what did the chaos guys come up with?

[1:13:41] Bob Dobbs: Self-generating intelligence,

[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: self-generation,

[1:13:45] Bob Dobbs: forget what the term is.

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember what,

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: do you know what I'm talking about?

[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:13:51] Cameron McEwen: I do know what you're talking about,

[1:13:53] Cameron McEwen: and I think that's exactly what

[1:13:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan denies.

[1:13:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:13:58] Cameron McEwen: You see,

[1:13:59] Cameron McEwen: I think that's close to your take.

[1:14:04] Cameron McEwen: Your take is that there are novelties in history,

[1:14:09] Cameron McEwen: and what we have to talk about today are the novelties that are being engendered around us.

[1:14:18] Cameron McEwen: Whereas I take McLuhan to be saying there is no novelty in history at the fundamental level,

[1:14:28] Cameron McEwen: but those eternal verities,

[1:14:35] Cameron McEwen: if you will,

[1:14:37] Cameron McEwen: the forms of experience,

[1:14:40] Cameron McEwen: because they are dynamic,

[1:14:42] Cameron McEwen: are always generating new things in history.

[1:14:46] Cameron McEwen: But those new things in history can only be understood through the prior forms.

[1:14:54] Bob Dobbs: Maybe.

[1:14:58] Bob Dobbs: What is the word I'm thinking of?

[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: It's self-something,

[1:15:02] Bob Dobbs: not self-reflexive,

[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: but you hear the bureaucrats mention a lot.

[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:15:07] Bob Dobbs: so you let the action happen,

[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: and then it starts generating its own rules.

[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: It's temporary rules or some phrase.

[1:15:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why I can't remember it.

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: But it's autopoiesis.

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: Is that it?

[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:15:23] Cameron McEwen: they would never use that word.

[1:15:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:15:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: they do use that word in there,

[1:15:28] Bob Dobbs: but that may not be the main one.

[1:15:29] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:15:30] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:15:30] Bob Dobbs: it was Humberto Macerana and

[1:15:34] Bob Dobbs: Francis Varela.

[1:15:36] Bob Dobbs: They were the two guys that coined this.

[1:15:37] Bob Dobbs: Do you know those two names?

[1:15:39] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: And it's kind of bootstrapping.

[1:15:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:15:45] Cameron McEwen: The idea is that you could say the chronological or quantified growth

[1:16:00] Cameron McEwen: ideas can generate something genuinely new,

[1:16:08] Cameron McEwen: qualitatively new,

[1:16:11] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:16:12] Cameron McEwen: So the play of quantitative change in time generates the qualitatively new.

[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: So if the principle of self-generation,

[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: that solutions Thank you.

[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: are generated by the situation,

[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: that would just be new effects that the medium creates,

[1:16:33] Bob Dobbs: the new medium.

[1:16:34] Bob Dobbs: And so again,

[1:16:35] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: they're redoing McLuhan.

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: You find a lot of the fads of consulting,

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:16:45] Bob Dobbs: what's his name,

[1:16:45] Bob Dobbs: John Nesbitt came after McLuhan.

[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: They were doing McLuhan with new words and particular terms from their specialisms.

[1:16:56] Bob Dobbs: what they came out of,

[1:16:57] Bob Dobbs: whatever fields.

[1:16:58] Bob Dobbs: It's like McLuhan came out of English,

[1:16:59] Bob Dobbs: so he used

[1:17:02] Bob Dobbs: Joyce and Lewis's dialectics,

[1:17:05] Bob Dobbs: their terms,

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: like shim and shon,

[1:17:07] Bob Dobbs: or central versus decentral from Lewis.

[1:17:14] Bob Dobbs: So people in the bland 70s said,

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: we just let things ride.

[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: It'll solve itself.

[1:17:21] Bob Dobbs: What made people think,

[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: that doesn't work anymore.

[1:17:24] Bob Dobbs: We've got to do something.

[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: there's a panic afoot,

[1:17:28] Bob Dobbs: and they always like to say,

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: fear is how we're manipulated,

[1:17:31] Bob Dobbs: and so you don't encourage fear,

[1:17:33] Bob Dobbs: but fear is being projected all the time now.

[1:17:37] Bob Dobbs: What do you think is causing that situation?

[1:17:39] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:17:40] Cameron McEwen: remember that in the 70s,

[1:17:42] Cameron McEwen: people were marching against war,

[1:17:45] Cameron McEwen: especially against nuclear war,

[1:17:47] Cameron McEwen: so they thought something could be done.

[1:17:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:17:50] Cameron McEwen: Whatever panic they felt then led to action,

[1:17:54] Cameron McEwen: whereas today it's...

[1:17:56] Cameron McEwen: You have panic,

[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: but it doesn't lead to anything.

[1:18:00] Cameron McEwen: There's no marches going on against nuclear war.

[1:18:04] Cameron McEwen: People are just saying,

[1:18:05] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:18:06] Cameron McEwen: maybe I wake up tomorrow and we've nuked the world,

[1:18:09] Cameron McEwen: but that's the way it goes.

[1:18:10] Bob Dobbs: It's more accepted.

[1:18:12] Bob Dobbs: So this guy,

[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: Eric Davis,

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: he did the book Technosis,

[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: and he writes a bit about McLuhan.

[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: I saw a new interview with him,

[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: and he brought up this sense of helplessness.

[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: his mother says,

[1:18:24] Bob Dobbs: He got his mother talking about this stuff.

[1:18:26] Bob Dobbs: And she said,

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:18:28] Bob Dobbs: we had a good run.

[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: That was her conclusion.

[1:18:33] Bob Dobbs: There's an acceptance.

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:18:34] Bob Dobbs: I think that this acceptance of wiping out ourselves is the further removal of the chemical body.

[1:18:43] Bob Dobbs: It's getting lost among the other bodies.

[1:18:45] Bob Dobbs: And people live with their chip body and TV body.

[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: And the chemical body,

[1:18:49] Bob Dobbs: that's what they think will be damaged by war.

[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: It's so obsolescent or sidelined right now in many ways that we say,

[1:18:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: we could get rid of the chemical body,

[1:19:01] Bob Dobbs: have a little nuclear war,

[1:19:02] Bob Dobbs: and someone will scoop us up and stick our ganglia into a computer console.

[1:19:10] Cameron McEwen: It's the sort of absurdity that McLuhan was talking about in

[1:19:16] Cameron McEwen: 1951 where he said,

[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:19:18] Cameron McEwen: Um,

[1:19:19] Cameron McEwen: We don't need to worry about losing all our soil.

[1:19:21] Cameron McEwen: We'll grow our potatoes on the moon.

[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: And I think around the time Ferdinand,

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: I thought I had the guy's name for a second there,

[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: but the Swedish nobleman,

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: but he talked about...

[1:19:34] Cameron McEwen: His name was John Lindbergh.

[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: Lindbergh?

[1:19:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:19:39] Cameron McEwen: Foundations of Social Survival.

[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:19:42] Bob Dobbs: I have the book.

[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: I bought it.

[1:19:46] Cameron McEwen: I was right.

[1:19:46] Cameron McEwen: that the review was in Commonweal in 1954.

[1:19:51] Bob Dobbs: Really?

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: What was it called?

[1:19:53] Cameron McEwen: March

[1:19:54] Cameron McEwen: 19th. It's a review of the Foundations of Social Survival.

[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: By McLuhan?

[1:19:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: I don't have that.

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about an article where he refers to it in 57,

[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about the four types of management or committees or causes of upset.

[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: Subliminal Seduction Project.

[1:20:13] Bob Dobbs: Does that sound familiar?

[1:20:16] Cameron McEwen: It does.

[1:20:18] Cameron McEwen: I don't know if I have it.

[1:20:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:20:20] Cameron McEwen: that's the one.

[1:20:20] Cameron McEwen: But I'll look it up.

[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: he doesn't review the book.

[1:20:23] Cameron McEwen: I'll send you the 54 review.

[1:20:26] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: I don't have that.

[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: I've never seen it.

[1:20:28] Bob Dobbs: But he makes a passing reference.

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: I can see the thing in my mind's eye.

[1:20:32] Bob Dobbs: He just quotes it.

[1:20:33] Bob Dobbs: It's not a review.

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: He just cites it as an example.

[1:20:37] Bob Dobbs: So it's not the 54 thing.

[1:20:39] Bob Dobbs: But he's talking about...

[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: We will replace our brains.

[1:20:50] Bob Dobbs: He ends an article,

[1:20:51] Bob Dobbs: it might be the one I'm thinking of,

[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: at the end we will put implants in our heads.

[1:20:59] Bob Dobbs: So he was saying that quite ahead of everybody.

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:21:03] Cameron McEwen: but he wasn't necessarily saying that would be a great thing.

[1:21:06] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:21:07] Bob Dobbs: he just said that's where we're going to end up,

[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: because we're asleep.

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: And more and more people would see that today.

[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: They think that's happening already.

[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:21:18] Bob Dobbs: you've got Elon Musk trying to sell Neuralink or something.

[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: And it's interesting that people argue.

[1:21:27] Bob Dobbs: They think culture,

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: life,

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: is argument.

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: something's outrageous,

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: they start pumping out messages they don't like it,

[1:21:38] Bob Dobbs: they don't like this and that.

[1:21:39] Bob Dobbs: Nobody ever gets convinced by argument.

[1:21:41] Bob Dobbs: Nobody takes sides,

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: nobody backs,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:21:43] Bob Dobbs: people take sides,

[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: they back.

[1:21:44] Bob Dobbs: they don't back down and we have this impasse.

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: So that kind of what did McLuhan say at the end of

[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: Ancient Quarrel in Modern America in 1946?

[1:21:56] Bob Dobbs: He says the hasty accusation and the warm rejoinder.

[1:22:02] Bob Dobbs: He ends the article with that.

[1:22:03] Bob Dobbs: That's what we witnessed.

[1:22:04] Bob Dobbs: The hasty accusation and the warm rejoinder.

[1:22:08] Bob Dobbs: That becomes crossfire.

[1:22:09] Bob Dobbs: But it did become more aggressive as people got indifferent.

[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: to,

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: quote,

[1:22:14] Bob Dobbs: decency.

[1:22:17] Bob Dobbs: It was almost like there were so many programs on,

[1:22:19] Bob Dobbs: you had to make yours more violent just to get the attention.

[1:22:22] Bob Dobbs: So there's been,

[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: basically,

[1:22:26] Bob Dobbs: there has been a panic more and more.

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: That's Kroker's book,

[1:22:30] Bob Dobbs: Panic Encyclopedia.

[1:22:32] Cameron McEwen: This is getting back to the

[1:22:34] Cameron McEwen: Substack article you talked about with the woman who talked about,

[1:22:39] Cameron McEwen: I think you said,

[1:22:40] Cameron McEwen: the industrialization of outrage.

[1:22:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:22:48] Cameron McEwen: I wanted to point out that when you write to her,

[1:22:51] Cameron McEwen: you can use a quote from Take Today.

[1:22:53] Cameron McEwen: It's from page 289.

[1:22:57] Cameron McEwen: And the headline is,

[1:22:58] Cameron McEwen: you can hurt a man's feelings,

[1:23:00] Cameron McEwen: but you can't hurt his rage.

[1:23:03] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[1:23:03] Bob Dobbs: that's good.

[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: Page 289.

[1:23:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: Right at the end of the book.

[1:23:07] Cameron McEwen: You see,

[1:23:08] Cameron McEwen: what's happened here is that rage has been industrialized.

[1:23:11] Cameron McEwen: And what do we mean by the industrialization of rage?

[1:23:14] Cameron McEwen: We mean that people recognize that arguments can't be won.

[1:23:24] Cameron McEwen: And so in a situation of unlimited argument where nothing ever comes to conclusion,

[1:23:33] Cameron McEwen: when people need a conclusion in order to establish their identity,

[1:23:39] Cameron McEwen: in order to establish...

[1:23:40] Cameron McEwen: orientation well they do it through outrage they do they say well um this um uh let's say the um the nazi camps in the second world war that's the the worst evil that could ever be done and i can use that to establish my orientation so

[1:24:04] Cameron McEwen: people people need rage they need outrage

[1:24:09] Cameron McEwen: in order to establish a kind of North Pole that gives them some way of orienting themselves.

[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: You know what I like to say?

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: The fentanyl users say,

[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: tell me how much to take that would kill me,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: and then back it off and give me one stage back,

[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: and I'll get a good hit but not die.

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: So they establish rage,

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: outrage,

[1:24:41] Bob Dobbs: maybe kill a few people,

[1:24:43] Bob Dobbs: and then they track back and then try to have a civilized committee deal with it.

[1:24:48] Bob Dobbs: It never happens.

[1:24:50] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:24:51] Cameron McEwen: So notice how this relates back to what we were saying very early in our conversation tonight,

[1:24:57] Cameron McEwen: and that has to do with the human ability to seek out the essence of things,

[1:25:04] Cameron McEwen: to seek out the truth of things.

[1:25:06] Cameron McEwen: We were talking about it in terms of there's all these noises in the forest,

[1:25:12] Cameron McEwen: but humans somehow can identify which noises are words and which aren't,

[1:25:17] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:25:18] Cameron McEwen: So for McLuhan,

[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: this is an analogy of what happens in all science.

[1:25:24] Cameron McEwen: It happens in all conversations.

[1:25:28] Cameron McEwen: When we're going back and forth with somebody,

[1:25:30] Cameron McEwen: we don't identify with everything they say,

[1:25:34] Cameron McEwen: But

[1:25:35] Cameron McEwen: We can get to the truth of what's going on,

[1:25:39] Cameron McEwen: and that's simply what it means to be a human being,

[1:25:42] Cameron McEwen: is to be able to figure out what's going on,

[1:25:46] Cameron McEwen: where it's at,

[1:25:47] Cameron McEwen: as McLuhan would say.

[1:25:49] Cameron McEwen: So when we have this unlimited argumentation that's going on now,

[1:25:54] Cameron McEwen: what we have is the refusal of the human essence.

[1:25:59] Cameron McEwen: We have the refusal that humans can figure it out.

[1:26:03] Cameron McEwen: That's what human beings are,

[1:26:05] Cameron McEwen: the beings that can figure it out.

[1:26:08] Cameron McEwen: So either we're going to completely retreat from what human being is and blow ourselves up,

[1:26:15] Cameron McEwen: or we're going to reestablish what human beings are and figure it out.

[1:26:22] Cameron McEwen: And McLuhan says at the end of his 1954 Christian humanism lecture,

[1:26:29] Cameron McEwen: we're either going to get to the top of...

[1:26:33] Cameron McEwen: Mount Purgatoria,

[1:26:35] Cameron McEwen: or we're going to end ourselves.

[1:26:39] Cameron McEwen: That's where we are.

[1:26:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:26:41] Bob Dobbs: but we always were there.

[1:26:43] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[1:26:44] Cameron McEwen: that's correct.

[1:26:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:26:47] Cameron McEwen: We were always there,

[1:26:48] Cameron McEwen: but up until now,

[1:26:49] Cameron McEwen: minus the nuclear bombs.

[1:26:52] Bob Dobbs: So our dialogue,

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: and you do in your blog,

[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: you refer back to basic terms,

[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: maybe basic principles.

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: And it's a science.

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: So are we working out the way the New Science would be done?

[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: You wouldn't accept the Venezuela stuff.

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: That can't be done now.

[1:27:16] Bob Dobbs: So what is the New Science?

[1:27:18] Bob Dobbs: Is it just using the terms that McLuhan came up with,

[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: with,

[1:27:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: sophisticated understanding?

[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: Or would we,

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: what...

[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: medium would we use?

[1:27:33] Bob Dobbs: What would we do?

[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: How do you see the science,

[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: this New Science?

[1:27:41] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:27:41] Cameron McEwen: the science itself will establish the vocabulary.

[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:27:45] Cameron McEwen: So if we I always like to go back to what's happened with chemistry and biochemistry and genetics and all this stuff since 1800.

[1:27:58] Cameron McEwen: So the establishment of a basic New Science is the establishment of a new genus of science,

[1:28:06] Cameron McEwen: sciences.

[1:28:08] Cameron McEwen: So it's not just chemistry,

[1:28:11] Cameron McEwen: it's biochemistry,

[1:28:13] Cameron McEwen: it's genetics,

[1:28:14] Cameron McEwen: it's a whole new way of doing medicine,

[1:28:16] Cameron McEwen: it's a whole new material science,

[1:28:19] Cameron McEwen: it's a whole array of sciences.

[1:28:23] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:28:24] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan sees that happening.

[1:28:26] Cameron McEwen: in the humanities and in the social sciences.

[1:28:31] Cameron McEwen: But it will not be independent of the old sciences because the old sciences themselves are a way of being in the world.

[1:28:42] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:28:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan points to quantum physics,

[1:28:45] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:28:46] Cameron McEwen: and says,

[1:28:47] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:28:48] Cameron McEwen: these people are doing something similar to what Cézanne was doing in painting.

[1:28:55] Cameron McEwen: Namely,

[1:28:56] Cameron McEwen: they're emphasizing the role of human in election in the world that's always going on.

[1:29:06] Cameron McEwen: Cezanne paints apples,

[1:29:08] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: or a pitcher of water in a way that says we cannot relate to this absent the committee of potentialities that's within us,

[1:29:22] Cameron McEwen: the interior landscape.

[1:29:24] Cameron McEwen: And they...

[1:29:25] Cameron McEwen: Quantum physics people say we can't relate to stuff that's independent of our intervention in that reality.

[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: So McLuhan says,

[1:29:38] Cameron McEwen: look,

[1:29:38] Cameron McEwen: the whole world is like that.

[1:29:41] Cameron McEwen: And the only way of coming to grips with it is with a New Science that establishes its own new vocabulary and its own new journals and its whole new university.

[1:29:54] Cameron McEwen: departments and all that sort of stuff.

[1:29:57] Cameron McEwen: And through that,

[1:29:58] Cameron McEwen: the world can solve its problems.

[1:30:03] Cameron McEwen: But that way is unique.

[1:30:07] Cameron McEwen: It's not as if we can establish some sort of committee absent that New Science that will be able to solve our problems.

[1:30:18] Cameron McEwen: The only way for us to figure out problems is to find the solutions that are embedded.

[1:30:24] Cameron McEwen: in those problems and they're embedded in those problems because those problems themselves are motivated from the committee of our possibilities.

[1:30:37] Bob Dobbs: How do you wear the New Science?

[1:30:42] Bob Dobbs: You just go to a room and you learn the terms that the committee has decided on and then you talk in those terms.

[1:30:49] Bob Dobbs: I don't think that's what we mean.

[1:30:51] Bob Dobbs: You want to apply to...

[1:30:54] Bob Dobbs: your daily observational techniques.

[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: So you would...

[1:30:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:59] Cameron McEwen: so...

[1:31:00] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: the big thing is that people have to decide to do the New Science in some sort of collective way.

[1:31:11] Cameron McEwen: And part of that decision to operate collectively operates on the basis of a new vocabulary and new techniques.

[1:31:24] Cameron McEwen: So the problem that

[1:31:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan had,

[1:31:28] Cameron McEwen: which is the same problem that...

[1:31:29] Cameron McEwen: Plato had 2,500 years ago is for people to make that decision to do collective research.

[1:31:39] Cameron McEwen: And what's happened in Western civilization is that we have decided to do collective research in everything that's not very important.

[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:31:50] Cameron McEwen: And the things that are most important,

[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: we reject the possibility of collective research.

[1:31:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: And that's the problem.

[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:31:58] Bob Dobbs: you've got millions of committees specializing in different issues,

[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: multiple throws to say,

[1:32:06] Bob Dobbs: and looking for money to apply it.

[1:32:10] Bob Dobbs: How do you take over?

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: I think there's groups trying to take over.

[1:32:15] Bob Dobbs: They'll say the Billionaires Club,

[1:32:17] Bob Dobbs: the Bilderbergers,

[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: the World Economic Forum,

[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: and maybe patriots,

[1:32:23] Bob Dobbs: different more subversive groups,

[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: terrorists.

[1:32:27] Bob Dobbs: cells,

[1:32:28] Bob Dobbs: the

[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: Al-Qaeda.

[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: Obviously, that's not going to work unless it does work,

[1:32:36] Bob Dobbs: and you take over and you actually impose everything.

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: that is what

[1:32:40] Bob Dobbs: I'm doing.

[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: I've got the goods,

[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: the goose that lays the golden egg,

[1:32:47] Bob Dobbs: and gradually familiarizing other secret societies or elites or committees what we're doing.

[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: I want to read page 139 a little bit,

[1:33:04] Bob Dobbs: just to get a bit of my stuff into the discussion here.

[1:33:09] Bob Dobbs: And let's see if it does relate to what we're talking about.

[1:33:12] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: let's see if it fits into the science we've established as a theory.

[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: We've established.

[1:33:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm still not sure how one does this.

[1:33:26] Bob Dobbs: Other than the way I think I'm doing it,

[1:33:28] Bob Dobbs: but I'm not sure how you would do it,

[1:33:32] Bob Dobbs: other than just urge people to read your column and take it seriously and talk to other people about it and spread the virus.

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:33:44] Bob Dobbs: you may not say that's what you're trying to do,

[1:33:47] Bob Dobbs: but it's the only way it could be used if it went outside of your control.

[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: Say someone could take your columns right there on the Internet

[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: And start handing them out to groups of people,

[1:33:59] Bob Dobbs: corporations,

[1:34:00] Bob Dobbs: and doing something with it without you even knowing.

[1:34:02] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:34:03] Cameron McEwen: And that's happening every day.

[1:34:04] Cameron McEwen: So people do an interview on YouTube and somebody takes the interview and makes a new interview out of it and puts it on YouTube and makes money.

[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:34:18] Cameron McEwen: And everybody's finding out that there's no such thing as property rights anymore.

[1:34:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:34:24] Cameron McEwen: that everything you do is taken by somebody else and transformed into their property.

[1:34:31] Cameron McEwen: So that's,

[1:34:32] Cameron McEwen: sure,

[1:34:32] Cameron McEwen: that's happening all the time.

[1:34:34] Cameron McEwen: Nothing can be done about that.

[1:34:40] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:34:41] Bob Dobbs: so page 139,

[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: Android meme phase two.

[1:34:45] Bob Dobbs: Bob says,

[1:34:46] Bob Dobbs: voluntary and involuntary ESP.

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: Involuntary ESP is the collective effect of radio and TV.

[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:34:53] Bob Dobbs: you had a term for that.

[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: You,

[1:34:56] Bob Dobbs: at the beginning,

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: talked about the...

[1:34:59] Bob Dobbs: I don't know which words you used,

[1:35:01] Bob Dobbs: about the collective effect of radio and media as opposed to some other thing.

[1:35:06] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember what dialectic,

[1:35:09] Bob Dobbs: what two words,

[1:35:10] Bob Dobbs: binary,

[1:35:11] Bob Dobbs: you brought up?

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,

[1:35:13] Bob Dobbs: I've got one here.

[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: Voluntary and involuntary ESP.

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: Involuntary ESP is the collective effect of radio and TV.

[1:35:19] Bob Dobbs: You can't get away from it.

[1:35:21] Bob Dobbs: However,

[1:35:22] Bob Dobbs: the later digital world puts a wall up that allows you to separate from the collective ESP of radio and TV.

[1:35:29] Bob Dobbs: Did you want to say something?

[1:35:32] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:35:32] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[1:35:34] Cameron McEwen: It's a historical happening.

[1:35:36] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:35:37] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:35:37] Bob Dobbs: I just flipped my thing.

[1:35:39] Bob Dobbs: Got to get back there.

[1:35:44] Bob Dobbs: So the Android meme has to emphasize the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:35:49] Bob Dobbs: It has to create the,

[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: now,

[1:35:50] Bob Dobbs: the ansemory physical,

[1:35:54] Bob Dobbs: that is what's talking in this jungle and recognizing other signals.

[1:36:01] Bob Dobbs: that are more important than the background.

[1:36:05] Bob Dobbs: That would be projecting the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:36:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:36:07] Bob Dobbs: this guy,

[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: this grunt guy here,

[1:36:10] Bob Dobbs: he's sort of like me.

[1:36:12] Bob Dobbs: So you begin to match as if,

[1:36:14] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:36:15] Bob Dobbs: we can establish some communication that's different from the rest of the environment here.

[1:36:19] Bob Dobbs: So I think that's the impulse I mean with the phrase Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:36:25] Cameron McEwen: But notice McLuhan would never use the word match there.

[1:36:28] Cameron McEwen: He would use the word make.

[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:36:31] Cameron McEwen: And the reason is that when there's communication between two people,

[1:36:35] Cameron McEwen: that the communication is always taken through the rearview mirror.

[1:36:43] Cameron McEwen: So the miracle of communication happens because the words aren't understood exactly.

[1:36:53] Cameron McEwen: They're understood inexactly,

[1:36:56] Cameron McEwen: but still the communication works.

[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: That Marshall McLuhan,

[1:37:02] Bob Dobbs: what he said in Hot and Cool,

[1:37:04] Bob Dobbs: the people are communicating on levels they don't recognize.

[1:37:08] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[1:37:10] Bob Dobbs: And then on the level that they think they're communicating on,

[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: they get into a lot of problems and arguments about it.

[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: And that wasn't what was happening.

[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:37:19] Bob Dobbs: So then the endorhine has to emphasize the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:37:24] Bob Dobbs: It has to create the effect that there is an increasing amount of voluntary

[1:37:29] Bob Dobbs: AP.

[1:37:30] Bob Dobbs: or Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:37:32] Bob Dobbs: or ESP maybe,

[1:37:34] Bob Dobbs: there is an increasing amount of voluntary AP because the unity dimension is already happening in the Global Membrane,

[1:37:40] Bob Dobbs: in the global theater,

[1:37:41] Bob Dobbs: in the Global Village,

[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: the merged interpenetration world.

[1:37:46] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:37:46] Bob Dobbs: I've got to read that again.

[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: I don't even know what I'm saying here.

[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme has to emphasize the Anthropomorphic Physical.

[1:37:52] Bob Dobbs: It has to create the affect rather than the effect that there is an increasing amount of voluntary AP

[1:37:59] Bob Dobbs: Because the unity...

[1:38:00] Bob Dobbs: So I'm taking my involuntary and voluntary ESP and I'm applying it to voluntary and involuntary AP because the unity dimension is already happening in the Global Membrane,

[1:38:15] Bob Dobbs: global theater,

[1:38:15] Bob Dobbs: Global Village,

[1:38:16] Bob Dobbs: the merged interpenetration world.

[1:38:20] Bob Dobbs: That's quite a statement there.

[1:38:22] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I mean.

[1:38:23] Bob Dobbs: So let's see what I do with it.

[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: Making a long narrative short,

[1:38:28] Bob Dobbs: that's what you would call historical chronology that I do,

[1:38:32] Bob Dobbs: making a long narrative short,

[1:38:34] Bob Dobbs: most of the 20th century can be understood as the analog media phase of involuntary ESP.

[1:38:40] Bob Dobbs: Involuntary ESP would be the communication that goes on between people when they're all listening to radio,

[1:38:49] Bob Dobbs: which in a simpler time they were doing it.

[1:38:51] Bob Dobbs: There was this other collective tribal something effect that was going on that made people feel...

[1:38:57] Bob Dobbs: A new impulse,

[1:38:59] Bob Dobbs: new attitudes,

[1:39:00] Bob Dobbs: new something,

[1:39:00] Bob Dobbs: new sensations.

[1:39:02] Bob Dobbs: That is the involuntary

[1:39:04] Bob Dobbs: ESP. So the hidden effects of media are what I mean by involuntary ESP.

[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: The voluntary is the verbal content that you're identifying with and listening to a show and deciding whether you agree with it or not,

[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: matching or making with it.

[1:39:21] Bob Dobbs: That would be the voluntary.

[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: The important thing is electronics as ESP,

[1:39:27] Bob Dobbs: says McLuhan.

[1:39:28] Bob Dobbs: The psychological decentralization cliche that McLuhan is so well known for predicting,

[1:39:33] Bob Dobbs: tribal meaning not necessarily harmony,

[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: but a lot of involvement with each other.

[1:39:37] Bob Dobbs: What McLuhan didn't predict is a disconnecting effect that started happening in the 80s with the Walkman,

[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: the cable TV business,

[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: video cassette recorders,

[1:39:46] Bob Dobbs: and then our personal computer.

[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: would you disagree with that,

[1:39:50] Bob Dobbs: that he did see the disconnecting?

[1:39:53] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.

[1:39:53] Cameron McEwen: He called it the loss of personal identity.

[1:39:58] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: So what I'm doing here is mentioning what I call the Madison Avenue version of McLuhan,

[1:40:06] Bob Dobbs: where people thought he meant the world was going to get peace in a global pastoral image.

[1:40:12] Bob Dobbs: So when I use the word McLuhan,

[1:40:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm putting on the bad assumption that people have about McLuhan.

[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: Then I'm trying to correct what he says.

[1:40:23] Bob Dobbs: And you're right.

[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: He did see the disconnecting effect.

[1:40:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:40:28] Bob Dobbs: I assume that's why I'm saying that that way there.

[1:40:31] Cameron McEwen: And by the way,

[1:40:33] Cameron McEwen: in this section,

[1:40:35] Cameron McEwen: I'm never sure if the word that you're using should be affect with an A or affect with an E.

[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:40:45] Cameron McEwen: It seems to me that

[1:40:47] Cameron McEwen: Clinton or whoever was doing this work may have confused those a lot.

[1:40:53] Bob Dobbs: You mean

[1:40:54] Bob Dobbs: I may not have written it that way?

[1:40:58] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:40:59] Cameron McEwen: is the blue writing or is the blue you talking and somebody transcribing it?

[1:41:04] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:41:05] Bob Dobbs: it is.

[1:41:07] Bob Dobbs: It is somebody transcribing,

[1:41:10] Bob Dobbs: but I read it and corrected it.

[1:41:12] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:41:12] Bob Dobbs: so I had an effect there.

[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: I mean that.

[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: I was aware of the problem,

[1:41:16] Bob Dobbs: the ambivalence.

[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:41:19] Bob Dobbs: that's why I capitalize it.

[1:41:20] Bob Dobbs: The effect,

[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: which is what

[1:41:24] Bob Dobbs: Theall brought within Bob's Media Ecology.

[1:41:26] Bob Dobbs: Theall started talking about affects versus effects in the late 80s,

[1:41:30] Bob Dobbs: and people weren't using affects.

[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: They were using effects when they were dealing with McLuhan,

[1:41:36] Bob Dobbs: because that's what he said.

[1:41:38] Bob Dobbs: He didn't use the word affect,

[1:41:39] Bob Dobbs: it seemed.

[1:41:40] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if there's any words where he used that.

[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: I think Don meant by affect what I mean by the involuntary ESP,

[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: this additional surplus energizing that goes on.

[1:41:54] Bob Dobbs: What is that thing?

[1:41:56] Bob Dobbs: Synergy,

[1:41:57] Bob Dobbs: the sum is worth more,

[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: is more than the parts.

[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: That's the world of affect.

[1:42:04] Bob Dobbs: Those are where charisma comes from,

[1:42:07] Bob Dobbs: and popularity is the affect.

[1:42:11] Bob Dobbs: Because that's the content and people listening to authors or writers or politicians.

[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: Meanwhile,

[1:42:18] Bob Dobbs: the effect of the radio or the electronic ESP is going on.

[1:42:24] Bob Dobbs: Regardless.

[1:42:27] Cameron McEwen: you could say the heart of McLuhan is to take all affects as effects.

[1:42:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:42:34] Cameron McEwen: So according to him,

[1:42:39] Cameron McEwen: he says at one point in a late letter,

[1:42:42] Cameron McEwen: he says the great virtue of being a Catholic is that you know that everything is intelligible.

[1:42:53] Cameron McEwen: So what he means by that is...

[1:42:55] Cameron McEwen: in concrete terms is that where you have an affect,

[1:43:00] Cameron McEwen: let's say radio has a certain affect,

[1:43:05] Cameron McEwen: that you can take that as an effect of something and that gives you its intelligibility.

[1:43:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:43:14] Bob Dobbs: In the

[1:43:14] Bob Dobbs: 90s, Dr.

[1:43:15] Bob Dobbs: Frank Zingrone of York University told me that he couldn't really interest his students in the book Understanding Media because none of the students had any experience of the older analog media.

[1:43:25] Bob Dobbs: Only the new digital commodities.

[1:43:27] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan was lost in them.

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:43:29] Bob Dobbs: you would say

[1:43:30] Bob Dobbs: Frank should have brought in your approach and talked about the ages of different media aren't relevant to the principles.

[1:43:40] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: That McLuhan was pointing out.

[1:43:42] Cameron McEwen: I'd also point out that the difficulty of reading,

[1:43:46] Cameron McEwen: Understanding Media is similar to the reading of

[1:43:50] Cameron McEwen: Shakespeare. That is to say that the...

[1:43:54] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan seems to be talking about the different media that you encounter in the world,

[1:44:01] Cameron McEwen: radio,

[1:44:02] Cameron McEwen: television,

[1:44:03] Cameron McEwen: whatever,

[1:44:03] Cameron McEwen: Walkman.

[1:44:05] Cameron McEwen: But his conversation in Understanding Media is informed by perennial human problems,

[1:44:15] Cameron McEwen: getting sick,

[1:44:16] Cameron McEwen: getting old,

[1:44:18] Cameron McEwen: getting unloved,

[1:44:21] Cameron McEwen: being unable to love,

[1:44:22] Cameron McEwen: all these sorts of things.

[1:44:24] Cameron McEwen: And students,

[1:44:26] Cameron McEwen: if they want to understand Understanding Media,

[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: they have to be able to understand,

[1:44:34] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:44:34] Cameron McEwen: what deep thinkers have always talked about,

[1:44:39] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: Very human limitations,

[1:44:42] Cameron McEwen: difficulties that just belong to human beings as human beings.

[1:44:47] Cameron McEwen: And if you don't know that that level is in Understanding Media,

[1:44:52] Cameron McEwen: you can never understand the book.

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:44:55] Bob Dobbs: good point.

[1:44:57] Bob Dobbs: So then

[1:44:59] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[1:45:00] Bob Dobbs: I'm quoting here,

[1:45:03] Bob Dobbs: what is that?

[1:45:13] Bob Dobbs: The Ignorance of Out of Awareness.

[1:45:17] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[1:45:18] Bob Dobbs: that's from Zingrone book,

[1:45:19] Bob Dobbs: The Media Complex.

[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:45:20] Cameron McEwen: it continues in the next page.

[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:45:23] Bob Dobbs: so his quote is,

[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: and this is the one quote I thought was pretty good from his book.

[1:45:28] Bob Dobbs: This ignorance of the Cosmic Awareness aspects of any medium of communication is where action and change occur,

[1:45:36] Bob Dobbs: particularly as one moves from one medium to another.

[1:45:40] Bob Dobbs: We want to know whether there is a form-content relationship that holds true for all media of communication.

[1:45:46] Bob Dobbs: An affirmative answer to this question is possible.

[1:45:49] Bob Dobbs: It's in italics.

[1:45:50] Bob Dobbs: Content consumes form.

[1:45:52] Bob Dobbs: So this was Frank's new...

[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: Principal,

[1:45:55] Bob Dobbs: and when me and Nelson were talking one day,

[1:45:58] Bob Dobbs: he pointed this page out.

[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: He said,

[1:46:00] Bob Dobbs: that's what I'm trying to say.

[1:46:03] Bob Dobbs: So the content is becoming forms,

[1:46:06] Bob Dobbs: which is page 11 of Take Today.

[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: The merger between content and form is getting tricky after the

[1:46:14] Bob Dobbs: 50s McLuhan.

[1:46:15] Bob Dobbs: So the late 60s McLuhan,

[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: where he says in Playboy,

[1:46:17] Bob Dobbs: the content italicized,

[1:46:20] Bob Dobbs: the content is the new ground.

[1:46:22] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: Frank's trying to get to that.

[1:46:25] Bob Dobbs: Content consumes form.

[1:46:26] Bob Dobbs: How could The Wizard of Oz,

[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: Gone with the Wind,

[1:46:29] Bob Dobbs: or La Dulce Vita,

[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: be imagined apart from their medium's form,

[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: which is entered and become fused with content?

[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: No matter how spectacular the production values of a film,

[1:46:40] Bob Dobbs: the contents of that film consume it.

[1:46:43] Bob Dobbs: So this was a useful quote for me to illustrate that the Android meme,

[1:46:49] Bob Dobbs: Phase 1 and 2,

[1:46:51] Bob Dobbs: We're after 19,

[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan after 1972,

[1:46:55] Bob Dobbs: and Take Today,

[1:46:56] Bob Dobbs: where man is both figure and ground with the electrotechnical extension,

[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: if you look on page,

[1:47:04] Bob Dobbs: I wonder if I have that quote in here.

[1:47:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if we've done it,

[1:47:09] Bob Dobbs: maybe.

[1:47:10] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: so he put out this book,

[1:47:13] Bob Dobbs: The Media Simplex at the

[1:47:15] Bob Dobbs: Edge of Meaning in the Age of Chaos.

[1:47:17] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: It's a very,

[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: for me,

[1:47:19] Bob Dobbs: a very useful quote to explain how voluntary and involuntary ESP are the grounds of our situation.

[1:47:30] Bob Dobbs: So there's a lot of understanding or matching even in the

[1:47:37] Bob Dobbs: ESP that's natural under electric conditions.

[1:47:41] Cameron McEwen: It will be very helpful for you to explain in more detail how this...

[1:47:48] Cameron McEwen: quote applies to voluntary and involuntary ESP.

[1:47:54] Cameron McEwen: I think it's an interesting quote,

[1:47:55] Cameron McEwen: although I think there's some big problems with it.

[1:47:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:47:58] Cameron McEwen: But I don't see how it applies in the way that you're saying it applies.

[1:48:04] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:48:04] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:48:04] Cameron McEwen: let's see what I say.

[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: so yeah,

[1:48:07] Bob Dobbs: I give the quote,

[1:48:08] Bob Dobbs: and then I say,

[1:48:09] Bob Dobbs: this is really important,

[1:48:10] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[1:48:13] Bob Dobbs: This is really important.

[1:48:15] Bob Dobbs: This is the part of the AP starting to dominate the Android meme content.

[1:48:19] Bob Dobbs: The user is the content.

[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: The Anthropomorphic Physical is consuming form.

[1:48:25] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:48:26] Bob Dobbs: so I'm trying to,

[1:48:27] Bob Dobbs: I'm adapting his words to my words.

[1:48:31] Bob Dobbs: This is a big switch from what Derrick de Kerckhove and McLuhan talked about.

[1:48:35] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan might have suggested it when he said in Playboy magazine that content becomes the thing we decide on.

[1:48:41] Bob Dobbs: I think that means what becomes the medium.

[1:48:44] Bob Dobbs: I like the ways Inglourney implies the user has content-consuming form.

[1:48:48] Bob Dobbs: That gives me a voluntary ESP aspect.

[1:48:53] Bob Dobbs: And an affirmative answer to this question.

[1:48:56] Bob Dobbs: Go ahead.

[1:48:57] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:48:57] Cameron McEwen: I can see that point.

[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:49:00] Cameron McEwen: that's a good couple sentences you have there.

[1:49:03] Bob Dobbs: Good.

[1:49:03] Cameron McEwen: But to think it through from McLuhan's perspective,

[1:49:10] Cameron McEwen: we have to understand that that has always gone on.

[1:49:14] Cameron McEwen: There's very little to Nietzsche other than user as content consuming form.

[1:49:20] Cameron McEwen: That's the death of God.

[1:49:22] Cameron McEwen: That's nihilism.

[1:49:27] Cameron McEwen: That's

[1:49:28] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche's praises of the Western civilization.

[1:49:35] Cameron McEwen: So user as content consuming form is simply what it means to be a...

[1:49:42] Cameron McEwen: human being that necessarily uses the rearview mirror,

[1:49:48] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:49:48] Cameron McEwen: That's,

[1:49:49] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[1:49:51] Cameron McEwen: that's what it's all about.

[1:49:53] Cameron McEwen: But then

[1:49:54] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would say,

[1:49:55] Cameron McEwen: however,

[1:49:56] Cameron McEwen: we have science,

[1:49:58] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:49:59] Cameron McEwen: The fact that human beings consume form,

[1:50:02] Cameron McEwen: the fact that they necessarily experience through the rearview mirror does not mean that human beings cannot be creative.

[1:50:10] Cameron McEwen: That's the great mystery.

[1:50:12] Cameron McEwen: The great mystery is that while content can consume form,

[1:50:19] Cameron McEwen: that is exactly what enables science,

[1:50:23] Cameron McEwen: not disables it.

[1:50:25] Cameron McEwen: And that's what people don't understand in what McLuhan was trying to point out.

[1:50:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:50:35] Bob Dobbs: An affirmative answer to this question is possible.

[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: Content consumes form.

[1:50:39] Bob Dobbs: That's what Zingrone says.

[1:50:41] Bob Dobbs: That would hold for all media communication.

[1:50:43] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[1:50:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said the user is the content.

[1:50:46] Bob Dobbs: Humans are always projecting their experience into a medium.

[1:50:50] Bob Dobbs: The actual content of any book...

[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: it just occurred to me,

[1:50:53] Bob Dobbs: maybe that's not happening anymore.

[1:50:55] Bob Dobbs: People can't project their experience into what's going on,

[1:50:59] Bob Dobbs: because there's too much happening and it's not familiar.

[1:51:02] Bob Dobbs: That could lead to fear,

[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: to panic.

[1:51:05] Bob Dobbs: So that's just a new little twist on that.

[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: The actual content of any book is your personal experience.

[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: Canadians legislated in 1971 that in Canada,

[1:51:14] Bob Dobbs: 25%

[1:51:15] Bob Dobbs: of pop music played on the radio and TV had to be produced in Canada.

[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: It's now up to 60%.

[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: Canadians would have these mediocre music groups becoming stars within Canada.

[1:51:25] Bob Dobbs: But then McLuhan stepped in and pointed out,

[1:51:27] Bob Dobbs: well,

[1:51:28] Bob Dobbs: that is silly.

[1:51:28] Bob Dobbs: What is Canadian content?

[1:51:30] Bob Dobbs: You've got all kinds of immigrants in the cultural mosaic of Canada.

[1:51:33] Bob Dobbs: Pakistanis,

[1:51:34] Bob Dobbs: Africans,

[1:51:34] Bob Dobbs: Brazilians,

[1:51:35] Bob Dobbs: etc.

[1:51:36] Bob Dobbs: They do not project a Canadian content.

[1:51:39] Bob Dobbs: Their Canadian lives are not projected into the media content.

[1:51:43] Bob Dobbs: What they were previously,

[1:51:44] Bob Dobbs: where they grew up around the world,

[1:51:47] Bob Dobbs: was more formative of their personality and their experience,

[1:51:50] Bob Dobbs: and therefore that's the content for them,

[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: and they see that content in any medium.

[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:51:55] Cameron McEwen: So remember I was just talking about the rear-view mirror?

[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:51:59] Cameron McEwen: That's inevitable.

[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:52:01] Bob Dobbs: You can't limit content perception as Canadian.

[1:52:05] Bob Dobbs: It's too...

[1:52:05] Bob Dobbs: You can't limit content perception as Canadian.

[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: It's too general.

[1:52:09] Bob Dobbs: People remember too much of their own previous lives.

[1:52:13] Bob Dobbs: Canada was a place a lot of immigrants came to,

[1:52:15] Bob Dobbs: especially starting in the 60s.

[1:52:17] Bob Dobbs: Maybe after a generation they have a family and their children grow up in Canada.

[1:52:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:52:21] Bob Dobbs: they're Canadian.

[1:52:23] Bob Dobbs: And of course there are lots of Canadian novels about the conflict between immigrants from Africa,

[1:52:28] Bob Dobbs: etc.,

[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: struggling with their kids as they get Canadianized.

[1:52:32] Bob Dobbs: I just noticed that,

[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: the last 30 years.

[1:52:36] Bob Dobbs: The newer novelists that...

[1:52:38] Bob Dobbs: The awards committees look at are often first-generation writers talking about the problems they had growing up in Canada and their conflicts with their parents.

[1:52:52] Bob Dobbs: So Zingrone is saying as the media shrinks and the chemical body gets bigger,

[1:52:56] Bob Dobbs: that's

[1:52:57] Bob Dobbs: Dali's painting,

[1:53:00] Bob Dobbs: the chemical body gets bigger than the media,

[1:53:02] Bob Dobbs: then that can be translated psychologically as the body,

[1:53:05] Bob Dobbs: the enlarged chemical body as an effect.

[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: become excuse me becoming the content it's consuming the dynamics of media the language is a form that McLuhan said he analyzed that form was disappearing all you're left with is content and that fosters an increasingly fragmented society as

[1:53:26] Bob Dobbs: people argue over what trudeau's going to say and lay down the science of his situation people are arguing to be that voice

[1:53:37] Bob Dobbs: to be what is said.

[1:53:39] Bob Dobbs: So everybody is projecting their own content,

[1:53:42] Bob Dobbs: which now is a medium,

[1:53:44] Bob Dobbs: and they want it to be the ground.

[1:53:49] Bob Dobbs: That's super democratic.

[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: Everybody's engaged in a level of identity formation that bureaucracy,

[1:53:57] Bob Dobbs: Congress,

[1:53:58] Bob Dobbs: and Parliament have nothing to do with.

[1:54:03] Cameron McEwen: But notice that already in the

[1:54:06] Cameron McEwen: 1880s,

[1:54:08] Cameron McEwen: Nietzsche pointed out that disappearing,

[1:54:11] Cameron McEwen: which is a word that you use in the middle of that paragraph,

[1:54:14] Cameron McEwen: that form was disappearing.

[1:54:17] Cameron McEwen: If you think that when form disappears,

[1:54:22] Cameron McEwen: then you still have content,

[1:54:24] Cameron McEwen: then you're just hallucinating.

[1:54:26] Cameron McEwen: Because when you lose form,

[1:54:29] Cameron McEwen: there's nothing left of content.

[1:54:31] Cameron McEwen: So the struggles that people have now with what they think is...

[1:54:36] Cameron McEwen: Content is an attempt to kind of outrage content,

[1:54:44] Cameron McEwen: to say,

[1:54:45] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:54:46] Cameron McEwen: I'm deciding what content is.

[1:54:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:54:48] Bob Dobbs: I'm deciding in form.

[1:54:49] Bob Dobbs: So people are engaging and creating form now.

[1:54:53] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:54:53] Cameron McEwen: But then if you then say,

[1:54:55] Cameron McEwen: well,

[1:54:57] Cameron McEwen: who's this artist,

[1:54:58] Cameron McEwen: this emperor that is making this decision?

[1:55:02] Cameron McEwen: What form is he or she?

[1:55:05] Cameron McEwen: then you can see it just falls through itself into a black hole.

[1:55:09] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:55:09] Bob Dobbs: so that's why on my chart I have everybody being,

[1:55:12] Bob Dobbs: and their respective media they promote,

[1:55:15] Bob Dobbs: subatomic particles.

[1:55:17] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:55:19] Bob Dobbs: So all you're left with is content,

[1:55:21] Bob Dobbs: and that fosters an increasingly fragmented society.

[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: And from the 90s on up to now,

[1:55:26] Bob Dobbs: people got into put on their own little chip body bubbles.

[1:55:30] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:55:31] Bob Dobbs: As the forms of media disappear and content...

[1:55:33] Bob Dobbs: projects,

[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: is that what I mean?

[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:55:36] Bob Dobbs: then,

[1:55:36] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:55:36] Bob Dobbs: you go hyper-projects.

[1:55:38] Bob Dobbs: The user as content experience is another part of Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:55:42] Bob Dobbs: taking over.

[1:55:43] Bob Dobbs: The cloned,

[1:55:44] Bob Dobbs: so I wonder if that Anthropomorphic Physical would be

[1:55:49] Bob Dobbs: The beginning of tribal awareness,

[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: so we've gone back,

[1:55:52] Bob Dobbs: retrieved,

[1:55:53] Bob Dobbs: or never left.

[1:55:54] Bob Dobbs: The initial humanization of the grunt people,

[1:55:59] Bob Dobbs: socialization,

[1:56:01] Bob Dobbs: that's probably what I'm trying to say here.

[1:56:03] Bob Dobbs: We've gone back.

[1:56:06] Cameron McEwen: Can we say that the Anthropomorphic Physical,

[1:56:09] Cameron McEwen: the AP,

[1:56:11] Cameron McEwen: is the recognition that all of the memes that are...

[1:56:17] Cameron McEwen: generated in the

[1:56:19] Cameron McEwen: AM have a basis in human possibility.

[1:56:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:56:28] Bob Dobbs: The clone tribal ESP is not so all-consuming because people have their own particular lives that are enhanced by the more individual-friendly digital media.

[1:56:37] Bob Dobbs: Look at cell phones.

[1:56:38] Bob Dobbs: They all have different designs and apps.

[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: People pick different capacities for their cell phones,

[1:56:44] Bob Dobbs: beginning

[1:56:44] Bob Dobbs: 15 years ago.

[1:56:46] Bob Dobbs: This customizing of everything takes over.

[1:56:48] Bob Dobbs: The user as content takes over and disappears form,

[1:56:51] Bob Dobbs: which is okay with the Android meme.

[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: It wants the human form to be visible,

[1:56:55] Bob Dobbs: the human content.

[1:56:57] Bob Dobbs: That's where the AP,

[1:56:59] Bob Dobbs: what humans think of themselves,

[1:57:01] Bob Dobbs: that's highlighted.

[1:57:03] Bob Dobbs: And you could say in situation comedies or in theater,

[1:57:08] Bob Dobbs: The cruder looking people took over the content because the Android meme was trying to show that it was human.

[1:57:16] Bob Dobbs: So they allowed the people that

[1:57:21] Bob Dobbs: 100 years ago would not be allowed in the movies.

[1:57:24] Bob Dobbs: They weren't pretty enough.

[1:57:25] Bob Dobbs: They didn't have this cliche stereotype.

[1:57:28] Bob Dobbs: The stereotypes fell apart and the odder of the person,

[1:57:33] Bob Dobbs: the more eccentric they looked,

[1:57:34] Bob Dobbs: they got the gigs as advertising content.

[1:57:38] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[1:57:39] Cameron McEwen: And that's now taken over politics.

[1:57:43] Cameron McEwen: Yes.

[1:57:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:57:43] Cameron McEwen: So if you want to be the president,

[1:57:46] Cameron McEwen: you have to be trans and whatever the trends are,

[1:57:51] Cameron McEwen: whatever the effects are.

[1:57:53] Cameron McEwen: A trans leper in a wheelchair.

[1:57:55] Bob Dobbs: Great.

[1:57:56] Bob Dobbs: Barry used to say,

[1:57:57] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt in the 80s,

[1:57:58] Bob Dobbs: if you look at the

[1:58:00] Bob Dobbs: Reagan, Ronald Reagan's cabinet,

[1:58:02] Bob Dobbs: they're all tribal people.

[1:58:04] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:58:07] Bob Dobbs: That would be,

[1:58:09] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember their names now,

[1:58:11] Bob Dobbs: Edwin Meese,

[1:58:12] Bob Dobbs: people like that.

[1:58:15] Bob Dobbs: The AM,

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: Android meme,

[1:58:17] Bob Dobbs: wants to distract people with all their foibles,

[1:58:20] Bob Dobbs: like the various eccentric talk shows that were created,

[1:58:23] Bob Dobbs: whereas the TV host in the 70s,

[1:58:25] Bob Dobbs: Phil Donahue,

[1:58:26] Bob Dobbs: ran a lot more sober and controlled show,

[1:58:29] Bob Dobbs: not like Jerry Springer,

[1:58:30] Bob Dobbs: who just died a few days ago.

[1:58:32] Bob Dobbs: Not like Jerry Springer's show that would have people jumping out of their chairs and physically attacking each other.

[1:58:39] Bob Dobbs: Content as individual bias was taking over a larger bias caused by a landscape such as the tactility of TV that no longer dominated its form.

[1:58:48] Bob Dobbs: So when people write articles on McLuhan now,

[1:58:51] Bob Dobbs: and have been doing it the last 25 years,

[1:58:53] Bob Dobbs: let's say since Wired,

[1:58:57] Bob Dobbs: they talk about form and how important it is compared to content.

[1:59:03] Bob Dobbs: What I'm doing here is I'm taking McLuhan and really wringing it out and getting rid of that cliche that form is more important than content.

[1:59:12] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying here you can't figure out what is the content.

[1:59:16] Bob Dobbs: Too much input and too much people being their own grounds.

[1:59:20] Bob Dobbs: So that's the effect,

[1:59:23] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[1:59:23] Bob Dobbs: or affect.

[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: I'd say that's the effect I'm trying to do there.

[1:59:28] Bob Dobbs: So the...

[1:59:30] Bob Dobbs: So at Jerry Springer's show,

[1:59:32] Bob Dobbs: people jumping around,

[1:59:35] Bob Dobbs: content as individual bias was taking over a larger bias caused by a landscape such as the tactility of TV that no longer dominated its form.

[1:59:44] Bob Dobbs: So you can see I'm trying to get at something interesting,

[1:59:47] Bob Dobbs: a new situation here.

[1:59:49] Bob Dobbs: Don't know if it's successful as I read it.

[1:59:52] Bob Dobbs: How could the wizard,

[1:59:55] Bob Dobbs: this is Frank's question.

[1:59:57] Bob Dobbs: How could The Wizard of Oz,

[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: Gone with the Wind,

[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: or La Dulce Vita be imagined apart from their medium's form,

[2:00:02] Bob Dobbs: which is edited and become fused with content?

[2:00:05] Bob Dobbs: No matter how spectacular the production values of a film,

[2:00:08] Bob Dobbs: the contents of that film consume it.

[2:00:11] Bob Dobbs: I don't think Frank gets the content-form merger.

[2:00:16] Bob Dobbs: He's using form as a part from content and saying they've come together.

[2:00:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm dealing with they long ago came together.

[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: And we're dealing with what McLuhan said,

[2:00:28] Bob Dobbs: many bizarre forms are coming.

[2:00:30] Bob Dobbs: So

[2:00:31] Bob Dobbs: I say that

[2:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Frank's quotation is a result of the efforts Zingrone was making in the late 80s to come up with a fifth Laws of Media.

[2:00:38] Bob Dobbs: By 1991,

[2:00:40] Bob Dobbs: he ends up with the fusion principle as the fifth law.

[2:00:43] Bob Dobbs: But Zingrone also was trying to describe new things that McLuhan missed.

[2:00:48] Bob Dobbs: This whole feature of content-consuming form is an aspect,

[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: but it's not the fifth law.

[2:00:53] Bob Dobbs: It's another angle on media moving out of the simpler formal dynamics of McLuhan's era.

[2:00:59] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,

[2:01:01] Bob Dobbs: this is like a scientific statement.

[2:01:03] Bob Dobbs: The voluntary ESP extension led to the flip in the mixed corporate media environment wherein the user is content now consumed form.

[2:01:11] Bob Dobbs: Hyperprojection became the norm.

[2:01:13] Bob Dobbs: So I was trying to explain how hyperprojection,

[2:01:16] Bob Dobbs: that's summing up what you thought was interesting before I did this last.

[2:01:22] Bob Dobbs: five minutes.

[2:01:24] Bob Dobbs: That's what I was trying to get to,

[2:01:26] Bob Dobbs: that people were creating the ground by projecting whatever content they were preferring.

[2:01:34] Bob Dobbs: And that causes infinite fragmentation.

[2:01:41] Cameron McEwen: But it turns out that fragmentation is itself a form.

[2:01:47] Cameron McEwen: So infinite fragmentation gets rid of fragmentation.

[2:01:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:01:54] Cameron McEwen: So that's,

[2:01:56] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[2:01:56] Cameron McEwen: where Nietzsche left us in 1889 was with nihilism,

[2:02:01] Cameron McEwen: and nihilism is the complete absence of everything.

[2:02:07] Bob Dobbs: And that's what my next quote is.

[2:02:10] Bob Dobbs: What you just said,

[2:02:11] Bob Dobbs: I say the mixed corporate media merged beehive environment,

[2:02:16] Bob Dobbs: involuntary,

[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: the hive mind,

[2:02:18] Bob Dobbs: involuntary ESP,

[2:02:20] Bob Dobbs: the global theater slash membrane environment of the 60s,

[2:02:23] Bob Dobbs: 70s,

[2:02:23] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[2:02:23] Bob Dobbs: that had to flip and it eventually reversed into fragmented voluntary ESP.

[2:02:29] Bob Dobbs: So what I've been doing here,

[2:02:30] Bob Dobbs: what I've been reading is getting into Android Meme Phase 2 where

[2:02:35] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about environmental technological effects.

[2:02:39] Bob Dobbs: without any references to senses.

[2:02:41] Bob Dobbs: So you begin with the non-sensory,

[2:02:43] Bob Dobbs: the ESP.

[2:02:45] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I'm doing here.

[2:02:46] Bob Dobbs: I'm establishing the ground,

[2:02:49] Bob Dobbs: let's say back in the 70s,

[2:02:51] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[2:02:51] Bob Dobbs: during the Global Membrane,

[2:02:53] Bob Dobbs: was a weird kind of collective knowing,

[2:02:56] Bob Dobbs: a collective consciousness,

[2:02:57] Bob Dobbs: a complex clairvoyance that McLuhan was asking us to get to and recognize and apply.

[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:03:04] Bob Dobbs: it's being applied,

[2:03:05] Bob Dobbs: but it becomes quite anarchistic or chaotic.

[2:03:09] Bob Dobbs: as more and more shrinking media allows everybody to be their own ground.

[2:03:15] Bob Dobbs: So that,

[2:03:16] Bob Dobbs: you see,

[2:03:17] Bob Dobbs: it's not an extension of the senses anymore.

[2:03:19] Bob Dobbs: You could say the ESP is tactility,

[2:03:22] Bob Dobbs: and that's a sense,

[2:03:23] Bob Dobbs: but it's just an interplay of senses.

[2:03:25] Bob Dobbs: And it may actually have frequencies that they'll be able to measure someday.

[2:03:30] Bob Dobbs: So does that explain to you what I'm trying to say here,

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: which you weren't getting?

[2:03:36] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:03:36] Cameron McEwen: I think so,

[2:03:37] Cameron McEwen: but notice how that gets...

[2:03:39] Cameron McEwen: back to what we said earlier about problems and solutions,

[2:03:43] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:03:44] Cameron McEwen: This infinite fragmentation,

[2:03:46] Cameron McEwen: this attempt of the individual to define things,

[2:03:54] Cameron McEwen: which is absurd because if the individual,

[2:04:00] Cameron McEwen: him or herself,

[2:04:01] Cameron McEwen: doesn't have definition,

[2:04:02] Cameron McEwen: how are they going to go about defining,

[2:04:05] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:04:06] Cameron McEwen: So you just end up with.

[2:04:08] Cameron McEwen: complete absurdity.

[2:04:10] Cameron McEwen: So that complete absurdity is the sort of problem out of which

[2:04:16] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan solutions emerge.

[2:04:19] Cameron McEwen: And if we don't allow those problems to be problems,

[2:04:24] Cameron McEwen: then we can't understand his solutions.

[2:04:26] Cameron McEwen: And modern or contemporary

[2:04:30] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan research or the the

[2:04:37] Cameron McEwen: What's it called,

[2:04:37] Cameron McEwen: the

[2:04:39] Cameron McEwen: EMA group?

[2:04:42] Bob Dobbs: MEA,

[2:04:43] Bob Dobbs: Media Ecology Association.

[2:04:44] Cameron McEwen: Or media ecology,

[2:04:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:04:46] Cameron McEwen: MEA,

[2:04:47] Cameron McEwen: sorry.

[2:04:49] Cameron McEwen: They exist by not taking McLuhan's problems as serious problems.

[2:04:55] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:04:55] Bob Dobbs: right.

[2:04:56] Cameron McEwen: And therefore,

[2:04:57] Cameron McEwen: they can't get the solutions.

[2:04:58] Cameron McEwen: So what you're doing here that I see is that you're trying to set up a way of seeing his

[2:05:06] Cameron McEwen: problems as problems.

[2:05:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:09] Cameron McEwen: Which is very important.

[2:05:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:12] Bob Dobbs: And

[2:05:13] Bob Dobbs: I'm establishing some science.

[2:05:16] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[2:05:17] Cameron McEwen: Science can only emerge out of those problems.

[2:05:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:05:20] Bob Dobbs: If people started saying,

[2:05:21] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:05:22] Bob Dobbs: we all got ESP and didn't make an issue,

[2:05:25] Bob Dobbs: a claim only special people had it.

[2:05:27] Bob Dobbs: We had it technologically.

[2:05:29] Bob Dobbs: That'd be an interesting point to begin with.

[2:05:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[2:05:33] Bob Dobbs: We all know everything.

[2:05:35] Bob Dobbs: We know what we're up to.

[2:05:36] Bob Dobbs: we're all about our unconscious is now figure and so we all got esp uh so what is there need to be said if we've all got esp what does it need to be pointed out what is the uh where do the strains and pressures come from because

[2:05:52] Bob Dobbs: they do come and we should be uh on the lookout on the say look when Marcel Duchamp was uh went to Andy warhol's factory uh

[2:06:04] Bob Dobbs: Warhol always put a camera in front of these celebrities,

[2:06:07] Bob Dobbs: and they had to stare at the camera and have a little confrontation with the effect of them looking at the camera filming them.

[2:06:14] Bob Dobbs: But Marcel Duchamp,

[2:06:15] Bob Dobbs: he didn't stare at the camera.

[2:06:17] Bob Dobbs: He kept looking off to the side,

[2:06:20] Bob Dobbs: making his eyes go back and forth,

[2:06:22] Bob Dobbs: over to the left,

[2:06:22] Bob Dobbs: over to the right.

[2:06:24] Bob Dobbs: Kind of like a paranoia thing.

[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: Like,

[2:06:26] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[2:06:26] Bob Dobbs: you've got me distracted looking at the camera.

[2:06:28] Bob Dobbs: What are you guys doing behind my back?

[2:06:31] Bob Dobbs: That's what

[2:06:33] Bob Dobbs: I think that's a good image of.

[2:06:35] Bob Dobbs: Lay out this new language,

[2:06:37] Bob Dobbs: the ESP,

[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: establish it as the ground,

[2:06:40] Bob Dobbs: and then you're left to look to the sides to see what's happening.

[2:06:44] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[2:06:46] Cameron McEwen: So

[2:06:47] Cameron McEwen: Deschamps was making an important statement.

[2:06:49] Cameron McEwen: He was saying the camera is a point of view,

[2:06:53] Cameron McEwen: but

[2:06:54] Cameron McEwen: I, as a pre-tribal awareness individual,

[2:07:00] Cameron McEwen: have points of view,

[2:07:01] Cameron McEwen: points plural.

[2:07:03] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[2:07:03] Cameron McEwen: And so the camera looks in one way,

[2:07:06] Cameron McEwen: but I look left,

[2:07:07] Cameron McEwen: I look right,

[2:07:08] Cameron McEwen: I look up,

[2:07:09] Cameron McEwen: I look down.

[2:07:10] Cameron McEwen: And what

[2:07:12] Cameron McEwen: I am is a...

[2:07:14] Cameron McEwen: a way of dealing with media,

[2:07:16] Cameron McEwen: plural,

[2:07:17] Cameron McEwen: whereas that camera is medium singular.

[2:07:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:07:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm not being seduced by it.

[2:07:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm not being numbed by it.

[2:07:25] Bob Dobbs: I'm staying outside of its effects.

[2:07:30] Bob Dobbs: So I just said the mixed corporate media merged beehive environment.

[2:07:33] Bob Dobbs: So the mixed corporate media beehive environment,

[2:07:36] Bob Dobbs: but it's merged,

[2:07:38] Bob Dobbs: involuntary ESP,

[2:07:39] Bob Dobbs: the Global Membrane environment,

[2:07:41] Bob Dobbs: 670s,

[2:07:41] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[2:07:42] Bob Dobbs: that had to flip.

[2:07:43] Bob Dobbs: It eventually reversed into fragmented voluntary ESP.

[2:07:50] Bob Dobbs: And the next quote is

[2:07:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Playboy.

[2:07:53] Bob Dobbs: This is the content one.

[2:07:55] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:07:56] Bob Dobbs: this is important.

[2:07:57] Cameron McEwen: But let's just,

[2:07:59] Cameron McEwen: for one second,

[2:08:00] Cameron McEwen: let's just look back at what you said in the blue stuff there.

[2:08:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:08:03] Cameron McEwen: Fragmented voluntary ESP.

[2:08:06] Cameron McEwen: Isn't that what we have in the media today?

[2:08:14] Cameron McEwen: The news has degenerated into whatever some person says it is.

[2:08:26] Cameron McEwen: So it's inherently fragmented,

[2:08:29] Cameron McEwen: but it's voluntary ESP because somebody has decided that.

[2:08:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:08:35] Bob Dobbs: we are integrated in the membrane aspect,

[2:08:37] Bob Dobbs: but then we spiral off like subatomic particles.

[2:08:41] Bob Dobbs: to create a fake fragmentation.

[2:08:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:08:45] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:08:46] Bob Dobbs: Fake news.

[2:08:49] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[2:08:49] Bob Dobbs: And so people say,

[2:08:50] Bob Dobbs: can we all get along?

[2:08:51] Bob Dobbs: We are getting along,

[2:08:52] Bob Dobbs: but we're not noticing the service environment to the EST is to create a little problem,

[2:09:00] Bob Dobbs: to make an issue out of something,

[2:09:02] Bob Dobbs: which is futile and will just end up people making money but becoming unhappy.

[2:09:11] Bob Dobbs: Isolated.

[2:09:12] Bob Dobbs: The new trend now,

[2:09:13] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if you've heard,

[2:09:15] Bob Dobbs: is to,

[2:09:16] Bob Dobbs: if you transgendered yourself,

[2:09:18] Bob Dobbs: is to get back to the non-trans.

[2:09:24] Bob Dobbs: They're taking drugs to get back to what they were before they got duped into the trend and started changing themselves.

[2:09:30] Bob Dobbs: That's a new fact.

[2:09:36] Bob Dobbs: It really is important.

[2:09:38] Bob Dobbs: I just think it's really important for people in high school to hear what we're saying.

[2:09:42] Bob Dobbs: Because they're not going to hear it anywhere else,

[2:09:44] Bob Dobbs: not in the way we go into it.

[2:09:46] Bob Dobbs: And they have an article they can look at.

[2:09:48] Bob Dobbs: If the luckier kids,

[2:09:51] Bob Dobbs: the ones who are just naturally attentive and interested in their lives,

[2:09:56] Bob Dobbs: if they heard this,

[2:09:57] Bob Dobbs: it would bring a bunch of words,

[2:10:00] Bob Dobbs: a science,

[2:10:01] Bob Dobbs: that they could rebut their parents with.

[2:10:05] Bob Dobbs: They make their parents have to get smarter if they could talk this way back to them.

[2:10:08] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: And I don't think it's that hard to understand if it's spelled out simply,

[2:10:17] Bob Dobbs: which I guess I'm trying to do here.

[2:10:20] Bob Dobbs: So you're looking at a,

[2:10:21] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:10:22] Bob Dobbs: Mao Zedong has a little red book or something in the 60s.

[2:10:24] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:10:28] Bob Dobbs: We need to do that with this fucking book.

[2:10:32] Bob Dobbs: Everybody wave.

[2:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Sure.

[2:10:34] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[2:10:34] Cameron McEwen: that's what my version of

[2:10:38] Cameron McEwen: Western civilization is,

[2:10:40] Cameron McEwen: that everybody who's smart is trying to come up with their little red book,

[2:10:45] Cameron McEwen: but nobody has done it yet.

[2:10:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:10:47] Bob Dobbs: so

[2:10:48] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and Gutenberg Galaxy,

[2:10:49] Bob Dobbs: he quoted Rabelais saying,

[2:10:51] Bob Dobbs: when I put out a book,

[2:10:52] Bob Dobbs: I demand everybody to put down their plow,

[2:10:55] Bob Dobbs: stop working,

[2:10:57] Bob Dobbs: and read my book and get it.

[2:10:59] Bob Dobbs: So he saw the projection,

[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: literate.

[2:11:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:11:04] Bob Dobbs: The printing press was you start to project over the society.

[2:11:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:11:08] Cameron McEwen: and that's like

[2:11:10] Cameron McEwen: Joyce talking about

[2:11:12] Cameron McEwen: Bloom's last thoughts as he falls asleep at night.

[2:11:17] Cameron McEwen: And it's the one advertisement that nobody can pass without getting the message,

[2:11:21] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:11:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:11:21] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:11:22] Cameron McEwen: And that's the same thing that you're talking about with

[2:11:30] Cameron McEwen: Montaigne. So...

[2:11:32] Bob Dobbs: With what?

[2:11:33] Bob Dobbs: Montaigne?

[2:11:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:11:36] Cameron McEwen: weren't you just talking...

[2:11:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:11:40] Bob Dobbs: what were the two words you said?

[2:11:42] Bob Dobbs: It wasn't Montaigne.

[2:11:43] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:11:43] Cameron McEwen: Montaigne.

[2:11:44] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[2:11:44] Bob Dobbs: Montaigne,

[2:11:44] Bob Dobbs: right,

[2:11:45] Bob Dobbs: yes.

[2:11:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[2:11:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:11:49] Cameron McEwen: so I'm just saying that what you're pointing out in the

[2:11:56] Cameron McEwen: 17th century France is perennial.

[2:12:02] Cameron McEwen: Joyce saw it,

[2:12:02] Cameron McEwen: Plato saw it.

[2:12:04] Cameron McEwen: Everybody sees the need to try to come up with a dialectic in Plato's terms,

[2:12:10] Cameron McEwen: where you can pass on what you're trying to say,

[2:12:14] Cameron McEwen: but nobody has found a way to do it.

[2:12:16] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:12:16] Bob Dobbs: it wasn't Montaigne was Rabelais I was quoting.

[2:12:19] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[2:12:19] Cameron McEwen: I'm sorry.

[2:12:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:12:20] Bob Dobbs: and Guttmer-Gauss.

[2:12:22] Bob Dobbs: So based on what you just said,

[2:12:26] Bob Dobbs: so many people are seeing what we're talking about.

[2:12:31] Bob Dobbs: They don't know how they got there,

[2:12:32] Bob Dobbs: but they're seeing it.

[2:12:34] Bob Dobbs: And so a lot of maybe the popularity of Jordan Peterson is people know that Jordan's not going to be able to come up with anything because he's using words.

[2:12:44] Bob Dobbs: So they watch him not understand what's going on,

[2:12:49] Bob Dobbs: not understanding the collective ESP at all,

[2:12:51] Bob Dobbs: the anonymous,

[2:12:52] Bob Dobbs: what he called them,

[2:12:53] Bob Dobbs: the moral majority.

[2:12:54] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan called them,

[2:12:56] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:12:57] Bob Dobbs: the great silent,

[2:12:57] Bob Dobbs: the silent majority in the early

[2:12:59] Bob Dobbs: 70s and arguing with

[2:13:02] Bob Dobbs: Austin or Auden,

[2:13:04] Bob Dobbs: the British poet in 1971,

[2:13:07] Bob Dobbs: that panel in Toronto that Bucky Fuller was on.

[2:13:10] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[2:13:12] Bob Dobbs: The audience is the employer,

[2:13:14] Bob Dobbs: he says in

[2:13:15] Bob Dobbs: Take Today.

[2:13:16] Bob Dobbs: The audience is the superior factor in the equation.

[2:13:21] Bob Dobbs: It's not dumb people being manipulated to become consumers.

[2:13:26] Bob Dobbs: That was the

[2:13:28] Bob Dobbs: 40s and 50s,

[2:13:29] Bob Dobbs: maybe the mall,

[2:13:30] Bob Dobbs: epitomizing the mall culture.

[2:13:32] Bob Dobbs: There's something has flipped,

[2:13:33] Bob Dobbs: and the audience is watching and judging whoever shows up on the stage with their opinions,

[2:13:40] Bob Dobbs: and they want to pick out

[2:13:42] Bob Dobbs: what that person does that overcomes the inevitable error of the fact they showed up on stage.

[2:13:51] Cameron McEwen: He calls that the consumer becoming the producer.

[2:13:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:13:56] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[2:13:57] Bob Dobbs: So that mandate of everybody being a producer,

[2:14:00] Bob Dobbs: the audience sits there and says,

[2:14:03] Bob Dobbs: that guy almost came up with a correction of his error.

[2:14:08] Bob Dobbs: That's where McLuhan says my fallacy is wrong.

[2:14:11] Bob Dobbs: The audience is deciding whose fallacy is wrong or right.

[2:14:15] Bob Dobbs: So it's quite reversed now in what's going on compared to how McLuhan described the audience.

[2:14:24] Bob Dobbs: So we have this content.

[2:14:26] Bob Dobbs: He says in Playboy magazine,

[2:14:28] Bob Dobbs: computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments.

[2:14:34] Bob Dobbs: So that's the Venezuelan thing,

[2:14:36] Bob Dobbs: which is happening naturally.

[2:14:38] Bob Dobbs: this is part of

[2:14:39] Bob Dobbs: electronic society,

[2:14:41] Bob Dobbs: the media ecology is being done,

[2:14:43] Bob Dobbs: but it's done crudely and with no interest in the effects.

[2:14:48] Bob Dobbs: Computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations.

[2:14:55] Bob Dobbs: The content of that programming,

[2:14:58] Bob Dobbs: and content is italicized,

[2:15:00] Bob Dobbs: the content of that programming,

[2:15:02] Bob Dobbs: however,

[2:15:02] Bob Dobbs: depends on the nature of future societies,

[2:15:05] Bob Dobbs: but that is in our own hands.

[2:15:07] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:15:08] Bob Dobbs: we were just all explaining how we took over the projection.

[2:15:11] Bob Dobbs: Ed comes out of that quote.

[2:15:13] Bob Dobbs: So that is McLuhan in 1968,

[2:15:17] Bob Dobbs: he gets published in 69,

[2:15:19] Bob Dobbs: establishing the reversal that has happened.

[2:15:22] Bob Dobbs: And you'll see him doing articles throughout the 70s like the media approach to inflation in

[2:15:29] Bob Dobbs: 1974, that New York Times op-ed.

[2:15:32] Cameron McEwen: So one way of putting this point is to go back.

[2:15:36] Cameron McEwen: to what we were talking about in the jungle where instead of just grunts going on that merge with all of the other noises that words are picked out.

[2:15:51] Bob Dobbs: That's the ESV.

[2:15:56] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:15:57] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[2:15:58] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[2:16:01] Cameron McEwen: The sensory perception is...

[2:16:07] Cameron McEwen: individual.

[2:16:07] Cameron McEwen: That's pre-tribal awareness.

[2:16:09] Cameron McEwen: And when the other person speaks,

[2:16:12] Cameron McEwen: that's external,

[2:16:14] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:16:15] Cameron McEwen: And that's what language is.

[2:16:16] Cameron McEwen: Language is extrasensory perception that is understood between the people in dialogue.

[2:16:26] Cameron McEwen: So what we see here with the word content italicized is that content,

[2:16:34] Cameron McEwen: when it's

[2:16:35] Cameron McEwen: individually defined prior to the individual definer having any reality,

[2:16:45] Cameron McEwen: that content completely falls apart and leaves us with nothing.

[2:16:50] Cameron McEwen: So what McLuhan is talking about here is how can we get content that is not nothing?

[2:16:59] Cameron McEwen: How not only can this happen in the future,

[2:17:03] Cameron McEwen: but how has it always happened in the past?

[2:17:07] Cameron McEwen: And that what could be called securing of content is the great demand put on life now.

[2:17:18] Cameron McEwen: How are we going to have news that's...

[2:17:20] Cameron McEwen: that is news instead of just manipulation.

[2:17:26] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[2:17:26] Cameron McEwen: So you can say that that securing of content is what McLuhan is all about.

[2:17:33] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[2:17:33] Bob Dobbs: not the securing of form,

[2:17:35] Bob Dobbs: which is what they thought he was saying in the

[2:17:37] Bob Dobbs: 60s.

[2:17:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah, but that's stupid,

[2:17:40] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:17:41] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[2:17:41] Cameron McEwen: if McLuhan says

[2:17:43] Cameron McEwen: TV is not visual,

[2:17:44] Cameron McEwen: it's tactile,

[2:17:46] Cameron McEwen: then of course the TV you see is not visual.

[2:17:48] Cameron McEwen: see over in the corner isn't what TV is.

[2:17:53] Cameron McEwen: So that means that he was never talking about form in the sense that,

[2:17:57] Cameron McEwen: oh,

[2:17:57] Cameron McEwen: you just look over there and there's the form.

[2:18:00] Cameron McEwen: He was talking about something very much more complicated.

[2:18:04] Cameron McEwen: And the biggest complication was that there would never be an idea of form that wasn't content.

[2:18:11] Cameron McEwen: There would never be an archetype that wasn't cliche.

[2:18:16] Cameron McEwen: That doesn't mean you can't have science.

[2:18:20] Bob Dobbs: So I wrote this article,

[2:18:22] Bob Dobbs: booklet,

[2:18:24] Bob Dobbs: to say McLuhan is important today,

[2:18:26] Bob Dobbs: but it's the McLuhan you never heard about because he flipped on himself and you didn't notice.

[2:18:33] Bob Dobbs: The people didn't notice that he flipped his,

[2:18:35] Bob Dobbs: and because here we are talking about content,

[2:18:38] Bob Dobbs: you bring in an old fogey of old McLuhan,

[2:18:41] Bob Dobbs: Madison Avenue,

[2:18:42] Bob Dobbs: and say,

[2:18:42] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:18:42] Bob Dobbs: what do you mean?

[2:18:43] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan never talked about content.

[2:18:44] Bob Dobbs: That wasn't important.

[2:18:45] Bob Dobbs: No,

[2:18:46] Bob Dobbs: the environment merged and the content became form.

[2:18:50] Bob Dobbs: So it's a both-and kind of situation.

[2:18:54] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.

[2:18:55] Cameron McEwen: So just think about the phrase,

[2:18:57] Cameron McEwen: the medium is the message,

[2:18:59] Cameron McEwen: right?

[2:19:00] Cameron McEwen: And so that can be taken in many,

[2:19:02] Cameron McEwen: many,

[2:19:03] Cameron McEwen: many different ways.

[2:19:04] Cameron McEwen: But the way that we're emphasizing right now is that the medium becomes the message.

[2:19:13] Cameron McEwen: There is no access.

[2:19:14] Cameron McEwen: to the medium except this message.

[2:19:16] Bob Dobbs: And the message is content.

[2:19:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:19:20] Bob Dobbs: The medium is the content.

[2:19:22] Bob Dobbs: So let's end at that point.

[2:19:25] Bob Dobbs: We've gone,

[2:19:26] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[2:19:26] Bob Dobbs: quite a long stretch here.

[2:19:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:19:29] Cameron McEwen: fine.

[2:19:29] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[2:19:30] Bob Dobbs: I think that's,

[2:19:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:19:33] Bob Dobbs: I'm looking at it.

[2:19:34] Bob Dobbs: We're getting close to the end.

[2:19:37] Bob Dobbs: It might take a couple of months,

[2:19:39] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:19:39] Bob Dobbs: many months maybe,

[2:19:40] Bob Dobbs: but

[2:19:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm quite far down on my bar.

[2:19:44] Bob Dobbs: I'm at page 141,

[2:19:46] Bob Dobbs: and it goes to 180.

[2:19:48] Bob Dobbs: That's another 40 pages,

[2:19:49] Bob Dobbs: so maybe it is a lot more.

[2:19:50] Bob Dobbs: But compared to how slow we were going and how we were at the top of the right-hand bar,

[2:19:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[2:19:58] Bob Dobbs: we're located way back there.

[2:20:01] Bob Dobbs: We've gotten down to the final lap.

[2:20:06] Cameron McEwen: We're getting into some interesting stuff,

[2:20:08] Cameron McEwen: so that's good.

[2:20:08] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:20:09] Bob Dobbs: this is the idea.

[2:20:11] Bob Dobbs: I did all the background to...

[2:20:14] Bob Dobbs: to show that even the Madison Avenue stuff missed out old obsolete McLuhan aspects that no one knew he was talking to.

[2:20:21] Bob Dobbs: Get that laid out.

[2:20:23] Bob Dobbs: Then I come into the problem,

[2:20:26] Bob Dobbs: which is where we're at now.

[2:20:28] Bob Dobbs: This problem of whatever,

[2:20:31] Bob Dobbs: what is the medium?

[2:20:31] Bob Dobbs: What's the message?

[2:20:32] Bob Dobbs: What's the content?

[2:20:34] Bob Dobbs: And who's involved?

[2:20:36] Bob Dobbs: And what's being extended?

[2:20:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anybody did that.

[2:20:41] Bob Dobbs: If people,

[2:20:42] Bob Dobbs: those people that

[2:20:44] Bob Dobbs: in the

[2:20:45] Bob Dobbs: 90s,

[2:20:47] Bob Dobbs: 2000s, they started to notice and had to deal with McLuhan because of Wired Magazine,

[2:20:51] Bob Dobbs: they would often say,

[2:20:52] Bob Dobbs: well,

[2:20:55] Bob Dobbs: we need something that's gone past McLuhan.

[2:20:58] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[2:20:58] Bob Dobbs: this is what went past McLuhan,

[2:21:00] Bob Dobbs: but it's pretty hard to get them to pay attention to it.

[2:21:04] Bob Dobbs: They didn't know where to go.

[2:21:06] Bob Dobbs: We need something to get past it,

[2:21:07] Bob Dobbs: but we haven't found anybody that's done that.

[2:21:12] Bob Dobbs: This might be...

[2:21:14] Cameron McEwen: All of these questions,

[2:21:16] Cameron McEwen: in order to be even addressed as questions,

[2:21:20] Cameron McEwen: require going Through the Vanishing Point.

[2:21:24] Cameron McEwen: And what people want to do with McLuhan or what people want to do about Ukraine or what people want to do about lawmaking or anything,

[2:21:33] Cameron McEwen: all of these things are ways of avoiding going Through the Vanishing Point.

[2:21:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[2:21:40] Bob Dobbs: Which includes the collective consciousness,

[2:21:43] Bob Dobbs: there's a knowing already.

[2:21:46] Bob Dobbs: We've been...

[2:21:48] Bob Dobbs: Massage into a collective where we're actually getting along quite well.

[2:21:55] Bob Dobbs: But the older analog media,

[2:22:01] Bob Dobbs: they want to stick with the rearview mirror because there you make money.

[2:22:06] Bob Dobbs: If you go through the vantage point,

[2:22:07] Bob Dobbs: there's no more money.

[2:22:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[2:22:10] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[2:22:11] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[2:22:11] Cameron McEwen: And this relates to

[2:22:13] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's communism,

[2:22:14] Cameron McEwen: et cetera,

[2:22:14] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.

[2:22:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[2:22:16] Bob Dobbs: the software communism.

[2:22:17] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:22:18] Bob Dobbs: so very good.

[2:22:21] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[2:22:24] Cameron McEwen: Top of 143 is where we start next time.

[2:22:28] Bob Dobbs: All right,

[2:22:28] Bob Dobbs: thanks for telling me how to get oriented.

[2:22:30] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[2:22:30] Bob Dobbs: We're going to get on 143.

[2:22:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[2:22:35] Bob Dobbs: the top of 143.

[2:22:37] Bob Dobbs: So thanks a lot,

[2:22:38] Bob Dobbs: Cameron.

[2:22:39] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[2:22:39] Cameron McEwen: you too,

[2:22:39] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[2:22:40] Bob Dobbs: And we'll talk soon.

[2:22:41] Cameron McEwen: Yes,

[2:22:41] Cameron McEwen: sir.

[2:22:42] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[2:22:42] Bob Dobbs: bye.

[2:22:43] Cameron McEwen: Bye-bye.