[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Hello,
[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Bob and Cameron,
[00:04] Bob Dobbs: Cameron McEwen and Bob Dobbs,
[00:06] Bob Dobbs: and we're starting episode number 70 in our series of trying to figure out what was Donald Trump?
[00:14] Bob Dobbs: What is he?
[00:15] Bob Dobbs: How is he connected to the tech body?
[00:18] Bob Dobbs: And so Cameron and I were already talking,
[00:21] Bob Dobbs: and make that point again,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: Cameron,
[00:24] Bob Dobbs: about how important it is to dialogue with some up-to-date physicists.
[00:30] Bob Dobbs: with McLuhan in mind.
[00:31] Bob Dobbs: I think that's what you were starting to say.
[00:33] Bob Dobbs: Can you say that again?
[00:35] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[00:35] Cameron McEwen: sure,
[00:35] Cameron McEwen: but I don't want to come across as somebody who claims to understand modern physics.
[00:44] Cameron McEwen: All
[00:45] Cameron McEwen: I am interested in at the moment is trying to see how broadly conceived fundamental physics is in particular essays,
[00:59] Cameron McEwen: and then um
[00:59] Cameron McEwen: try to critique them from a McLuhan point of view as being limited.
[01:08] Bob Dobbs: You said to me,
[01:09] Bob Dobbs: you think it's very important to do that.
[01:11] Bob Dobbs: I was telling you how I attempted to do that with Jack Sarfatti.
[01:17] Bob Dobbs: Now you're thinking of it.
[01:19] Bob Dobbs: It is something that if you have a good,
[01:24] Bob Dobbs: deep understanding of McLuhan,
[01:25] Bob Dobbs: you do come up to these questions about science and physics.
[01:29] Bob Dobbs: And how would they respond if you brought in a perspective that McLuhan had that does encompass matter and the changes in matter or changes or ideas of matter?
[01:42] Bob Dobbs: Would any scientist,
[01:44] Bob Dobbs: modern scientist,
[01:45] Bob Dobbs: be interested?
[01:46] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I tried to do with Jack.
[01:50] Bob Dobbs: I made up a formula based on the Android meme and sent it to him about 1999.
[01:57] Bob Dobbs: And he...
[01:58] Bob Dobbs: did not recognize any traditional mathematical terminology or formulaic letters.
[02:06] Bob Dobbs: So he said,
[02:07] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what to make of this.
[02:08] Bob Dobbs: So he's just polite.
[02:09] Bob Dobbs: Basically,
[02:09] Bob Dobbs: he probably thought it was ridiculous.
[02:11] Bob Dobbs: But you would support what I attempted to do there,
[02:15] Bob Dobbs: to open up a dialogue.
[02:16] Bob Dobbs: So tell me some more that you would say about that,
[02:21] Bob Dobbs: if you can.
[02:21] Bob Dobbs: How would you do it?
[02:23] Cameron McEwen: I think the fundamental thing is...
[02:28] Cameron McEwen: The question of whether the sort of stuff that McLuhan was doing could suggest new possibilities,
[02:39] Cameron McEwen: either for experimentation or for theoretization.
[02:45] Cameron McEwen: And all that a person like me can do,
[02:50] Cameron McEwen: I guess similar to what you were doing with
[02:53] Cameron McEwen: Jack, Yeah.
[02:54] Cameron McEwen: Is,
[02:55] Cameron McEwen: um,
[02:57] Cameron McEwen: um,
[02:57] Cameron McEwen: uh,
[02:57] Cameron McEwen: attempting to show how a particular formulation can be looked at in multiple ways and suggesting that those multiple ways may be suggestive.
[03:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[03:15] Bob Dobbs: like he said in Understanding Media or Gutenberg Galaxy,
[03:18] Bob Dobbs: that modern physics was trying to visualize the non-visualizable.
[03:25] Bob Dobbs: And that's a good statement to be in because,
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[03:27] Bob Dobbs: if the atom is in,
[03:29] Bob Dobbs: or the subatomic particle is in two places at the same time,
[03:32] Bob Dobbs: how do you visualize that?
[03:35] Bob Dobbs: And then how does a formula,
[03:37] Bob Dobbs: alphabetic derived formula,
[03:39] Bob Dobbs: do anything there?
[03:40] Bob Dobbs: So it's a simple statement.
[03:42] Bob Dobbs: I assume no physicist has ever thought about it or cared that he said that or understood him.
[03:48] Bob Dobbs: But would you begin with that kind of thinking?
[03:51] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[03:53] Cameron McEwen: No,
[03:53] Cameron McEwen: that's a good example.
[03:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan also said that about philosophy,
[03:58] Cameron McEwen: right?
[03:58] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[04:02] Cameron McEwen: People from Hegel on were trying to visualize the acoustic.
[04:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[04:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[04:11] Cameron McEwen: so it seems to me that it should be interesting to physicists to think along the lines that you were just...
[04:24] Cameron McEwen: suggesting that the ways in which people attempt to visualize things can be a useful exercise,
[04:42] Cameron McEwen: but visualization is inherently limited.
[04:48] Cameron McEwen: And so when McLuhan tried to think
[04:52] Cameron McEwen: Through the limits of visualization,
[04:55] Cameron McEwen: it may be that he came up with potential ways of thinking about physical problems that could be fertile.
[05:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[05:06] Cameron McEwen: So I don't know enough about physics to know that they would be fertile.
[05:10] Cameron McEwen: All I can do is suggest that possibility.
[05:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[05:14] Bob Dobbs: and I had an idea that just went through my head,
[05:16] Bob Dobbs: I remember,
[05:17] Bob Dobbs: but I can't get it right now.
[05:18] Bob Dobbs: So you were about the visualization.
[05:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[05:26] Bob Dobbs: if you're,
[05:26] Bob Dobbs: it's the subatomic,
[05:27] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[05:28] Bob Dobbs: this is what it is.
[05:29] Bob Dobbs: It's a quote,
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[05:30] Bob Dobbs: in Explorations where he talks about,
[05:33] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[05:33] Bob Dobbs: the time of the Renaissance,
[05:34] Bob Dobbs: Thank you.
[05:35] Bob Dobbs: the model of the body consisted of humors,
[05:39] Bob Dobbs: right?
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: You know what they are?
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[05:40] Bob Dobbs: sir.
[05:42] Bob Dobbs: And then he says something like,
[05:47] Bob Dobbs: and I keep thinking this,
[05:48] Bob Dobbs: it's in his first essay,
[05:50] Bob Dobbs: A Culture Without Literacy,
[05:52] Bob Dobbs: Volume 1.
[05:53] Bob Dobbs: If you have that sitting there,
[05:55] Bob Dobbs: you could look at that,
[05:56] Bob Dobbs: see if it's in the first couple of paragraphs.
[05:58] Bob Dobbs: So he goes through,
[06:00] Bob Dobbs: the printed book comes in,
[06:01] Bob Dobbs: And...
[06:03] Bob Dobbs: It changes the body image.
[06:06] Bob Dobbs: And then
[06:07] Bob Dobbs: I know the next one,
[06:08] Bob Dobbs: probably in the industrial era,
[06:10] Bob Dobbs: 19th century,
[06:11] Bob Dobbs: it becomes a pumping machine.
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[06:15] Bob Dobbs: that's levers,
[06:17] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[06:18] Bob Dobbs: kinetic technology.
[06:19] Bob Dobbs: So the body becomes a pumping machine.
[06:22] Bob Dobbs: And then as you get into the 20th century,
[06:24] Bob Dobbs: it becomes a bag of chemicals.
[06:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[06:28] Bob Dobbs: Does that quote sound familiar?
[06:30] Bob Dobbs: It goes through about four phases.
[06:32] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[06:33] Cameron McEwen: no,
[06:33] Cameron McEwen: it does sound familiar.
[06:35] Cameron McEwen: I wouldn't be able to identify where it is,
[06:39] Cameron McEwen: but you could be right that it's in the first explorations essay.
[06:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[06:45] Bob Dobbs: let me just see if I put a search,
[06:48] Bob Dobbs: bag of chemicals.
[06:50] Bob Dobbs: Let's just see if that brings up anything in my own computer.
[06:55] Bob Dobbs: Bag of chemicals.
[07:05] Bob Dobbs: No,
[07:05] Bob Dobbs: it says bag of chemicals,
[07:07] Bob Dobbs: but it didn't go to anything.
[07:16] Bob Dobbs: It's in this second.
[07:39] Bob Dobbs: No,
[07:40] Bob Dobbs: it didn't work.
[07:44] Bob Dobbs: So the point is that it becomes a bag of chemicals,
[07:47] Bob Dobbs: and that's the last image in science of the body,
[07:51] Bob Dobbs: and that leads to drugs.
[07:52] Bob Dobbs: IG Farben and all that stuff in the teens and
[07:56] Bob Dobbs: 20s, you know,
[07:58] Bob Dobbs: chemical takes over as a model.
[08:01] Bob Dobbs: But there's a body percept of what we're made up of,
[08:06] Bob Dobbs: our physics.
[08:07] Bob Dobbs: And it goes through changes due to the change in media.
[08:12] Bob Dobbs: So part of the reason of my Tiny Note chart,
[08:17] Bob Dobbs: if you look on it,
[08:18] Bob Dobbs: I've got a column of subatomic particles,
[08:20] Bob Dobbs: but beside them
[08:22] Bob Dobbs: I have changes in disease.
[08:26] Bob Dobbs: And they were what Carolyn discovered,
[08:28] Bob Dobbs: being a doctor starting in 79,
[08:30] Bob Dobbs: for the next 15 years,
[08:32] Bob Dobbs: there would become fads of ailments.
[08:36] Bob Dobbs: In the alternative medicine world,
[08:39] Bob Dobbs: people who were trying to avoid drugs and surgery,
[08:42] Bob Dobbs: so they,
[08:43] Bob Dobbs: like the first one was maybe hypoglycemia,
[08:46] Bob Dobbs: and then there's chronic fatigue,
[08:50] Bob Dobbs: environmental allergies,
[08:52] Bob Dobbs: immunity deficiencies.
[08:53] Bob Dobbs: These were fads that would be on the cover of Time magazine about,
[08:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[08:58] Bob Dobbs: every three years from 79 to early
[09:01] Bob Dobbs: 90s. So they're the image of the stress.
[09:05] Bob Dobbs: factors in body problems changed.
[09:08] Bob Dobbs: And of course,
[09:08] Bob Dobbs: there was such a rapidity of technologies in that period that the body image was always changing following McLuhan's suggestions,
[09:16] Bob Dobbs: right?
[09:17] Bob Dobbs: So as part of my Tiny Note chart is the changes in disease or in new problems.
[09:25] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[09:25] Bob Dobbs: if you're discarnate all the time,
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: electrified,
[09:27] Bob Dobbs: disembodied,
[09:29] Bob Dobbs: you might find the chemical body world irritating.
[09:34] Bob Dobbs: So you start developing allergies,
[09:37] Bob Dobbs: and it's psychosomatic due to the immediate effects.
[09:41] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying
[09:42] Bob Dobbs: I apply that to chemistry,
[09:44] Bob Dobbs: and you can apply it to physics,
[09:46] Bob Dobbs: because media affects nature or matter,
[09:50] Bob Dobbs: and it's embedded in matter from our brain's point of view.
[09:52] Bob Dobbs: So science has to consider the media constituents of the chemical elements that you go on about from 200 years ago.
[10:03] Bob Dobbs: They got the chemical elements,
[10:05] Bob Dobbs: they build a knowledge base with that,
[10:07] Bob Dobbs: and then you're suggesting we should bring in the media elements as new parts of what we're made up of.
[10:13] Bob Dobbs: And so physics is ignoring our new constituents.
[10:17] Bob Dobbs: at least on the textbook level,
[10:20] Bob Dobbs: right?
[10:21] Bob Dobbs: College textbook.
[10:22] Bob Dobbs: They might be doing all kinds of avant-garde stuff at
[10:25] Bob Dobbs: CERN or something.
[10:26] Bob Dobbs: But you follow what I'm saying?
[10:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying what?
[10:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[10:32] Cameron McEwen: I think I follow it,
[10:33] Cameron McEwen: but I think I also differ a bit in that
[10:39] Cameron McEwen: I'm thinking along the lines that all scientific theory,
[10:45] Cameron McEwen: So all theory in...
[10:47] Cameron McEwen: modern physics,
[10:49] Cameron McEwen: is itself media-driven.
[10:53] Cameron McEwen: So that says to me that if physicists became aware of the media through which they are thinking,
[11:04] Cameron McEwen: which isn't just one thing,
[11:05] Cameron McEwen: there's probably all sorts of different media takes within the physics community,
[11:12] Cameron McEwen: but if physicists were to factor that in,
[11:16] Cameron McEwen: They should be able to come up with new possibilities for either experiment or theory.
[11:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[11:25] Bob Dobbs: After
[11:27] Bob Dobbs: I did my chart in 1995,
[11:30] Bob Dobbs: the newest fad was called energy medicine.
[11:34] Bob Dobbs: And many people just thought they were an emanation of energy,
[11:40] Bob Dobbs: and they get deflated in their energy,
[11:44] Bob Dobbs: and they have to get something to...
[11:45] Bob Dobbs: boost their energy but they just thought of energy so as we got more uh ethereal or doing more with less or disembodied or holeopathic these terms i use of we didn't have a body percept by the year 2000 none
[12:01] Bob Dobbs: of the not no visual frameworks used were used anymore that's why people were doing acupuncture and and rolfing and all these different things that stimulated energy so we had become a node of energy Thank you.
[12:14] Bob Dobbs: was the final body image I had when we were thinking of it.
[12:17] Bob Dobbs: And that was the expression of life in the Internet.
[12:23] Bob Dobbs: And then what happened to physics?
[12:26] Bob Dobbs: Their visualization models fell apart.
[12:29] Bob Dobbs: They got as far as the quantum,
[12:30] Bob Dobbs: never really got anything stable there.
[12:33] Bob Dobbs: They don't even know if they could,
[12:35] Bob Dobbs: and maybe they knew they couldn't.
[12:36] Bob Dobbs: So what comes up is string theory,
[12:39] Bob Dobbs: which is based on acoustic space.
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: So we...
[12:43] Bob Dobbs: completely moved out of visualization.
[12:47] Bob Dobbs: And we're moving into tactile nodes of energy,
[12:51] Bob Dobbs: but that would not become an art form or rearview mirror content of a new ground right away.
[12:57] Bob Dobbs: What would happen would be the acoustic phase after the retrieval of acoustics,
[13:01] Bob Dobbs: the radio effect.
[13:03] Bob Dobbs: The acoustic effect would be what would shape physicist's thinking.
[13:09] Bob Dobbs: So why did string theory become popular?
[13:12] Bob Dobbs: And something that the old scientists would say,
[13:15] Bob Dobbs: this stuff's ridiculous.
[13:16] Bob Dobbs: They don't have any experiments.
[13:17] Bob Dobbs: They have no models of anything.
[13:20] Bob Dobbs: They don't have any visual space is what the old guys would complain about.
[13:24] Bob Dobbs: But the guy,
[13:25] Bob Dobbs: I forget his name,
[13:26] Bob Dobbs: he carried on having a certain authority in modern physics.
[13:32] Bob Dobbs: And if you ever heard of this guy,
[13:34] Bob Dobbs: Eric Weinstein,
[13:35] Bob Dobbs: does that mean anything to you?
[13:37] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[13:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[13:40] Bob Dobbs: He's on a campaign.
[13:41] Bob Dobbs: And maybe he would.
[13:42] Bob Dobbs: be interested.
[13:42] Bob Dobbs: He's on a campaign to say that physics has become completely corrupt.
[13:47] Bob Dobbs: And he's been interviewed on
[13:49] Bob Dobbs: Joe Rogan and a few other places about this.
[13:52] Bob Dobbs: Maybe you've seen them.
[13:53] Bob Dobbs: But he runs through the various icons,
[13:56] Bob Dobbs: including the string theory guy,
[13:58] Bob Dobbs: and he says there's something fraudulently going on there.
[14:02] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't know it,
[14:03] Bob Dobbs: but he's ready to see there needs to...
[14:06] Bob Dobbs: He says we've got to do something new.
[14:08] Bob Dobbs: It's not working anymore.
[14:10] Bob Dobbs: That's rape.
[14:10] Bob Dobbs: our time to enter,
[14:12] Bob Dobbs: right?
[14:13] Bob Dobbs: Tell Eric,
[14:13] Bob Dobbs: this is what you're looking for.
[14:16] Bob Dobbs: But I thought it was nice and cute that they are doing acoustic space because it's been so lodged in us with our musical,
[14:26] Bob Dobbs: we live entirely by music today,
[14:28] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan said,
[14:29] Bob Dobbs: that that is the main means of knowing for people.
[14:33] Bob Dobbs: They live tactile in the chip body,
[14:36] Bob Dobbs: but their anchor is acoustic space.
[14:38] Bob Dobbs: So physics adapts.
[14:40] Bob Dobbs: And it's called string theory.
[14:44] Bob Dobbs: They describe it as an acoustic kind of stuff.
[14:46] Bob Dobbs: Did you know that?
[14:48] Cameron McEwen: No.
[14:49] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[14:49] Bob Dobbs: it's not visualizable,
[14:51] Bob Dobbs: what they're doing,
[14:51] Bob Dobbs: which bugs the quantum.
[14:52] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[14:52] Cameron McEwen: for sure it's not visualizable.
[14:55] Cameron McEwen: It's n-dimensional.
[14:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[14:58] Bob Dobbs: So we're making progress here.
[15:02] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[15:02] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[15:03] Cameron McEwen: Let's see,
[15:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan main point from the very beginning was that
[15:10] Cameron McEwen: You never can understand one of these modes of experience without understanding them all.
[15:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[15:18] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[15:19] Cameron McEwen: So it's a little bit like saying,
[15:20] Cameron McEwen: well,
[15:21] Cameron McEwen: can I understand salt if I don't understand sugar?
[15:25] Cameron McEwen: And the answer is no,
[15:26] Cameron McEwen: you can't.
[15:28] Cameron McEwen: Because in order to really understand salt,
[15:31] Cameron McEwen: you have to understand chemistry.
[15:32] Cameron McEwen: And once you understand chemistry,
[15:34] Cameron McEwen: you can understand sugar.
[15:36] Cameron McEwen: And that's the same thing with acoustic and visual space.
[15:40] Cameron McEwen: If you are only thinking in acoustic space,
[15:44] Cameron McEwen: you don't understand acoustic space.
[15:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[15:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[15:47] Bob Dobbs: you have to juxtapose the ratios and parallel images,
[15:53] Bob Dobbs: parallel sensory structures.
[15:56] Bob Dobbs: So...
[15:58] Bob Dobbs: That was McLuhan's secret agenda.
[16:00] Bob Dobbs: He implied it.
[16:01] Bob Dobbs: He said James Joyce's discoveries are way more important than Einstein's.
[16:05] Bob Dobbs: You remember that sentence?
[16:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[16:07] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[16:07] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[16:08] Cameron McEwen: And he said that his own discoveries were more important than DNA.
[16:14] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[16:15] Bob Dobbs: And they both happened the same year,
[16:17] Bob Dobbs: 53.
[16:19] Bob Dobbs: You ever notice that pattern?
[16:20] Bob Dobbs: He gets the grant and gets explorations going in 53.
[16:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[16:25] Bob Dobbs: And,
[16:26] Bob Dobbs: um...
[16:27] Bob Dobbs: That's when he was ready to go public and put the world on.
[16:30] Bob Dobbs: And that's the same year for DNA discovery,
[16:32] Bob Dobbs: like Crick and Watson.
[16:34] Bob Dobbs: So that's interesting,
[16:37] Bob Dobbs: 53.
[16:38] Bob Dobbs: And it's also symbolized by Stalin dying.
[16:41] Bob Dobbs: That changed the politics of the world.
[16:43] Bob Dobbs: And there's a lot of other stuff that happened in 53.
[16:46] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[16:46] Cameron McEwen: So,
[16:47] Cameron McEwen: for example,
[16:48] Cameron McEwen: Bob,
[16:50] Cameron McEwen: that's when
[16:51] Cameron McEwen: Hans Selye published an essay in Explorations.
[16:56] Cameron McEwen: That was in Explorations number one.
[17:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[17:00] Bob Dobbs: the stress theory.
[17:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[17:02] Cameron McEwen: So in
[17:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan essay on stress in Explorations eight,
[17:10] Cameron McEwen: he has the following to say.
[17:13] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[17:14] Cameron McEwen: the Greek view of the body as package of organs.
[17:17] Cameron McEwen: Ah,
[17:17] Bob Dobbs: you found it.
[17:19] Cameron McEwen: That's it.
[17:20] Bob Dobbs: That's it.
[17:21] Cameron McEwen: At the Renaissance.
[17:22] Cameron McEwen: No,
[17:23] Bob Dobbs: no,
[17:23] Bob Dobbs: no.
[17:23] Bob Dobbs: I interrupted.
[17:24] Bob Dobbs: Start again.
[17:24] Bob Dobbs: It's a very important quote.
[17:27] Cameron McEwen: The Greek view of the body as package of organs and humors got cut down at the Renaissance to a view of the body as a pumping station.
[17:36] Cameron McEwen: Then with the rise of chemistry in the
[17:38] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[17:40] Cameron McEwen: the body became a chemistry factory.
[17:42] Cameron McEwen: Everybody was loaded with germs.
[17:45] Cameron McEwen: But the rise of field theory in physics now has its medical counterpart in Dr.
[17:52] Cameron McEwen: Hans Selye's worldview.
[17:54] Bob Dobbs: Holy shit,
[17:54] Bob Dobbs: I forgot about that.
[17:55] Bob Dobbs: as the punchline,
[17:57] Bob Dobbs: the fourth phase,
[17:58] Bob Dobbs: or the modern phase.
[17:59] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty amazing.
[18:00] Bob Dobbs: So what,
[18:01] Bob Dobbs: did you suddenly remember what I was thinking of,
[18:03] Bob Dobbs: or did you just start looking at it?
[18:05] Bob Dobbs: How did you find it?
[18:06] Bob Dobbs: No,
[18:08] Cameron McEwen: I found it by looking for humors,
[18:12] Cameron McEwen: and I had to use humor with both the Canadian and the American spelling,
[18:19] Cameron McEwen: and then I got it.
[18:21] Bob Dobbs: So you had that quote in your files?
[18:25] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[18:25] Bob Dobbs: Awesome.
[18:26] Bob Dobbs: You're not even looking at the book.
[18:28] Cameron McEwen: No,
[18:29] Cameron McEwen: I'm looking at the little essay on stress.
[18:32] Bob Dobbs: But see,
[18:32] Bob Dobbs: that's a really important quote.
[18:34] Bob Dobbs: That shows you the figure of ground that what we're talking about,
[18:36] Bob Dobbs: that would apply to physics and any science.
[18:40] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[18:41] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[18:42] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[18:43] Cameron McEwen: So in
[18:47] Cameron McEwen: Selye's work,
[18:50] Cameron McEwen: as quoted by McLuhan,
[18:53] Cameron McEwen: what happens is you have
[18:55] Cameron McEwen: pre-existent possibilities and then the body kind of play kind of what oh
[19:10] Bob Dobbs: wait wait you've flipped out cameron you've you've flipped out i missed the last 15 seconds so say that again sorry i i don't think i changed the phone but i may have um what i was saying is that
[19:23] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's view of consciousness is either taken from Selye or at least is consonant with Selye.
[19:32] Cameron McEwen: Because both start with pre-existing structures and then they understand what they're looking at.
[19:43] Cameron McEwen: In
[19:44] Cameron McEwen: Selye's case,
[19:46] Cameron McEwen: it's the health of the body.
[19:49] Cameron McEwen: And in McLuhan's case,
[19:50] Cameron McEwen: it's consciousness.
[19:53] Cameron McEwen: Understanding Media.
[19:54] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[19:54] Bob Dobbs: the health of the body politic.
[19:57] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[19:59] Cameron McEwen: But both of them stress that there are pre-existent structures.
[20:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[20:05] Bob Dobbs: Would that be affecting preceding causes?
[20:11] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[20:13] Cameron McEwen: the pre-existing structures necessarily have effects.
[20:21] Cameron McEwen: And the way that human beings operate is that they nearly always deal with effects not knowing that they are effects.
[20:31] Cameron McEwen: And the great revolutions in thought happens when somebody exercises pattern recognition and they say,
[20:39] Cameron McEwen: wait a minute,
[20:40] Cameron McEwen: these are...
[20:40] Cameron McEwen: effects that we've already seen actually came from a cause which we haven't seen yet.
[20:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[20:48] Bob Dobbs: good.
[20:49] Bob Dobbs: So the stress thing,
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah,
[20:53] Bob Dobbs: so by the
[20:55] Bob Dobbs: 80s, it was a big fad of being a stress coach.
[21:02] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[21:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[21:03] Bob Dobbs: a lot of people were under stress.
[21:05] Bob Dobbs: That was the beginning of becoming an energy node,
[21:08] Bob Dobbs: but they were coming out of the chemical body image.
[21:11] Bob Dobbs: And they were moving discarnate,
[21:12] Bob Dobbs: and now they're a bundle of stresses,
[21:15] Bob Dobbs: which was really just McLuhan's ratios.
[21:17] Bob Dobbs: And a lot of people had stress.
[21:21] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people quit their jobs because they had stress.
[21:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't have stress on the chart,
[21:26] Bob Dobbs: but stress is like more general,
[21:28] Bob Dobbs: not the particular chronic fatigue or environmental allergies,
[21:31] Bob Dobbs: but they come from stress.
[21:33] Cameron McEwen: Stress is actually another word for medium.
[21:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[21:38] Bob Dobbs: it's a...
[21:40] Bob Dobbs: Dynamic symmetry of tensions among proportions.
[21:43] Bob Dobbs: Isn't that that phrase?
[21:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:45] Bob Dobbs: Dynamic symmetry of tensions among proportions.
[21:49] Bob Dobbs: And that's the definition of life,
[21:52] Bob Dobbs: of your being.
[21:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[21:57] Bob Dobbs: So we're talking about changes in the body image,
[22:01] Bob Dobbs: changes in matter image.
[22:04] Bob Dobbs: What about out in space?
[22:06] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[22:06] Bob Dobbs: quasars and...
[22:08] Bob Dobbs: Whatever they got out there.
[22:10] Bob Dobbs: What was the evolution of imagery that the astronomers came up with over the last hundred years?
[22:15] Bob Dobbs: I wonder if you could map that onto different media phases.
[22:21] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[22:21] Cameron McEwen: definitely,
[22:22] Cameron McEwen: definitely.
[22:23] Cameron McEwen: So one thing that's very interesting is the whole question of black holes.
[22:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[22:31] Cameron McEwen: And everybody's interested in black holes.
[22:34] Cameron McEwen: Everybody knows that there's something about black holes that...
[22:38] Cameron McEwen: have to do with their own life and with their own destiny and all this sort of stuff.
[22:43] Cameron McEwen: But black holes are structural elements in the universe that cannot be brought
[22:58] Cameron McEwen: into any single field.
[23:02] Cameron McEwen: They fall between fields.
[23:04] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[23:05] Cameron McEwen: And that is...
[23:08] Cameron McEwen: Very much of a
[23:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan idea that you could say the medium of media is a black hole.
[23:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[23:21] Bob Dobbs: now,
[23:22] Bob Dobbs: would you know what the color of tactility is?
[23:25] Cameron McEwen: The color of tactility?
[23:27] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[23:28] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[23:29] Cameron McEwen: one color he suggests is black.
[23:31] Bob Dobbs: That's right,
[23:32] Bob Dobbs: black.
[23:33] Bob Dobbs: And,
[23:33] Bob Dobbs: of course,
[23:34] Bob Dobbs: we're in the global theater.
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:36] Bob Dobbs: there's intervals everywhere.
[23:38] Bob Dobbs: Intervals become dominant.
[23:40] Bob Dobbs: And the astronomers projected that into space as black holes,
[23:44] Bob Dobbs: black tactility.
[23:47] Bob Dobbs: And then it became dark matter,
[23:48] Bob Dobbs: same thing.
[23:50] Bob Dobbs: It's talking about the extension of tactility.
[23:54] Bob Dobbs: So I forgot that.
[23:55] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[23:55] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking,
[23:56] Bob Dobbs: what are the astronomical things?
[23:57] Bob Dobbs: I forgot about you brought up black holes.
[23:59] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[23:59] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[24:00] Bob Dobbs: the black of tactility.
[24:02] Bob Dobbs: So I remember thinking that.
[24:03] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[24:03] Bob Dobbs: so we got that covered.
[24:04] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[24:05] Bob Dobbs: what else is,
[24:05] Bob Dobbs: what other knowledge bases are there?
[24:08] Bob Dobbs: Is weather,
[24:10] Bob Dobbs: how they judge weather,
[24:12] Bob Dobbs: climate,
[24:13] Bob Dobbs: climate change.
[24:15] Bob Dobbs: That's just the shifting of the environments that we become aware of in our
[24:21] Bob Dobbs: Android meme quantum fluctuations.
[24:25] Bob Dobbs: Everybody knows that the only constant today is change.
[24:28] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[24:28] Cameron McEwen: well,
[24:29] Cameron McEwen: climate change is just one example of pollution.
[24:32] Cameron McEwen: And pollution,
[24:34] Cameron McEwen: according to
[24:35] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan's ideas,
[24:37] Cameron McEwen: arose through satellite technology,
[24:41] Cameron McEwen: where we had an opportunity to look back on the Earth as a whole.
[24:45] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[24:45] Bob Dobbs: and then pollution are rear-view mirror disservices.
[24:50] Bob Dobbs: There may be services in it that we don't see.
[24:55] Bob Dobbs: You're projecting old images of nature to think it's a disaster.
[24:59] Bob Dobbs: So we can maybe relax about climate change,
[25:02] Bob Dobbs: applying McLuhan to where that fad of perception came from.
[25:07] Bob Dobbs: So what's we're talking about?
[25:08] Bob Dobbs: Fads of perception that come out of the general media that's in use,
[25:13] Bob Dobbs: and then it ripples across the board in all forms of knowledge,
[25:17] Bob Dobbs: in all categories,
[25:18] Bob Dobbs: and in business and everything,
[25:20] Bob Dobbs: and everybody is doing the same.
[25:21] Bob Dobbs: They're all talking black holes,
[25:23] Bob Dobbs: like you just said.
[25:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[25:25] Cameron McEwen: And of course,
[25:27] Cameron McEwen: one of McLuhan great interests in the
[25:29] Cameron McEwen: 50s was art theory.
[25:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[25:32] Cameron McEwen: And art theory applies to all this because starting in the
[25:40] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[25:42] Cameron McEwen: instead of people looking at individual styles,
[25:46] Cameron McEwen: they started to look at the question of plural styles.
[25:51] Cameron McEwen: And that's really what we're looking at.
[25:53] Cameron McEwen: If we're looking at the different...
[25:54] Cameron McEwen: images that succeed one another and compete with one another in the different disciplines.
[26:01] Cameron McEwen: What we're really talking about is the whole question of style in all of these disciplines and what the question of style can suggest about everything.
[26:16] Cameron McEwen: And
[26:17] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan great contribution to the question of style is that all styles
[26:24] Cameron McEwen: can be formulated in terms of their middles,
[26:27] Cameron McEwen: that is to say in terms of their media.
[26:30] Cameron McEwen: So media theory is the question of a general theory of styles,
[26:40] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[26:41] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[26:41] Bob Dobbs: So what did you mean by plural style in the 19th century?
[26:47] Cameron McEwen: Plural theory?
[26:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[26:49] Cameron McEwen: so people became aware that as...
[26:55] Cameron McEwen: As there was speed up and as the world came to be consolidated into highly confused front pages,
[27:08] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[27:11] Cameron McEwen: it became obvious to everybody that the question of style was not a question of what is the best style or what style should we have.
[27:23] Cameron McEwen: They had to consider styles plural.
[27:25] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[27:26] Cameron McEwen: They had to consider the fact that there were all sorts of different styles.
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[27:31] Bob Dobbs: relativity of styles.
[27:33] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[27:33] Cameron McEwen: And this then,
[27:34] Cameron McEwen: this led to a whole new anthropology where people would look at primitive cultures not as something that we need to look at chronologically as something that has only been surpassed.
[27:50] Cameron McEwen: We need to look at them as a style of
[27:53] Cameron McEwen: cognition,
[27:54] Cameron McEwen: a style of being in the world.
[27:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[27:57] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[27:58] Bob Dobbs: A style of stress,
[27:59] Bob Dobbs: perceptual stress.
[28:01] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[28:02] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.
[28:03] Cameron McEwen: Absolutely.
[28:04] Bob Dobbs: So listen to this.
[28:04] Bob Dobbs: So I'm reading a lot of Wyndham Lewis,
[28:07] Bob Dobbs: and he is the figure of this.
[28:09] Bob Dobbs: He went through so many,
[28:13] Bob Dobbs: he didn't join the movements,
[28:14] Bob Dobbs: but he studied every art movement,
[28:16] Bob Dobbs: like starting off with Impressionism,
[28:18] Bob Dobbs: and then Cubism,
[28:19] Bob Dobbs: and then Expressionism,
[28:21] Bob Dobbs: and then...
[28:22] Bob Dobbs: Futurism was in there.
[28:24] Cameron McEwen: Surrealism.
[28:26] Bob Dobbs: Surrealism and Dada and whatever else.
[28:30] Bob Dobbs: Starting in the teens,
[28:31] Bob Dobbs: he would become aware of these things because he got kicked out of Slade School in 1901.
[28:38] Bob Dobbs: So he spent the next seven years wandering around Europe and became aware of all these art things that were just starting,
[28:45] Bob Dobbs: the beginning of modernism,
[28:46] Bob Dobbs: I guess you would call it.
[28:48] Bob Dobbs: And his buddies back in school,
[28:50] Bob Dobbs: they didn't know about this stuff.
[28:52] Bob Dobbs: So he came back to London in late 1908,
[28:56] Bob Dobbs: and he started to write a novel about art,
[29:01] Bob Dobbs: his experience in these cities.
[29:03] Bob Dobbs: So it's based in
[29:05] Bob Dobbs: Paris. It's called Tarr,
[29:07] Bob Dobbs: and it's the interplay of a German artist,
[29:09] Bob Dobbs: an English artist based on him,
[29:11] Bob Dobbs: and he's Tarr,
[29:12] Bob Dobbs: and then a Russian female artist,
[29:14] Bob Dobbs: and maybe a French artist,
[29:16] Bob Dobbs: and someone else.
[29:18] Bob Dobbs: The book didn't come out until after World War I,
[29:20] Bob Dobbs: about 1918,
[29:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[29:22] Bob Dobbs: at the end there.
[29:25] Bob Dobbs: But then as people were reading it in the 20s,
[29:26] Bob Dobbs: they said,
[29:27] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[29:27] Bob Dobbs: this is a metaphor for the
[29:30] Bob Dobbs: European countries interacting with each other before World War I and the tensions between them.
[29:36] Bob Dobbs: And he had anthropomorphized it into these artists.
[29:40] Bob Dobbs: So he begins by studying the artist.
[29:43] Bob Dobbs: That's his portrait of the artist as a young man,
[29:46] Bob Dobbs: which comes out late.
[29:47] Bob Dobbs: Two years after Joyce's,
[29:49] Bob Dobbs: and Joyce's portrait is in 1916.
[29:52] Bob Dobbs: So from that point on,
[29:53] Bob Dobbs: because he had a head start on all the art movements,
[29:55] Bob Dobbs: he was ready for any changes that happened.
[29:58] Bob Dobbs: in Europe.
[29:59] Bob Dobbs: So he monitored them all and he would react to them.
[30:02] Bob Dobbs: And Blast was in 1914 a reaction.
[30:05] Bob Dobbs: But you track him through the 20s and 30s and 40s,
[30:07] Bob Dobbs: he's analyzing philosophy,
[30:09] Bob Dobbs: trends,
[30:10] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of things.
[30:11] Bob Dobbs: But one of the main things is art theory and you get to see what the art theory was if you read Lewis on many books by him and he'll be dealing with an art theory and then he'll give its bias and then his position,
[30:26] Bob Dobbs: his bias or
[30:28] Bob Dobbs: counter environment.
[30:29] Bob Dobbs: So as you were talking,
[30:30] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking Lewis was the first to do this in art theory.
[30:35] Bob Dobbs: There were enough changes.
[30:37] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: in the 19th century,
[30:38] Bob Dobbs: there weren't that many changes,
[30:39] Bob Dobbs: but there were enough changes,
[30:40] Bob Dobbs: and he was tracking the stresses of it,
[30:43] Bob Dobbs: and therefore,
[30:43] Bob Dobbs: he's a major figure in the foundation of media ecology,
[30:47] Bob Dobbs: and he did it through art theory.
[30:48] Bob Dobbs: He showed the changes,
[30:50] Bob Dobbs: and he kept adapting,
[30:51] Bob Dobbs: adjusting,
[30:53] Bob Dobbs: reacting,
[30:54] Bob Dobbs: and so people thought,
[30:55] Bob Dobbs: well,
[30:56] Bob Dobbs: This guy,
[30:56] Bob Dobbs: he jumped all over the place.
[30:57] Bob Dobbs: Like,
[30:58] Bob Dobbs: what was he about?
[30:59] Bob Dobbs: And they can't figure out what his opinion was.
[31:02] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan wrote a review of Lewis in Renaissance,
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[31:05] Bob Dobbs: in the 50s,
[31:06] Bob Dobbs: saying that you have to understand that Lewis didn't have a point of view.
[31:10] Bob Dobbs: He was just reacting with whatever new perceptions he could have to what was happening around him,
[31:16] Bob Dobbs: to the stresses in the art world.
[31:19] Bob Dobbs: So Wyndham Lewis,
[31:20] Bob Dobbs: right now,
[31:21] Bob Dobbs: I'm reading Lewis,
[31:22] Bob Dobbs: so it's prominent in my head,
[31:24] Bob Dobbs: reading a lot of his books.
[31:25] Bob Dobbs: And he's doing what you were just saying,
[31:28] Bob Dobbs: looking at the plurality of style that was happening and trying to find the causes.
[31:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[31:36] Cameron McEwen: And he was doing it in literature.
[31:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[31:40] Cameron McEwen: Maybe his painting could be related.
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: I don't know enough.
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[31:44] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[31:46] Bob Dobbs: His painting is just...
[31:47] Bob Dobbs: They were parallel.
[31:48] Bob Dobbs: His painting was a translation of his novels.
[31:52] Bob Dobbs: books,
[31:53] Bob Dobbs: and his books were a translation of his painting.
[31:54] Bob Dobbs: They were totally interpenetrating.
[31:57] Cameron McEwen: Have you looked into the difference between the different editions of TAR?
[32:02] Bob Dobbs: No,
[32:03] Bob Dobbs: I have not read the later version,
[32:05] Bob Dobbs: 1928,
[32:07] Bob Dobbs: and I haven't read the later version of Enemy of the Stars.
[32:10] Bob Dobbs: No,
[32:10] Bob Dobbs: I haven't done those.
[32:11] Bob Dobbs: I'm just doing them for the first time.
[32:14] Cameron McEwen: Uh-huh.
[32:16] Cameron McEwen: But
[32:17] Cameron McEwen: I wanted to point out that there was a lot of work
[32:22] Bob Dobbs: going on in especially in europe um on uh theory of science so well that was a new trend right so there's so many yeah because there was change people started to look at this um have a
[32:40] Bob Dobbs: figure ground perspective and so it marxist guys were doing it you know conservative thinkers were doing the whole range were doing the same thing so Marshall McLuhan would say Okay.
[32:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[32:49] Bob Dobbs: Lewis was a figure for the British critics,
[32:52] Bob Dobbs: and name all the guys around Europe.
[32:55] Bob Dobbs: They're all reacting to radio and movies,
[32:59] Bob Dobbs: automobiles.
[33:00] Bob Dobbs: That media mix made Culture Is Our Business happen faster and turn over faster.
[33:08] Bob Dobbs: So they were forced to have a more detached perspective.
[33:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[33:15] Cameron McEwen: just by being alive.
[33:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[33:20] Cameron McEwen: One of his interesting suggestions is that the effect of being alive as new things are invented comes
[33:34] Cameron McEwen: way before any idea of where those effects come from.
[33:41] Cameron McEwen: But just by being alive in 1910,
[33:45] Cameron McEwen: let's say,
[33:46] Cameron McEwen: you have to be aware of cars.
[33:49] Cameron McEwen: for the first time.
[33:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[33:50] Cameron McEwen: And because you don't want to be hit by them or you notice the changes that they're making to the city,
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: et cetera,
[33:57] Cameron McEwen: et cetera.
[33:59] Cameron McEwen: And so that drives a change in consciousness that revolves around a new consciousness of change itself.
[34:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[34:16] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[34:17] Cameron McEwen: So,
[34:17] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[34:17] Cameron McEwen: that's...
[34:18] Cameron McEwen: That's sort of McLuhan's reading of modern times right there.
[34:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[34:22] Bob Dobbs: he had a theory of transformation,
[34:24] Bob Dobbs: not transportation.
[34:27] Bob Dobbs: The changes,
[34:28] Bob Dobbs: people get to the point,
[34:29] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[34:30] Bob Dobbs: by the 70s or 80s,
[34:31] Bob Dobbs: the cliche was the only cost in our lives is change.
[34:33] Bob Dobbs: So that's what everybody is used to.
[34:36] Bob Dobbs: But
[34:37] Bob Dobbs: Joyce and them,
[34:39] Bob Dobbs: and there's a very good
[34:41] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan student named Vincent Sherry.
[34:43] Bob Dobbs: Have I ever mentioned him to you?
[34:47] Cameron McEwen: You may have.
[34:47] Cameron McEwen: The name is familiar to me.
[34:49] Cameron McEwen: He was a literary scholar,
[34:50] Cameron McEwen: wasn't he?
[34:51] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[34:52] Bob Dobbs: and he was a student of McLuhan,
[34:53] Bob Dobbs: but he taught in Pennsylvania someplace,
[34:56] Bob Dobbs: and he's written a lot of books about the 1914 period.
[34:59] Bob Dobbs: He did one on
[35:00] Bob Dobbs: Pound and
[35:05] Bob Dobbs: Lewis and Radical Modernism.
[35:07] Bob Dobbs: But he did a book on
[35:10] Bob Dobbs: World War
[35:11] Bob Dobbs: I, and the shock to Eliot and Joyce and everybody is...
[35:15] Bob Dobbs: the British government trying to justify this ridiculous warfare in the trenches and create meaning for the population,
[35:23] Bob Dobbs: they had to,
[35:24] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[35:25] Bob Dobbs: lie all the time.
[35:26] Bob Dobbs: They had to change their policies or change their opinions.
[35:29] Bob Dobbs: And no one had witnessed a government changing themselves so much over that four-year period that it became,
[35:37] Bob Dobbs: it looked corrupt.
[35:39] Bob Dobbs: And so his thesis is that
[35:41] Bob Dobbs: Eliot,
[35:42] Bob Dobbs: Pound, you know,
[35:43] Bob Dobbs: the men of 1914.
[35:44] Bob Dobbs: were so influenced and noticed these changes that it changed their art.
[35:49] Bob Dobbs: So they brought in change as a part of their art more,
[35:53] Bob Dobbs: like in Ulysses or in Finnegans Wake or in the Cantos or in Lewis's writing and Eliot.
[35:59] Bob Dobbs: They are registering the new confusion caused by the rapidity of World War I,
[36:07] Bob Dobbs: which was really not what was going on in the trenches.
[36:12] Bob Dobbs: The real war was the software war of authorities trying to keep in charge and define as if there's a purpose to that.
[36:19] Bob Dobbs: Hardware war.
[36:20] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?
[36:21] Bob Dobbs: The real war was software war in World War I.
[36:25] Cameron McEwen: And that story is still going on today in spades.
[36:29] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[36:30] Bob Dobbs: No,
[36:30] Bob Dobbs: in the extremists.
[36:31] Cameron McEwen: Especially in England.
[36:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[36:34] Bob Dobbs: In the establishment.
[36:36] Cameron McEwen: Ludicrous.
[36:40] Bob Dobbs: So Vincent lays out,
[36:41] Bob Dobbs: he shows you the positions of the government,
[36:43] Bob Dobbs: the prime minister,
[36:44] Bob Dobbs: 10 Downing Street,
[36:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[36:46] Bob Dobbs: what they said in 1914,
[36:47] Bob Dobbs: how they had different stuff in 15 and then changed again in 16.
[36:51] Bob Dobbs: And this is a serious thing.
[36:54] Bob Dobbs: People are associated in a hardware war and there are people dying.
[36:57] Bob Dobbs: And the government has,
[36:58] Bob Dobbs: doesn't even know,
[37:00] Bob Dobbs: well,
[37:01] Bob Dobbs: you can't figure out why they're doing it.
[37:02] Bob Dobbs: Why are we doing this?
[37:04] Bob Dobbs: Because the government had to change with all the rapid changes that were multi-changing.
[37:08] Bob Dobbs: pluralizing right in front of everybody.
[37:10] Bob Dobbs: So the revolution in culture really happened in World War I.
[37:20] Bob Dobbs: That's when these guys like Joyce changed Ulysses halfway through the war,
[37:24] Bob Dobbs: partly influenced by
[37:28] Bob Dobbs: Lewis's theater called Enemy of the Stars,
[37:32] Bob Dobbs: which was in blast.
[37:34] Bob Dobbs: That was the most radical,
[37:36] Bob Dobbs: crazy,
[37:37] Bob Dobbs: extreme form of...
[37:38] Bob Dobbs: theater that nobody knew how to produce,
[37:40] Bob Dobbs: how to make it theater.
[37:41] Bob Dobbs: They couldn't visualize it,
[37:43] Bob Dobbs: but it became a model for Waiting for Godot and all kinds of things that a lot of people were influenced by that part of Blast,
[37:50] Bob Dobbs: what he did.
[37:51] Bob Dobbs: But he was anticipating the hallucinatory quality of changes that were going to happen to the public from 1914 to 1918.
[38:02] Bob Dobbs: So there's your stress theory.
[38:04] Bob Dobbs: So I'm responding to what you said.
[38:06] Bob Dobbs: You said
[38:07] Bob Dobbs: There's change,
[38:08] Bob Dobbs: becoming aware of change.
[38:10] Bob Dobbs: What were you saying there?
[38:11] Bob Dobbs: I think you finished it,
[38:12] Bob Dobbs: but that's what I was responding to.
[38:15] Bob Dobbs: Vincent Sherry,
[38:16] Bob Dobbs: a student of McLuhan,
[38:17] Bob Dobbs: he learned something from McLuhan.
[38:19] Bob Dobbs: He applied it to the 1914 era.
[38:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[38:26] Bob Dobbs: So you were saying people became aware of change more and more due to technologies.
[38:31] Bob Dobbs: In many ways,
[38:33] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was writing.
[38:37] Bob Dobbs: a description of how people were living.
[38:42] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was going through these media changes that he has in different chapters in Understanding Media.
[38:47] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was being an instinctive media ecologist.
[38:51] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[38:52] Cameron McEwen: Just to be alive.
[38:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: there it is.
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[38:54] Bob Dobbs: just to be alive is what you start off saying.
[38:57] Bob Dobbs: You had to become a media ecologist.
[38:58] Bob Dobbs: You're very crude,
[39:00] Bob Dobbs: and you see that Lewis stands out.
[39:03] Bob Dobbs: He was a little more on top of it than even Joyce and Pound and Eliot.
[39:08] Bob Dobbs: And so he confused people,
[39:10] Bob Dobbs: and he got,
[39:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[39:12] Bob Dobbs: considered to be a very antisocial person,
[39:16] Bob Dobbs: because he would be honest about the changes that were happening.
[39:20] Bob Dobbs: So you get to that famous line,
[39:21] Bob Dobbs: I've told you many times,
[39:23] Bob Dobbs: in 1929,
[39:24] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[39:24] Bob Dobbs: I'm part fascist,
[39:26] Bob Dobbs: part communist,
[39:27] Bob Dobbs: a Marxist with morals,
[39:29] Bob Dobbs: and an anarchist with a healthy passion for order.
[39:35] Bob Dobbs: That's a perfect description.
[39:37] Bob Dobbs: what was happening to the citizen,
[39:38] Bob Dobbs: though they would not understand that.
[39:40] Bob Dobbs: One of the symptoms is,
[39:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan said,
[39:43] Bob Dobbs: people...
[39:44] Bob Dobbs: By 1910,
[39:46] Bob Dobbs: they thought they needed an audience.
[39:49] Bob Dobbs: That's the audience participating,
[39:50] Bob Dobbs: and they've got all kinds of new thoughts and emotions,
[39:53] Bob Dobbs: so they need an audience.
[39:55] Bob Dobbs: So they went to this guy who provided a couch you'd lie on,
[39:58] Bob Dobbs: and you would talk,
[40:00] Bob Dobbs: and you had an audience,
[40:00] Bob Dobbs: a psychiatrist.
[40:03] Bob Dobbs: That was the popularity of Freud,
[40:05] Bob Dobbs: was due to people needing an audience.
[40:08] Bob Dobbs: They never did that before.
[40:13] Bob Dobbs: That's media ecology.
[40:15] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was always photographed lying on the couch.
[40:20] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[40:22] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[40:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm inclined to say here that
[40:27] Cameron McEwen: Lewis himself never got entirely comfortable with what he could see.
[40:33] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[40:34] Cameron McEwen: He had a very difficult personality.
[40:37] Cameron McEwen: But McLuhan,
[40:38] Cameron McEwen: you could say,
[40:40] Cameron McEwen: is the guy who saw what Lewis saw.
[40:42] Cameron McEwen: and didn't let it bother him.
[40:45] Bob Dobbs: He completed Lewis.
[40:47] Bob Dobbs: And so in the Wyndham Lewis Society that I'm part of,
[40:50] Bob Dobbs: I told you,
[40:51] Bob Dobbs: we have a monthly reading group.
[40:53] Bob Dobbs: We do
[40:54] Bob Dobbs: Lewis's books.
[40:55] Bob Dobbs: And that's probably why I'm reading Lewis now for this group.
[40:59] Bob Dobbs: The two main guys,
[41:03] Bob Dobbs: if
[41:05] Bob Dobbs: I do it or no one else does,
[41:07] Bob Dobbs: but if McLuhan gets hinted at,
[41:10] Bob Dobbs: then these two guys,
[41:11] Bob Dobbs: who started,
[41:12] Bob Dobbs: they were the first guys to do a PhD on McLuhan,
[41:15] Bob Dobbs: on
[41:15] Bob Dobbs: Lewis in the late 60s,
[41:17] Bob Dobbs: early 70s,
[41:19] Bob Dobbs: and they're real authorities on Lewis now.
[41:23] Bob Dobbs: If McLuhan comes up,
[41:24] Bob Dobbs: they go,
[41:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[41:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[41:26] Bob Dobbs: here's an idea that McLuhan ripped off Lewis.
[41:28] Bob Dobbs: Every time,
[41:31] Bob Dobbs: whatever new idea,
[41:32] Bob Dobbs: and then I started pointing things out,
[41:34] Bob Dobbs: and they say,
[41:34] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[41:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan ripped off Lewis on that one.
[41:37] Bob Dobbs: They see.
[41:39] Bob Dobbs: They don't see,
[41:40] Bob Dobbs: they haven't read enough McLuhan to see the vast vistas of McLuhan,
[41:44] Bob Dobbs: way beyond Lewis.
[41:46] Bob Dobbs: But it came from Lewis,
[41:47] Bob Dobbs: as Marshall said,
[41:48] Bob Dobbs: but he completed it.
[41:50] Bob Dobbs: He made it more unemotional.
[41:54] Bob Dobbs: It was like done.
[41:55] Bob Dobbs: What Lewis was struggling in,
[41:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan came and picked up the corpses and picked up the pieces of Lewis'
[42:03] Bob Dobbs: brain and redid it again more comprehensively.
[42:07] Bob Dobbs: But they cannot see that.
[42:10] Bob Dobbs: I'm not allowed to bring up McLuhan very much before they start saying,
[42:14] Bob Dobbs: Come on.
[42:16] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[42:17] Bob Dobbs: he did Lewis badly,
[42:18] Bob Dobbs: they say.
[42:21] Bob Dobbs: So it's a pretty interesting little drama where I'm sitting there,
[42:25] Bob Dobbs: and they know my life with McLuhan,
[42:27] Bob Dobbs: and they wait for me to say something.
[42:29] Bob Dobbs: But I'm cagey.
[42:30] Bob Dobbs: I don't say nothing until they're not ready.
[42:33] Bob Dobbs: Or when they're not there,
[42:34] Bob Dobbs: sometimes they miss a meeting,
[42:35] Bob Dobbs: and they're not there,
[42:36] Bob Dobbs: and I'll lay it all out.
[42:37] Bob Dobbs: Then the people report,
[42:38] Bob Dobbs: well,
[42:39] Bob Dobbs: Bob was telling us all this great stuff,
[42:41] Bob Dobbs: and you missed it all.
[42:44] Bob Dobbs: So it's a matter of sneaking it in,
[42:46] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[42:48] Bob Dobbs: So I'm doing media ecology right there with the group,
[42:53] Bob Dobbs: with me and McLuhan Ecology.
[42:55] Bob Dobbs: I'm careful how I bring it up because I don't want to get kicked out.
[42:59] Bob Dobbs: And so I agree completely what you said about
[43:06] Bob Dobbs: Lewis.
[43:07] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan.
[43:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[43:09] Bob Dobbs: he even explains in that essay,
[43:12] Bob Dobbs: in The Electric Light,
[43:14] Bob Dobbs: 1959,
[43:17] Bob Dobbs: he's talking to his community,
[43:19] Bob Dobbs: the Basilians,
[43:21] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about how Lewis was a cool writer,
[43:26] Bob Dobbs: but he was up against
[43:28] Bob Dobbs: Protestant majority in the 20s and
[43:30] Bob Dobbs: 30s, and he couldn't harness the Protestant fury.
[43:34] Bob Dobbs: He couldn't be hot enough,
[43:36] Bob Dobbs: so it never worked.
[43:37] Bob Dobbs: Then McLuhan recognized,
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: well,
[43:38] Bob Dobbs: the world has flipped.
[43:39] Bob Dobbs: It's not hot anymore.
[43:41] Bob Dobbs: It's cool in the
[43:42] Bob Dobbs: 60s, thanks to TV.
[43:44] Bob Dobbs: So then he said,
[43:45] Bob Dobbs: now's the time to do Lewis and be cool,
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: right?
[43:48] Bob Dobbs: So he acted out Lewis coolly without all the animosity Lewis suffered.
[43:55] Bob Dobbs: It was the right time to do Lewis.
[43:57] Bob Dobbs: And he does say in this article in Atlantic Monthly,
[44:00] Bob Dobbs: December 69,
[44:02] Bob Dobbs: he ends by saying,
[44:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[44:03] Bob Dobbs: Lewis is an artist,
[44:04] Bob Dobbs: a giant,
[44:06] Bob Dobbs: who's...
[44:07] Bob Dobbs: carapace of art forms we can admire today.
[44:12] Bob Dobbs: And then he also says,
[44:14] Bob Dobbs: bless the student.
[44:15] Bob Dobbs: What a lucky person if he discovers
[44:17] Bob Dobbs: Lewis. But there was another point.
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[44:19] Bob Dobbs: he says that
[44:21] Bob Dobbs: Lewis's art has the qualities,
[44:26] Bob Dobbs: his painting,
[44:27] Bob Dobbs: of the cool effect of television.
[44:30] Bob Dobbs: It's a cool art.
[44:31] Bob Dobbs: And I don't think any...
[44:33] Bob Dobbs: I've read different,
[44:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[44:34] Bob Dobbs: critics on Lewis's art.
[44:36] Bob Dobbs: They don't know that.
[44:37] Bob Dobbs: They don't know that he was expressing
[44:40] Bob Dobbs: TV sensibility in his art.
[44:43] Bob Dobbs: TV wasn't even around when he was happening.
[44:46] Bob Dobbs: But it's a pretty good statement by Marshall,
[44:49] Bob Dobbs: that he's a cool,
[44:50] Bob Dobbs: tactile quality.
[44:51] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[44:51] Bob Dobbs: he once wrote to
[44:53] Bob Dobbs: Sheila Watson in the mid-60s.
[44:55] Bob Dobbs: He had a big insight.
[44:56] Bob Dobbs: He probably called her and woke her up.
[44:59] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[45:00] Bob Dobbs: I just realized that Lewis,
[45:02] Bob Dobbs: when he's talking about the values of the eye versus the acoustic values of time,
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[45:08] Bob Dobbs: space versus time,
[45:10] Bob Dobbs: and he was a space guy,
[45:11] Bob Dobbs: which he called eye.
[45:13] Bob Dobbs: And
[45:14] Bob Dobbs: E-Y-E. And McLuhan says,
[45:16] Bob Dobbs: I just realized that what he called eye,
[45:19] Bob Dobbs: he thought it was visual.
[45:21] Bob Dobbs: But he was actually describing the eye as tactile.
[45:26] Bob Dobbs: The tactile eye.
[45:28] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember that letter?
[45:30] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen it?
[45:31] Cameron McEwen: Vaguely.
[45:32] Cameron McEwen: Vaguely.
[45:32] Cameron McEwen: It's really important.
[45:34] Cameron McEwen: It's an important,
[45:35] Cameron McEwen: oh yeah,
[45:35] Cameron McEwen: it's very important.
[45:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[45:37] Bob Dobbs: he pointed out,
[45:38] Bob Dobbs: he realized that,
[45:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[45:40] Bob Dobbs: let's say by 1965.
[45:42] Bob Dobbs: thinking about Sheila Watson's PhD on Lewis.
[45:45] Bob Dobbs: That happened in 65.
[45:47] Bob Dobbs: And he said,
[45:47] Bob Dobbs: hey,
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: here,
[45:48] Bob Dobbs: I just realized this,
[45:49] Bob Dobbs: focusing on Lewis,
[45:50] Bob Dobbs: that he was talking about tactility in visual space or through the eye.
[45:55] Bob Dobbs: And that's why four years later,
[45:57] Bob Dobbs: in 69,
[45:58] Bob Dobbs: he says that he's matured the insight and said,
[46:01] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[46:02] Bob Dobbs: Lewis was a TV artist.
[46:04] Bob Dobbs: He was cool.
[46:05] Bob Dobbs: Tactile eye.
[46:06] Cameron McEwen: What's going on in McLuhan's mind,
[46:09] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[46:10] Cameron McEwen: is that Um,
[46:11] Cameron McEwen: In 1960,
[46:14] Cameron McEwen: he thought that the acoustic was the ground of things.
[46:21] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[46:23] Cameron McEwen: And he had to learn in the
[46:26] Cameron McEwen: 1960s that the acoustic and the visual needed to be thought together via tactility.
[46:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[46:33] Cameron McEwen: And so what he's seeing in Lewis is what he himself had to learn.
[46:39] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[46:40] Bob Dobbs: He was projecting what he was discovering.
[46:43] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[46:43] Bob Dobbs: And since he got so much of it from Lewis,
[46:46] Bob Dobbs: he had to go back to see,
[46:47] Bob Dobbs: well,
[46:47] Bob Dobbs: did Lewis get it?
[46:48] Bob Dobbs: Remember how he and Eric,
[46:49] Bob Dobbs: they said they'd get an insight,
[46:51] Bob Dobbs: and then they'd go check Finnegans Wake to see if it's in there,
[46:53] Bob Dobbs: and they often found it there?
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[46:55] Bob Dobbs: he had to check with Lewis because that was his personal mentor sort of thing on one level.
[47:00] Bob Dobbs: So,
[47:01] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[47:01] Bob Dobbs: he had to go back and change what Lewis had discovered.
[47:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[47:05] Cameron McEwen: So for our conversation and for your own...
[47:09] Cameron McEwen: conversations with the Lewis people.
[47:13] Cameron McEwen: Let me just read you a couple sentences from the
[47:18] Cameron McEwen: Project 69.
[47:21] Cameron McEwen: So this would have been written in 1959,
[47:24] Cameron McEwen: probably,
[47:25] Cameron McEwen: and then was part of the project when it was submitted in 1960.
[47:32] Cameron McEwen: So he says,
[47:33] Cameron McEwen: in 1915,
[47:35] Cameron McEwen: Heinrich Wölfflin published his Principles of art history.
[47:39] Cameron McEwen: which has since then revolutionized the study of many matters besides art.
[47:45] Cameron McEwen: This entire approach confirms what I discovered about media.
[47:49] Cameron McEwen: The effect of the thing is what counts,
[47:52] Cameron McEwen: not the sensuous facts.
[47:56] Cameron McEwen: Switching attention to effects away from the sensuous facts highlighted that the visual is,
[48:03] Cameron McEwen: in effect,
[48:04] Cameron McEwen: very tactile,
[48:06] Cameron McEwen: resonant,
[48:07] Cameron McEwen: and auditory.
[48:08] Bob Dobbs: Wow.
[48:09] Cameron McEwen: So that's an amazing statement in
[48:12] Bob Dobbs: 1960. Right.
[48:14] Bob Dobbs: In other words,
[48:14] Bob Dobbs: he tells Sheila he discovers about Lewis in 1965 or so,
[48:18] Bob Dobbs: but no,
[48:19] Bob Dobbs: he discovered it eight years before secretly.
[48:23] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[48:23] Cameron McEwen: But notice that before you were talking about the importance of the year 1915.
[48:30] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[48:30] Cameron McEwen: You were talking about the importance of it for Lewis,
[48:33] Cameron McEwen: for Joyce.
[48:34] Cameron McEwen: And for Wölfflin.
[48:37] Cameron McEwen: And so.
[48:38] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[48:38] Cameron McEwen: and Wölfflin,
[48:39] Cameron McEwen: what was he doing in the principles of art history?
[48:41] Cameron McEwen: He was looking at styles.
[48:45] Cameron McEwen: He was looking at dominance within art history and trying to understand how the dominance worked with each other.
[48:53] Cameron McEwen: And Wölfflin was the professor,
[48:56] Cameron McEwen: the mentor of Giedion.
[48:58] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[48:59] Cameron McEwen: Giedion was met by McLuhan in the same year that he met Lewis.
[49:04] Cameron McEwen: So the whole of 19...
[49:07] Cameron McEwen: of the decade of the
[49:09] Cameron McEwen: 1940s was dominated for
[49:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan trying to think through
[49:14] Cameron McEwen: Lewis and Giedion together.
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[49:17] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[49:18] Bob Dobbs: who's the guy,
[49:19] Bob Dobbs: the art critic who did
[49:21] Bob Dobbs: The Problem of Form back then at the time of Wölfflin?
[49:25] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[49:27] Cameron McEwen: that was right around the turn of the century.
[49:30] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[49:31] Bob Dobbs: another famous name.
[49:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[49:34] Cameron McEwen: Of course,
[49:34] Cameron McEwen: we can't think of it right now.
[49:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[49:35] Cameron McEwen: I think it starts with
[49:37] Cameron McEwen: H.
[49:38] Cameron McEwen: Oh, Hildebrand.
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[49:40] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand.
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[49:41] Bob Dobbs: so just the...
[49:44] Bob Dobbs: Last week in the latest meeting,
[49:47] Bob Dobbs: I was going to bring up this point about the discovery of tactility by our criticism,
[49:54] Bob Dobbs: and I couldn't remember whether it was Wölfflin or the other guy.
[49:58] Bob Dobbs: So I held back because I didn't want to say the wrong critic because someone there might have known.
[50:03] Cameron McEwen: You were killed upon.
[50:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[50:05] Bob Dobbs: so now I'll next time present it because I got it clarified with your help here.
[50:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[50:10] Bob Dobbs: that Wölfflin point,
[50:11] Bob Dobbs: and also Berenson.
[50:12] Bob Dobbs: Berenson says something back then.
[50:14] Bob Dobbs: He says,
[50:16] Bob Dobbs: looking for the what?
[50:17] Bob Dobbs: The tactile aspects of retinal impressions?
[50:20] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that quote?
[50:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[50:22] Cameron McEwen: yes.
[50:23] Cameron McEwen: Right at the end of one of his essays.
[50:25] Cameron McEwen: And
[50:26] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan quotes it somewhere.
[50:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[50:28] Bob Dobbs: and that's another guy discovering this tactile factor.
[50:32] Bob Dobbs: The word had a bit of vogue in the teens,
[50:36] Bob Dobbs: I guess,
[50:37] Bob Dobbs: right?
[50:37] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[50:38] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[50:39] Cameron McEwen: or even earlier.
[50:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[50:40] Bob Dobbs: With Hildebrand,
[50:42] Bob Dobbs: he has a chapter,
[50:42] Bob Dobbs: I think he even has the word tactile in the chapter titles.
[50:47] Bob Dobbs: So yeah,
[50:48] Bob Dobbs: Berenson,
[50:49] Bob Dobbs: Wölfflin,
[50:50] Bob Dobbs: and Hildebrand are important.
[50:51] Bob Dobbs: And now,
[50:53] Bob Dobbs: why did we bring this?
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: Oh yeah,
[50:55] Bob Dobbs: so the tactile eye.
[50:57] Bob Dobbs: So I didn't notice that quote that you're quoting there.
[51:00] Bob Dobbs: That's really,
[51:01] Bob Dobbs: what page is that in Project 69?
[51:04] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[51:05] Cameron McEwen: I don't even know the section it's in.
[51:07] Cameron McEwen: I just,
[51:08] Cameron McEwen: I...
[51:09] Cameron McEwen: Oftentimes in the blog,
[51:11] Cameron McEwen: what I do is
[51:13] Cameron McEwen: I just mention the overall title because
[51:16] Cameron McEwen: I don't want people just to mine the quotation.
[51:23] Cameron McEwen: I want them to look up the whole essay or the whole book.
[51:26] Cameron McEwen: And so here
[51:28] Cameron McEwen: I don't document where it comes from.
[51:31] Cameron McEwen: I can look it up,
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: though,
[51:32] Cameron McEwen: and in the course of our conversation,
[51:35] Cameron McEwen: I'll let you know.
[51:36] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[51:36] Bob Dobbs: and what...
[51:39] Bob Dobbs: When did you quote it?
[51:40] Bob Dobbs: How recently?
[51:42] Bob Dobbs: In your blog?
[51:44] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[51:44] Cameron McEwen: I probably quoted it a number of times,
[51:46] Cameron McEwen: but this particular blog was written in February 2018.
[51:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[51:52] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[51:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm talking about the Sheila Watson letter.
[51:56] Bob Dobbs: I think it's in the book.
[51:57] Bob Dobbs: Do you remember it?
[52:00] Cameron McEwen: In the book,
[52:00] Cameron McEwen: you mean letters?
[52:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[52:02] Bob Dobbs: where he talks about his discovery,
[52:04] Bob Dobbs: the tactile eye.
[52:06] Bob Dobbs: So you already knew about that.
[52:07] Bob Dobbs: and knew this previous quote from
[52:11] Cameron McEwen: 1960. Yes,
[52:13] Cameron McEwen: but...
[52:13] Cameron McEwen: But nobody's ever talked to you about it.
[52:15] Cameron McEwen: I can't keep all these things in mind at the same time.
[52:19] Cameron McEwen: That's why I have to record it in the blog,
[52:21] Cameron McEwen: and then I can forget about it.
[52:25] Bob Dobbs: So,
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[52:30] Bob Dobbs: we've never discussed that,
[52:31] Bob Dobbs: the tactile eye,
[52:32] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.
[52:34] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[52:34] Cameron McEwen: So here's a quote for you from...
[52:37] Cameron McEwen: Inside the Five-Cent Censorium.
[52:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:39] Cameron McEwen: I know that one.
[52:39] Cameron McEwen: 1961.
[52:42] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[52:43] Cameron McEwen: The art historian Heinrich Wölfflin taught the Hildebrand stress on visual forms as haptic or tangible tactile.
[52:52] Bob Dobbs: Wow.
[52:53] Bob Dobbs: But what is it?
[52:54] Bob Dobbs: I thought you said he taught it?
[52:56] Bob Dobbs: Read the sentence again.
[52:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[52:58] Cameron McEwen: the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin taught the Hildebrand stress on visual forms as haptic or tangible tactile.
[53:07] Cameron McEwen: And Wölfflin's pupil,
[53:09] Cameron McEwen: Siegfried Giedion,
[53:11] Cameron McEwen: embodied it in his space,
[53:13] Cameron McEwen: time,
[53:13] Cameron McEwen: and architecture.
[53:14] Bob Dobbs: Wow,
[53:15] Bob Dobbs: there's a really important chain there.
[53:18] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand,
[53:19] Bob Dobbs: he taught
[53:20] Bob Dobbs: Wölfflin?
[53:22] Cameron McEwen: No, they were contemporaries.
[53:24] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[53:24] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[53:25] Bob Dobbs: But
[53:26] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand got there first?
[53:30] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[53:30] Cameron McEwen: in terms of tactility,
[53:32] Cameron McEwen: perhaps.
[53:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[53:33] Cameron McEwen: but the...
[53:37] Cameron McEwen: I think for
[53:39] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, the central influence is Giedion.
[53:44] Cameron McEwen: And then Giedion goes back to these other figures.
[53:48] Bob Dobbs: So you've got,
[53:49] Bob Dobbs: for those listening,
[53:50] Bob Dobbs: here's the sequence.
[53:51] Bob Dobbs: Very important.
[53:52] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand,
[53:53] Bob Dobbs: Wölfflin,
[53:54] Bob Dobbs: Giedion.
[53:56] Bob Dobbs: No,
[53:58] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand,
[53:59] Bob Dobbs: Wölfflin,
[54:00] Bob Dobbs: Berenson,
[54:01] Bob Dobbs: Giedion,
[54:01] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter.
[54:03] Bob Dobbs: There's the history of
[54:04] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan.
[54:05] Bob Dobbs: Deepening understanding of tactility.
[54:08] Bob Dobbs: Those are the five figures.
[54:11] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter coming out with the Eskimo stuff,
[54:14] Bob Dobbs: right?
[54:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[54:15] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[54:15] Cameron McEwen: I think so.
[54:16] Cameron McEwen: I think probably there are other figures that contributed.
[54:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[54:22] Bob Dobbs: Barron,
[54:22] Bob Dobbs: what's the guy,
[54:23] Bob Dobbs: his best buddy in 39 in St.
[54:27] Bob Dobbs: Louis?
[54:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[54:30] Cameron McEwen: that's
[54:31] Cameron McEwen: Muller-Thym.
[54:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[54:34] Bob Dobbs: he was.
[54:34] Bob Dobbs: He
[54:34] Bob Dobbs: expressed Thomistic tactility or something to Marshall,
[54:37] Bob Dobbs: right?
[54:37] Bob Dobbs: I think he is.
[54:38] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.
[54:38] Cameron McEwen: Definitely.
[54:39] Bob Dobbs: So we have to put him in there.
[54:42] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[54:43] Bob Dobbs: He might be before Giedion.
[54:46] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[54:46] Cameron McEwen: he was before Giedion.
[54:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[54:49] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[54:49] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[54:51] Cameron McEwen: before in McLuhan time.
[54:53] Bob Dobbs: Yes.
[54:54] Cameron McEwen: The
[54:55] Cameron McEwen: Space, Time,
[54:56] Cameron McEwen: and Architecture was a series of lectures at Harvard in 1938.
[55:01] Cameron McEwen: So before
[55:03] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Muller-Thym ever met,
[55:05] Cameron McEwen: Giedion had already set out these ideas.
[55:08] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[55:09] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan meets it later.
[55:10] Bob Dobbs: So this is a new chain of influence no one's ever said before.
[55:14] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand.
[55:16] Bob Dobbs: Wölfflin,
[55:17] Bob Dobbs: Berenson,
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: for McLuhan,
[55:20] Bob Dobbs: Muller,
[55:21] Bob Dobbs: Thym,
[55:22] Bob Dobbs: then Giedion,
[55:23] Bob Dobbs: then Carpenter.
[55:24] Bob Dobbs: Six names.
[55:26] Cameron McEwen: And this is roughly parallel to Lewis.
[55:30] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[55:30] Bob Dobbs: and then there's Lewis in there,
[55:32] Bob Dobbs: for freak's sake.
[55:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[55:35] Bob Dobbs: But Lewis was probably confusing for McLuhan because he didn't talk about tactility as far as we know.
[55:41] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[55:41] Bob Dobbs: he didn't use that term or he didn't know he was tactile.
[55:45] Bob Dobbs: That was McLuhan.
[55:45] Bob Dobbs: point to Sheila.
[55:46] Bob Dobbs: He didn't recognize the tactile qualities and he thought it was visual,
[55:52] Bob Dobbs: but he had a tactile view of it.
[55:54] Bob Dobbs: And then he lived a tactile life of always dealing with the new stresses and the basic changes going on.
[56:01] Bob Dobbs: He was a very tactile person,
[56:03] Bob Dobbs: Lewis was.
[56:03] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[56:04] Cameron McEwen: But
[56:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan criticism of Lewis that he makes in his
[56:10] Cameron McEwen: 53 essay that Lewis liked,
[56:13] Cameron McEwen: but there's a
[56:16] Cameron McEwen: criticism in there of Lewis that his theory his theorizing of his own work was screwed up that he in his theory he was too visual although
[56:31] Cameron McEwen: in his practice he was tactile.
[56:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah so he so he intuited that in 53 or so when he wrote that then he got it more crystalline by 1960
[56:42] Bob Dobbs: And then he was able to say it's sure to
[56:44] Bob Dobbs: Sheila Watson in 65.
[56:45] Bob Dobbs: That would be the progression there.
[56:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[56:48] Bob Dobbs: so he caught on to it real early.
[56:50] Bob Dobbs: But that's because he's with these other guys.
[56:53] Cameron McEwen: Yes.
[56:54] Bob Dobbs: So it's seven names now.
[56:55] Bob Dobbs: We're going to add in Lewis in there after Giedion and before Carpenter.
[57:01] Cameron McEwen: But he meets
[57:03] Cameron McEwen: Giedion and Lewis the same year,
[57:06] Cameron McEwen: and he begins to read the two of them in parallel.
[57:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[57:10] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[57:10] Cameron McEwen: So he's reading.
[57:11] Cameron McEwen: Space,
[57:11] Cameron McEwen: Time,
[57:12] Cameron McEwen: and Architecture,
[57:13] Cameron McEwen: and all sorts of small essays by Giedion,
[57:16] Cameron McEwen: but at the same time he's reading The Art of Being Ruled and...
[57:21] Bob Dobbs: And talking to Lewis.
[57:23] Cameron McEwen: That's right.
[57:24] Cameron McEwen: Of course,
[57:25] Cameron McEwen: talking with Lewis,
[57:26] Cameron McEwen: for sure,
[57:26] Cameron McEwen: and talking to Giedion.
[57:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[57:29] Cameron McEwen: So there are letters between McLuhan and Giedion at that time,
[57:34] Cameron McEwen: and it's Giedion who tells him that if he wants to come clear about...
[57:40] Cameron McEwen: the stuff that he's thinking about,
[57:42] Cameron McEwen: he has to get into French poetry.
[57:45] Cameron McEwen: So what does McLuhan do in the later
[57:48] Cameron McEwen: 1940s? He starts relearning his French and reading Mallarmé.
[57:56] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[57:57] Cameron McEwen: And Baudelaire and
[57:59] Cameron McEwen: Rimbaud and all these guys.
[58:01] Cameron McEwen: So the...
[58:05] Bob Dobbs: Giedion told him that.
[58:07] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[58:08] Bob Dobbs: And who is Giedion?
[58:09] Bob Dobbs: Giedion buries James Joyce.
[58:13] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[58:14] Cameron McEwen: yeah,
[58:14] Cameron McEwen: his wife was a good friend of Joyce.
[58:17] Cameron McEwen: Giedion,
[58:17] Cameron McEwen: I think,
[58:19] Cameron McEwen: was in America when Joyce died and couldn't get back to
[58:23] Cameron McEwen: Europe because of the war.
[58:25] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[58:25] Bob Dobbs: because
[58:27] Bob Dobbs: Giedion,
[58:28] Bob Dobbs: Joyce, the only guy that he talked to the deeper meanings of Finnegans Wake was with Giedion.
[58:34] Bob Dobbs: And
[58:36] Bob Dobbs: I talked to Joyce through the Evergreens.
[58:38] Bob Dobbs: using the medium,
[58:40] Bob Dobbs: about their relationship.
[58:41] Bob Dobbs: And Joyce said that,
[58:43] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[58:43] Bob Dobbs: Giedion was the only guy who understood me,
[58:46] Bob Dobbs: even more than Frank Budgen.
[58:48] Bob Dobbs: And he was the last guy that Joyce would talk about whenever 39,
[58:53] Bob Dobbs: 40,
[58:53] Bob Dobbs: he dies in January 41.
[58:56] Bob Dobbs: And he moves to Switzerland,
[58:58] Bob Dobbs: and the Giedions are there,
[58:59] Bob Dobbs: but we don't know when
[59:01] Bob Dobbs: Siegfried wasn't there.
[59:03] Bob Dobbs: But you're saying he wasn't there in January 41.
[59:05] Bob Dobbs: So his wife buried Joyce.
[59:07] Bob Dobbs: But the conversation...
[59:09] Bob Dobbs: You have Joyce talking deeper stuff about what he was really doing that the literati didn't know,
[59:16] Bob Dobbs: the transition people didn't know,
[59:19] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[59:19] Bob Dobbs: Jolas and those guys,
[59:22] Bob Dobbs: but it's transmitted to Giedion.
[59:24] Bob Dobbs: Then Giedion makes a book called Space,
[59:27] Bob Dobbs: Time,
[59:27] Bob Dobbs: and Architecture.
[59:28] Bob Dobbs: Does that come out?
[59:29] Bob Dobbs: I thought it was 41.
[59:30] Bob Dobbs: Do you know when it came out?
[59:31] Bob Dobbs: 39?
[59:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:32] Cameron McEwen: it is 41.
[59:34] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[59:34] Bob Dobbs: and there's the space-time dialectic that Lewis did.
[59:39] Bob Dobbs: And architecture,
[59:40] Bob Dobbs: and that's what Lewis first began his mediocrity with,
[59:43] Bob Dobbs: The Caliph's Design in 1919,
[59:46] Bob Dobbs: he wrote that book.
[59:47] Bob Dobbs: But look at that,
[59:49] Bob Dobbs: within two years of Joyce being with Giedion,
[59:53] Bob Dobbs: he's with McLuhan.
[59:55] Bob Dobbs: It's that close,
[59:56] Bob Dobbs: it's that quick,
[59:57] Bob Dobbs: the transition,
[59:58] Bob Dobbs: or the passing on the knowledge.
[1:00:04] Cameron McEwen: Yep.
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:00:05] Bob Dobbs: it's pretty incredible.
[1:00:07] Bob Dobbs: And I've told you that...
[1:00:08] Bob Dobbs: On September 1st,
[1:00:09] Bob Dobbs: when World War II broke out,
[1:00:11] Bob Dobbs: I think it was September 1st,
[1:00:13] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is in Paris on his honeymoon.
[1:00:16] Bob Dobbs: He hears about the war breaking out,
[1:00:18] Bob Dobbs: so he grabs Corinne and they go for the,
[1:00:21] Bob Dobbs: wherever the boat is,
[1:00:22] Bob Dobbs: to get across the Channel.
[1:00:24] Bob Dobbs: And while he's up there,
[1:00:25] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:00:26] Bob Dobbs: starting to go across the Channel's boat,
[1:00:28] Bob Dobbs: down the Channel comes Wyndham Lewis,
[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: who's on a big liner.
[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: And James Joyce is right there on the Channel 2 on the coast at his daughter's...
[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: hospital where she was being looked after.
[1:00:41] Bob Dobbs: So you had this triangle of McLuhan,
[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,
[1:00:45] Bob Dobbs: and Lewis all within proximity of each other in that little area,
[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: northern France,
[1:00:51] Bob Dobbs: on the coast of the water,
[1:00:53] Bob Dobbs: right when the war breaks out.
[1:00:55] Bob Dobbs: And so the war is what McLuhan acted out in trying to figure out whether he was a Lewisian or a Joycean,
[1:01:03] Bob Dobbs: that Donald Theall writes a lot about.
[1:01:07] Bob Dobbs: trying to resolve the antinomy between those two guys.
[1:01:13] Bob Dobbs: And so he says in Interior landscape,
[1:01:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if it's in the Lewis essay,
[1:01:18] Bob Dobbs: but it might be in the Joyce one,
[1:01:19] Bob Dobbs: he says that
[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: Joyce had a little more humor than Lewis.
[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: Remember that sentence?
[1:01:26] Cameron McEwen: Sure.
[1:01:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:01:28] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:01:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan will say he got it from Lewis,
[1:01:32] Bob Dobbs: and he said Lewis was the first to do the media on block.
[1:01:36] Bob Dobbs: But that's the struggle.
[1:01:37] Bob Dobbs: Lewis was the first to see it,
[1:01:38] Bob Dobbs: like to go into the silent sea and then go through all the psychic pressure of seeing that stuff and not knowing what he's seeing,
[1:01:50] Bob Dobbs: not being able to articulate it.
[1:01:51] Bob Dobbs: Because you can see in his books,
[1:01:53] Bob Dobbs: he's recognizing that technologies,
[1:01:55] Bob Dobbs: the press,
[1:01:56] Bob Dobbs: media,
[1:01:57] Bob Dobbs: are a big stress factor in what's going on.
[1:01:59] Bob Dobbs: But he doesn't lay it out so clearly as McLuhan does.
[1:02:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:02:04] Cameron McEwen: see,
[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: I think...
[1:02:05] Cameron McEwen: To me,
[1:02:06] Cameron McEwen: the influence of Lewis on McLuhan is that Lewis sees what needs to be explained.
[1:02:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:02:16] Cameron McEwen: I think that's very close to your heart.
[1:02:20] Cameron McEwen: I think that's sort of what you like to do is find things that can be regarded as a problem.
[1:02:28] Cameron McEwen: And then within the problem,
[1:02:30] Cameron McEwen: there'll be the solution.
[1:02:32] Cameron McEwen: That's certainly an important part of McLuhan.
[1:02:35] Cameron McEwen: But I think what he gets from Giedion is a way of explaining that
[1:02:44] Cameron McEwen: Lewis never had.
[1:02:45] Bob Dobbs: That's right.
[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: So
[1:02:47] Cameron McEwen: Lewis helps McLuhan understand what the problems are.
[1:02:52] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:02:52] Cameron McEwen: And
[1:02:53] Cameron McEwen: Giedion helps McLuhan see how there might be a solution there.
[1:02:59] Cameron McEwen: So it's from Giedion that McLuhan gets the whole idea of the symphony.
[1:03:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan the whole rest of his life talked about how we need to see the symphony of the senses or the symphony of the media.
[1:03:16] Cameron McEwen: We need to see the plurality in order to see the singularity.
[1:03:21] Bob Dobbs: And when you say it like that,
[1:03:23] Bob Dobbs: I hear Joyce,
[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: because Joyce is in the Finnegans Wake emphasizing the senses and the extensions.
[1:03:30] Bob Dobbs: So that's the kind of stuff I'm sure they talked about.
[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:03:34] Bob Dobbs: Giedion did his version.
[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: He explained Finnegans Wake with space-time architecture.
[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:03:41] Cameron McEwen: that I can't speak to.
[1:03:43] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that that's...
[1:03:44] Bob Dobbs: You don't know Finnegans Wake enough,
[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: you're saying?
[1:03:46] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.
[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: I see.
[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: I had another point there.
[1:03:50] Bob Dobbs: You were saying that
[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: Giedion...
[1:03:57] Bob Dobbs: What's interesting is Drucker,
[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: the great...
[1:04:01] Bob Dobbs: consultant of the corporations later,
[1:04:04] Bob Dobbs: he experiences McLuhan talking in 41 or so,
[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: 40,
[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: 41.
[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: And he tells a story that
[1:04:11] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan didn't have the phrase the medium is the message.
[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: But later,
[1:04:14] Bob Dobbs: when that came out,
[1:04:15] Bob Dobbs: he realized that that's what McLuhan was saying in
[1:04:19] Bob Dobbs: 41 when he saw him speak.
[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: So Drucker is lurking in there to exploit this new view himself as a consultant.
[1:04:28] Cameron McEwen: And this is actually a very interesting topic for
[1:04:32] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan. What we see here is something that's very unusual in
[1:04:38] Cameron McEwen: North American intellectual history,
[1:04:41] Cameron McEwen: and especially in Canadian intellectual history.
[1:04:44] Cameron McEwen: And that is that McLuhan had exposure,
[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: personal exposure,
[1:04:51] Cameron McEwen: to a whole series of
[1:04:54] Cameron McEwen: European intellectuals.
[1:04:57] Cameron McEwen: And those...
[1:04:58] Cameron McEwen: intellectuals appreciated
[1:05:00] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan mind and tried to teach
[1:05:04] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan more or less as an individual student.
[1:05:08] Cameron McEwen: But these are things which almost never happened to intellectuals at that time in North America.
[1:05:20] Cameron McEwen: Later,
[1:05:21] Cameron McEwen: people began to look into Derrida and Heidegger and all this sort of stuff.
[1:05:27] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:05:28] Cameron McEwen: In the
[1:05:29] Cameron McEwen: 1930s and
[1:05:30] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, when McLuhan was meeting all these people personally,
[1:05:35] Cameron McEwen: right,
[1:05:35] Cameron McEwen: and being influenced by them,
[1:05:37] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:05:38] Cameron McEwen: just think,
[1:05:39] Cameron McEwen: he meets
[1:05:41] Cameron McEwen: Drucker. And by the way,
[1:05:43] Cameron McEwen: Drucker was in Detroit when McLuhan was in Windsor.
[1:05:48] Cameron McEwen: So Drucker is,
[1:05:50] Cameron McEwen: not only is he a European,
[1:05:54] Cameron McEwen: is one more European that influences McLuhan,
[1:05:57] Cameron McEwen: He's also one more Detroit guy at a time when
[1:06:01] Cameron McEwen: Lewis was in Windsor,
[1:06:05] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was in Windsor,
[1:06:07] Cameron McEwen: and Drucker was in Detroit.
[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: Wow,
[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: that's another triangulation like I was describing with the English Channel right there in Detroit.
[1:06:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:06:14] Cameron McEwen: Detroit,
[1:06:15] Bob Dobbs: Windsor.
[1:06:17] Cameron McEwen: In a couple of years,
[1:06:19] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan will meet
[1:06:21] Cameron McEwen: Gilson in Toronto,
[1:06:23] Cameron McEwen: the colleague of Gilson.
[1:06:25] Cameron McEwen: So you have all of these people like
[1:06:28] Cameron McEwen: Drucker,
[1:06:30] Cameron McEwen: Lewis,
[1:06:31] Cameron McEwen: Giedion, there's more,
[1:06:35] Cameron McEwen: Gilson,
[1:06:37] Cameron McEwen: there's five or six of these guys.
[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:06:41] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:06:41] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that
[1:06:42] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan ever had a personal relationship with Maritain,
[1:06:47] Cameron McEwen: but his good friend Phelan,
[1:06:52] Cameron McEwen: right,
[1:06:53] Cameron McEwen: the Catholic priest who...
[1:06:55] Cameron McEwen: basically brought him into the church,
[1:06:59] Cameron McEwen: and they were very close friends and corresponded with each other and knew each other very well.
[1:07:08] Cameron McEwen: Phelan was a translator and a close friend of both Maritain and Gilson.
[1:07:14] Cameron McEwen: And so you could say that through
[1:07:17] Cameron McEwen: Phelan, who had been,
[1:07:19] Cameron McEwen: Phelan was educated in Europe,
[1:07:21] Cameron McEwen: so through Phelan,
[1:07:22] Cameron McEwen: that was another.
[1:07:24] Cameron McEwen: sort of avenue he had to
[1:07:28] Cameron McEwen: European culture.
[1:07:30] Cameron McEwen: And this connection with European culture,
[1:07:35] Cameron McEwen: not American culture,
[1:07:36] Cameron McEwen: not Canadian culture,
[1:07:38] Cameron McEwen: is very distinctive of
[1:07:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan, and it's almost not appreciated at all.
[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:07:45] Bob Dobbs: and so here's the pattern I hadn't thought of before.
[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,
[1:07:47] Bob Dobbs: 1901 to 1908,
[1:07:50] Bob Dobbs: he's in Europe experiencing stuff that his...
[1:07:54] Bob Dobbs: peers in London aren't getting.
[1:07:56] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan redid Lewis in the same levels of going beyond his provincial beginnings and exploring beyond what anybody else in his peer group didn't have.
[1:08:07] Bob Dobbs: He redid what Lewis did in terms of getting out of his local town,
[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: his local culture.
[1:08:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:08:14] Cameron McEwen: But you see,
[1:08:15] Cameron McEwen: did you just say the local pound?
[1:08:18] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:08:18] Bob Dobbs: the local town.
[1:08:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:08:19] Bob Dobbs: local town,
[1:08:20] Bob Dobbs: T-O-W-N.
[1:08:21] Cameron McEwen: Okay.
[1:08:22] Cameron McEwen: But...
[1:08:23] Cameron McEwen: It's important for us to mention that at the end of the period you're talking about,
[1:08:28] Cameron McEwen: so around 1908,
[1:08:30] Cameron McEwen: is when
[1:08:31] Cameron McEwen: Pound and Lewis come together.
[1:08:33] Cameron McEwen: And then in the
[1:08:38] Cameron McEwen: 1940s, when McLuhan meets Lewis and then rereads Time and Western Man and reads for the first time stuff like
[1:08:49] Cameron McEwen: The Art of Being Ruled,
[1:08:51] Cameron McEwen: he's also reading Pound.
[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:08:53] Bob Dobbs: and you have to put pound in there.
[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: You have to put pound in there in the late 40s,
[1:08:58] Bob Dobbs: early 50s.
[1:08:59] Bob Dobbs: There's a whole dialogue with him.
[1:09:01] Bob Dobbs: So he's meeting all the right people,
[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: which is what I try to show on my chart.
[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: I think that
[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: LaRouche, May Brussel,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: Zappa,
[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[1:09:10] Bob Dobbs: William Irwin Thompson,
[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: Christian Murdy,
[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: Dr.
[1:09:13] Bob Dobbs: Beter,
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: Garrett Dean,
[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: those people in my life are special like that.
[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: And they're all...
[1:09:23] Bob Dobbs: important and they're all they have impact so my chart
[1:09:28] Bob Dobbs: has those guys in and we're going to McLuhan chart and who he had in his influential uh impact same same uh same bunch of amazing people um let's see uh we um
[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: oh yeah every one of the people in my chart are tactile artists and
[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is meeting a lot of people who are touching on tactility in different ways,
[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: especially Pound and Joyce and Lewis.
[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: he didn't meet Joyce,
[1:10:07] Bob Dobbs: but he's studying.
[1:10:08] Bob Dobbs: So this is the major discovery in culture is tactility in the 20th century because of the electric tactile extension.
[1:10:18] Bob Dobbs: There's the big view.
[1:10:20] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan looked across all these fields,
[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: including all these giants he met,
[1:10:24] Bob Dobbs: but they're all...
[1:10:25] Bob Dobbs: subject to the tactile electric effect.
[1:10:29] Bob Dobbs: And that's the big level McLuhan is talking on.
[1:10:32] Bob Dobbs: So he goes beyond science and culture to a new level of material causality,
[1:10:40] Cameron McEwen: which is not the way you would say that.
[1:10:43] Bob Dobbs: What?
[1:10:45] Cameron McEwen: I don't know that the word beyond is the right word there.
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:10:48] Bob Dobbs: it's bigger.
[1:10:51] Bob Dobbs: It's bigger.
[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:10:52] Bob Dobbs: you've got scholars spending all their life doing the wake.
[1:10:55] Bob Dobbs: or the cantos,
[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: and they specialize in one of these artists.
[1:10:58] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan is looking at the artists and the scientists and sociologists and everybody in the world of knowledge,
[1:11:04] Bob Dobbs: and he's at the center of it,
[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: center of culture and technology,
[1:11:08] Bob Dobbs: and he's seeing a hidden ground that none of them saw.
[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:11:12] Cameron McEwen: That is correct.
[1:11:13] Cameron McEwen: But my objection is,
[1:11:15] Cameron McEwen: imagine that somebody is looking at chemistry in the
[1:11:22] Cameron McEwen: 19th century,
[1:11:23] Cameron McEwen: and they say that,
[1:11:25] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:11:26] Cameron McEwen: Mendeleev's table goes beyond all physical things.
[1:11:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:11:34] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:11:36] Cameron McEwen: in a sense,
[1:11:38] Cameron McEwen: it goes beyond all physical things,
[1:11:40] Cameron McEwen: but only in the sense that chemistry identifies what was always going on in those physical things,
[1:11:50] Cameron McEwen: but not realized.
[1:11:51] Cameron McEwen: So the same thing with McLuhan.
[1:11:54] Cameron McEwen: If he can be said to go beyond art and culture generally,
[1:12:01] Cameron McEwen: it's only because he's identifying what's already there.
[1:12:05] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:12:06] Cameron McEwen: So it's beyond in a funny sense.
[1:12:08] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:12:08] Bob Dobbs: it's a bigger perspective.
[1:12:11] Bob Dobbs: It's a,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:12:13] Bob Dobbs: just to say,
[1:12:14] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:12:15] Bob Dobbs: in 1895,
[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: I see the electric technologies come in,
[1:12:20] Bob Dobbs: and I'm McLuhan.
[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: Or as a Nostradamus,
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: and I say,
[1:12:23] Bob Dobbs: all these things will happen in books and painting and all the changes in science and the metaphors they use will be due to the electric technology.
[1:12:33] Bob Dobbs: And then he could have said,
[1:12:34] Bob Dobbs: I'm turning them off.
[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: We're not going to have a 20th century electric environment,
[1:12:38] Bob Dobbs: and none of the 20th century would have happened as we know it.
[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: So what do you call that?
[1:12:44] Bob Dobbs: It's a view of the crucible.
[1:12:46] Bob Dobbs: It's like an extraterrestrial looking at the planet and saying,
[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: they're turning on electricity.
[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: Tesla and these guys,
[1:12:52] Bob Dobbs: who was it?
[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:12:54] Bob Dobbs: Tesla was there at Niagara,
[1:12:55] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:12:55] Bob Dobbs: When they brought in
[1:12:56] Bob Dobbs: ACDC and all that stuff.
[1:12:59] Bob Dobbs: That was the beginning of it.
[1:13:00] Bob Dobbs: They turned it on.
[1:13:02] Bob Dobbs: And an alien could have said,
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:13:04] Bob Dobbs: this is not good for the humans.
[1:13:05] Bob Dobbs: So he would have turned it off.
[1:13:07] Bob Dobbs: That's a big,
[1:13:09] Bob Dobbs: you're Archimedes.
[1:13:10] Bob Dobbs: You found a place to lever the planet,
[1:13:13] Bob Dobbs: to move the planet.
[1:13:14] Cameron McEwen: We agree with that.
[1:13:17] Cameron McEwen: Where we disagree is the relationship between
[1:13:20] Cameron McEwen: theory and the practice.
[1:13:24] Cameron McEwen: I see the two of them as linked by tactility and therefore
[1:13:32] Cameron McEwen: I never can see the one without the other.
[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: the same would apply to me,
[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: but I've got to use categories to a literate American like you.
[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: I could just blabble here or sing you a song.
[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: Which we do on the radio.
[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: But
[1:13:53] Bob Dobbs: I don't see there's much difference,
[1:13:56] Bob Dobbs: just the way we're talking.
[1:13:57] Bob Dobbs: Because you're going to say your words,
[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: and then I'll try to say some words that complement it.
[1:14:01] Bob Dobbs: And it might sound erroneous.
[1:14:04] Cameron McEwen: If I try to identify a difference,
[1:14:06] Cameron McEwen: that doesn't mean that it's necessarily disharmonious or something.
[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:14:11] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[1:14:12] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:14:13] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:14:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:14:14] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:14:15] Bob Dobbs: I'm not sure why you're making the distinction.
[1:14:17] Bob Dobbs: Other than it needs to be said,
[1:14:19] Bob Dobbs: because the average mind listening will make those mistakes.
[1:14:24] Cameron McEwen: The reason I made the distinction is that you were talking about,
[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:14:27] Cameron McEwen: I'm going to turn off electricity and then the 20th century won't happen and stuff.
[1:14:34] Cameron McEwen: We always disagree at what level
[1:14:38] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was advocating sort of being the control tower.
[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:14:44] Bob Dobbs: right.
[1:14:45] Cameron McEwen: And you tend to see it in terms of whole technologies,
[1:14:50] Cameron McEwen: thermostat,
[1:14:51] Cameron McEwen: electricity,
[1:14:52] Bob Dobbs: something like that.
[1:14:54] Cameron McEwen: And I see it in terms of structures,
[1:14:57] Cameron McEwen: minute structures.
[1:14:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:03] Bob Dobbs: you know he couldn't get away with that.
[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: I project,
[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:15:05] Bob Dobbs: he might have got away with it if he headed up the United Nations.
[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: But it just goes back to him saying that in Playboy magazine,
[1:15:16] Bob Dobbs: you know.
[1:15:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: And remember those pictures in 1964 of the set of Culture and Technology,
[1:15:23] Bob Dobbs: this awesome building where he's going to be studying sensory thresholds by computer.
[1:15:28] Bob Dobbs: He was trying to go that way.
[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:15:32] Cameron McEwen: he was being misguided by colleagues.
[1:15:35] Bob Dobbs: By Capon?
[1:15:37] Cameron McEwen: That was a ridiculous waste of time.
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: But,
[1:15:40] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:15:41] Cameron McEwen: he was trying to communicate his ideas and he got derailed.
[1:15:46] Cameron McEwen: By Capon.
[1:15:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:15:49] Cameron McEwen: some sort of quantitative proof of his stuff.
[1:15:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:15:54] Bob Dobbs: that's for listeners.
[1:15:56] Bob Dobbs: That's Capon.
[1:15:57] Bob Dobbs: He was a scientist,
[1:15:58] Bob Dobbs: a York
[1:15:59] Bob Dobbs: University guy,
[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[1:16:01] Bob Dobbs: who offered the computer models for measuring sensory thresholds,
[1:16:07] Bob Dobbs: which later McLuhan found out he was misusing their funds or something.
[1:16:11] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:16:11] Bob Dobbs: he's a bit of a thief.
[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: And so we never heard of Capon again.
[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: Never seen again.
[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: Definitely not out of the co-chose.
[1:16:23] Bob Dobbs: I think somebody looked into where he,
[1:16:25] Bob Dobbs: where did he end up?
[1:16:26] Bob Dobbs: I think he was around doing stuff in the
[1:16:29] Bob Dobbs: 70s.
[1:16:30] Bob Dobbs: So, very good,
[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: very exciting stuff we're saying here.
[1:16:35] Bob Dobbs: New things never said before.
[1:16:40] Cameron McEwen: Maybe we need to get to your book.
[1:16:43] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:16:44] Cameron McEwen: we need to get a few quotes in.
[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: We'll lose our grant if we're not working on what I said we got our grant for.
[1:16:53] Bob Dobbs: So let's see.
[1:16:54] Bob Dobbs: We're at page 143.
[1:17:00] Bob Dobbs: Where's my book?
[1:17:02] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:17:03] Bob Dobbs: So there's this quote from Eric McLuhan.
[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: So we're at the top of 143,
[1:17:09] Bob Dobbs: which is a bit of the...
[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: Here it is.
[1:17:13] Bob Dobbs: It's a summary of what we were just saying about the big view.
[1:17:17] Bob Dobbs: In Playboy,
[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[1:17:18] Bob Dobbs: computer technology can and doubtless will,
[1:17:22] Bob Dobbs: is at the bottom of 142,
[1:17:25] Bob Dobbs: computer technology can and doubtless will program entire environments to fulfill the social needs and sensory preferences of communities and nations.
[1:17:34] Bob Dobbs: Now that happened on an efficient causality level,
[1:17:36] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:17:38] Bob Dobbs: That's the problem we have now,
[1:17:40] Bob Dobbs: AI.
[1:17:42] Bob Dobbs: The content,
[1:17:43] Bob Dobbs: and it's italicized,
[1:17:44] Bob Dobbs: and that's what I think is really important,
[1:17:46] Bob Dobbs: the content of that programming,
[1:17:49] Bob Dobbs: it's programming,
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:17:50] Bob Dobbs: programming,
[1:17:52] Bob Dobbs: it has two M's,
[1:17:53] Bob Dobbs: wouldn't you say?
[1:17:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:17:59] Cameron McEwen: I don't know when there may be a difference between Canadian and American spelling on that.
[1:18:05] Cameron McEwen: I'm not sure.
[1:18:05] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:18:06] Bob Dobbs: The content of that programming,
[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: however,
[1:18:08] Bob Dobbs: depends on the nature of future societies.
[1:18:11] Bob Dobbs: But that is in our own hands.
[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:18:13] Bob Dobbs: that's Marshall McLuhan,
[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: Playboy Magazine,
[1:18:15] Bob Dobbs: March 6th,
[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: 9th,
[1:18:16] Bob Dobbs: page 74.
[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: But there it is.
[1:18:18] Bob Dobbs: That's a summation of what he said in another part of the interview about,
[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: giving less radio to Venezuela to cool them off.
[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: And so then I say,
[1:18:29] Bob Dobbs: Eric McLuhan's notion of the computer extensions of the brain is too narrow.
[1:18:35] Cameron McEwen: Good call.
[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:18:36] Bob Dobbs: are you saying something to the dog?
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:18:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:18:39] Cameron McEwen: the dog is.
[1:18:40] Cameron McEwen: coming up trying to beg something and I'm trying to get them away.
[1:18:44] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[1:18:44] Cameron McEwen: Anyway,
[1:18:45] Cameron McEwen: sorry for the interruption.
[1:18:46] Bob Dobbs: So watch for the reading here.
[1:18:48] Bob Dobbs: Eric McLuhan's notion of the computer extension of the brain is too narrow.
[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: It misses the live environment and or living organism aspect of the digital proprioceptive and quark-tuned cubed.
[1:18:59] Bob Dobbs: See the Bob Dobbs quadrant of my Tiny Note chart.
[1:19:03] Bob Dobbs: But here's the quote from Eric from his 1998 book.
[1:19:08] Bob Dobbs: electric language understanding the message.
[1:19:11] Bob Dobbs: Animals evolve by incorporating into their bodies the new technology,
[1:19:15] Bob Dobbs: whether by growing longer teeth or by modifying their digestive systems.
[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: Human evolution works in the opposite manner.
[1:19:23] Bob Dobbs: With the first inventions,
[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: human evolution suddenly shifted from the realm of biology to that of technology.
[1:19:29] Bob Dobbs: Animals incorporated,
[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: we discorporated.
[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: We extended into the environment various parts of the body,
[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: various limbs and organs,
[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: and with electricity,
[1:19:38] Bob Dobbs: the central nervous system.
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: Most recently,
[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: computer technology and its children now extend around the globe the hemispheres and other elements and organs of the brain.
[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: It remains only to extend the mind itself.
[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: Now I would say,
[1:19:53] Bob Dobbs: I say to people when trying to explain tactility that it's not a sense,
[1:19:56] Bob Dobbs: it's the interplay of the senses.
[1:19:59] Bob Dobbs: That,
[1:20:00] Bob Dobbs: I say on a popular level,
[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: is the mind.
[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: So it remains only to extend the mind itself,
[1:20:05] Bob Dobbs: but the way I use mind in explaining tactility,
[1:20:09] Bob Dobbs: we're already extending the mind.
[1:20:11] Bob Dobbs: Now he has another quote where the later digital technologies are extensions of the parts of the brain,
[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: different aspects in the brain.
[1:20:21] Bob Dobbs: Which could be what he says here.
[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: We're extending the mind itself.
[1:20:26] Bob Dobbs: So then
[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: Eric McLuhan,
[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: So Eric is seeing the final extensions of humans before you look at the planet as an extension through the satellite is parts of the brain,
[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: and that's digital.
[1:20:42] Bob Dobbs: But I say it this way.
[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: I say the machines are extending the machines.
[1:20:46] Bob Dobbs: They're not extending us anymore.
[1:20:47] Bob Dobbs: They're not extending parts of the brain.
[1:20:50] Bob Dobbs: They're extending whatever they are digitally.
[1:20:53] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[1:20:54] Bob Dobbs: Eric McLuhan doesn't see the machines extending themselves.
[1:20:56] Bob Dobbs: He sees us extending intricate and subtle parts of the brain.
[1:21:00] Bob Dobbs: He's still keeping technologies categorized as extensions of our bodies.
[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't take the process to extensions independent of our faculties.
[1:21:09] Bob Dobbs: And if we're still extending technology within our body,
[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: then we should be able to make ethical decisions and turn off certain media environments,
[1:21:15] Bob Dobbs: if only occasionally.
[1:21:17] Bob Dobbs: He wrote the quotation,
[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: above 20 years ago.
[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:21:22] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying this in 2019,
[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: say 2018.
[1:21:25] Bob Dobbs: We haven't seen much progress by Eric on that front.
[1:21:29] Bob Dobbs: It seems a bit of an intellectual cop out.
[1:21:31] Bob Dobbs: Extend the mind itself.
[1:21:32] Bob Dobbs: That's vague.
[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: And I just already explained how mind is tactility.
[1:21:37] Bob Dobbs: I focus on the live environment aspect and suggest Eric misses that dimension.
[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: Does that prompt you to say anything?
[1:21:48] Bob Dobbs: What are you saying there about Eric?
[1:21:49] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:21:49] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:21:51] Cameron McEwen: I like the idea that the live environment was very important for McLuhan because it fits in with his idea that personal identity is going to be lost
[1:22:06] Cameron McEwen: or is already lost.
[1:22:08] Cameron McEwen: And whatever new identity we have is going to be networked.
[1:22:14] Cameron McEwen: And it's,
[1:22:16] Cameron McEwen: excuse me.
[1:22:16] Cameron McEwen: It's going to be an environmental effect,
[1:22:20] Cameron McEwen: not some sort of body effect or ownership effect.
[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:22:25] Bob Dobbs: it's going to be within the technical environment itself.
[1:22:29] Bob Dobbs: That's extending in itself,
[1:22:31] Bob Dobbs: not within our bodies.
[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: And you see the way Kroker writes about it,
[1:22:36] Bob Dobbs: he says,
[1:22:37] Bob Dobbs: flesh becomes surplus.
[1:22:39] Bob Dobbs: It's just sitting on the sidelines watching the next level of technological evolution.
[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: And is quite adrift and agog and has no clue what's going on.
[1:22:53] Bob Dobbs: And maybe feels greatly alienated.
[1:22:57] Bob Dobbs: The thing that media are extensions of us,
[1:23:00] Bob Dobbs: that McLuhan lays out in Understanding Media,
[1:23:02] Bob Dobbs: needs to be restated and clarified that it is us,
[1:23:06] Bob Dobbs: but it looks like it's machines extending themselves.
[1:23:10] Bob Dobbs: So use a bunch of words to reconnect ourselves to the machines.
[1:23:16] Bob Dobbs: Because most people are intuiting with their bias that they're not being extended anymore.
[1:23:23] Bob Dobbs: Something else is.
[1:23:25] Bob Dobbs: And then that's expressed by AI and the new panic about
[1:23:29] Bob Dobbs: AI can't be controlled anymore.
[1:23:32] Bob Dobbs: It's going to make it extinct,
[1:23:34] Bob Dobbs: which is the latest fad the past couple of months is these guys
[1:23:40] Bob Dobbs: Yudkowsky and Schmachtenberger are out there telling us that the...
[1:23:45] Bob Dobbs: And the social dilemma guys,
[1:23:46] Bob Dobbs: they are saying it in their new movie called,
[1:23:49] Bob Dobbs: or film,
[1:23:50] Bob Dobbs: whatever it is,
[1:23:51] Bob Dobbs: AI Dilemma.
[1:23:53] Bob Dobbs: They're saying it's extending itself and nobody knows how it's doing it and it's not in our control anymore.
[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: That's the panic of the last couple of months.
[1:24:01] Bob Dobbs: Have you picked up on it?
[1:24:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:24:04] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:24:04] Cameron McEwen: certainly there's,
[1:24:05] Cameron McEwen: you know,
[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: you can't look at the news these days without seeing something about AI.
[1:24:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:24:13] Bob Dobbs: And Hinton at the University of Toronto,
[1:24:14] Bob Dobbs: he quit.
[1:24:15] Bob Dobbs: Quit Google.
[1:24:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:24:18] Bob Dobbs: The guy who started it.
[1:24:20] Cameron McEwen: Excuse me.
[1:24:22] Cameron McEwen: I just wanted to point out that one of the great problems with this whole area is that when we talk about what is body or what is technology or what is identity and stuff,
[1:24:39] Cameron McEwen: we don't really know what we're talking about with these words.
[1:24:43] Cameron McEwen: And all of them need to be redefined.
[1:24:47] Cameron McEwen: And we're sort of just...
[1:24:50] Cameron McEwen: products of their confusion at the present time.
[1:24:55] Cameron McEwen: So it's not as if these things are as we take them to be at the present moment.
[1:25:10] Cameron McEwen: There,
[1:25:10] Cameron McEwen: they are just artifacts of confusion.
[1:25:13] Cameron McEwen: But on the other side of confusion,
[1:25:18] Cameron McEwen: which is where McLuhan wants to go,
[1:25:19] Cameron McEwen: to locate themselves,
[1:25:22] Cameron McEwen: these things can be restated.
[1:25:24] Cameron McEwen: They can be relived,
[1:25:27] Cameron McEwen: but in an entirely different sense from the way they're currently stated or currently lived.
[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: the specialisms don't work anymore,
[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: the categories.
[1:25:37] Cameron McEwen: Correct.
[1:25:37] Bob Dobbs: Jack Sarfatti should welcome amateurs who have done maybe some McLuhan study.
[1:25:43] Bob Dobbs: You've got to do the basics.
[1:25:44] Bob Dobbs: You've got to learn the New Science.
[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: And then he engages his physics with what they come up with.
[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: or with what I came up with,
[1:25:51] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:25:52] Bob Dobbs: not say,
[1:25:53] Bob Dobbs: oh,
[1:25:53] Bob Dobbs: you're not talking in my language.
[1:25:55] Bob Dobbs: You're not using the proper formulas.
[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: Therefore,
[1:25:58] Bob Dobbs: we can't talk about it.
[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: No.
[1:26:00] Bob Dobbs: And this is the democratic effect we've gotten to today.
[1:26:04] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan used to say,
[1:26:05] Bob Dobbs: let's have a TV show,
[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: lay out our problems,
[1:26:08] Bob Dobbs: and someone in the audience will solve it.
[1:26:10] Bob Dobbs: So that's what the Internet has brought with social media.
[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: It got everybody talking in a global.
[1:26:18] Bob Dobbs: classroom or a global seminar with,
[1:26:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:26:21] Bob Dobbs: 5 billion people contributing to it.
[1:26:23] Bob Dobbs: That's where we're at now.
[1:26:25] Bob Dobbs: And is there a necessary conclusion that we have to come up with?
[1:26:30] Bob Dobbs: We have to say,
[1:26:30] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[1:26:31] Bob Dobbs: now we know what the environment is.
[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: Now we know what identity is.
[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: Don't know if that ever happened.
[1:26:36] Bob Dobbs: There won't be a finish line.
[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: But there can't be people getting paid.
[1:26:45] Bob Dobbs: $300,000 after teaching for 35 years,
[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: and there's some kind of pope in their field that everybody has to pay respects to.
[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: Because we now know,
[1:26:56] Bob Dobbs: just like they say,
[1:26:57] Bob Dobbs: all the institutions are suspected now of not being worthy of anything,
[1:27:01] Bob Dobbs: they say,
[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: in America.
[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:27:03] Bob Dobbs: all forms of knowledge are,
[1:27:05] Bob Dobbs: and nobody can lord it over anybody anymore.
[1:27:08] Bob Dobbs: Everybody is part of the dialogue.
[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:27:11] Bob Dobbs: I guess if you're good at it.
[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: You might get a bit of prominence,
[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: and everybody looks at your YouTube for a while,
[1:27:20] Bob Dobbs: or your
[1:27:21] Bob Dobbs: Zooms, but it won't last long,
[1:27:24] Bob Dobbs: because something else will come up.
[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: So this is Finnegans Wake,
[1:27:29] Bob Dobbs: you know?
[1:27:30] Bob Dobbs: The whole world and all the languages talking.
[1:27:34] Bob Dobbs: So there's Finnegans Wake,
[1:27:36] Bob Dobbs: the most,
[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: on the surface,
[1:27:37] Bob Dobbs: for literate people,
[1:27:38] Bob Dobbs: the most difficult book ever.
[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:27:41] Bob Dobbs: it's a simple book once you get these points that McLuhan's figured out.
[1:27:45] Bob Dobbs: And then the Finnegans Wake can be the standard text or map or agenda that always reminds you of what we're in the middle of,
[1:27:54] Bob Dobbs: because it's always painted on every page.
[1:27:57] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:27:58] Bob Dobbs: I went forward with that in 1980,
[1:28:01] Bob Dobbs: mid-80s in Toronto.
[1:28:03] Bob Dobbs: I started the damn school,
[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: the new school.
[1:28:06] Bob Dobbs: Here it is 40 years later and still carrying on.
[1:28:11] Bob Dobbs: Nobody went forward and made a big deal out of Finnegans Wake as a Democratic thing that anybody could get involved with.
[1:28:16] Bob Dobbs: That's pretty radical,
[1:28:18] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:28:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:28:20] Bob Dobbs: Most people didn't even know of the book.
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:28:25] Bob Dobbs: I wrote to somebody that
[1:28:28] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says he got it from Lewis,
[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: but actually
[1:28:33] Bob Dobbs: Pound, Eliot,
[1:28:34] Bob Dobbs: Joyce,
[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: Lewis,
[1:28:35] Bob Dobbs: and Yeats all had aspects of what was coming,
[1:28:39] Bob Dobbs: the tech body.
[1:28:40] Bob Dobbs: They intuited early parts of it,
[1:28:42] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan saw that,
[1:28:44] Bob Dobbs: so he juggled those five guys and all the other people we just mentioned tonight because he kept adding to the team,
[1:28:52] Bob Dobbs: and he juggled all these people,
[1:28:54] Bob Dobbs: and he came up to the closest approximation of the tech body.
[1:28:58] Bob Dobbs: According to iON,
[1:28:59] Bob Dobbs: that's where iON comes in.
[1:29:00] Bob Dobbs: But it's not so obvious to anybody who reads McLuhan unless they get this live point that we just said.
[1:29:08] Bob Dobbs: The environment is alive.
[1:29:10] Bob Dobbs: So the,
[1:29:11] Bob Dobbs: um,
[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: what you're saying,
[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: what I'm saying,
[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: we're doing and all are invited.
[1:29:21] Bob Dobbs: to contribute.
[1:29:22] Bob Dobbs: But you're not going to get much response from me if you haven't done some basics,
[1:29:28] Bob Dobbs: which is look at the elements that you said had to be done 200 years ago with chemistry.
[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: You've got to familiarize yourself with what would you call it?
[1:29:35] Bob Dobbs: The program?
[1:29:36] Bob Dobbs: What is it?
[1:29:37] Bob Dobbs: What are we?
[1:29:38] Bob Dobbs: What is the elements that McLuhan discovered or stated?
[1:29:45] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:29:45] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:29:45] Cameron McEwen: Bye.
[1:29:48] Cameron McEwen: I would prefer to say that he discovered the elementary structure of experience.
[1:29:53] Cameron McEwen: And the elementary structure of experience is the medium is the message.
[1:29:58] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: Barry, never you say that McLuhan discovered an epistemology of experience.
[1:30:04] Bob Dobbs: Does that work,
[1:30:05] Bob Dobbs: that word epistemology?
[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you're saying?
[1:30:09] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:30:09] Cameron McEwen: but epistemology by itself is like an air balloon.
[1:30:17] Cameron McEwen: epistemology needs to be based in ontology,
[1:30:21] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:30:23] Cameron McEwen: Theory of knowledge needs to be based in ontology,
[1:30:28] Cameron McEwen: a theory of reality.
[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:30:30] Bob Dobbs: so it should be an ontology and epistemology of experience,
[1:30:33] Bob Dobbs: not just epistemology.
[1:30:35] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:30:35] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:30:36] Bob Dobbs: that's good.
[1:30:38] Cameron McEwen: But this relates to what you were just saying in the sense that we're suddenly in a situation that's like...
[1:30:47] Cameron McEwen: the
[1:30:49] Cameron McEwen: 1700s of alchemy.
[1:30:51] Cameron McEwen: But instead of there being different alchemists in different labs coming up with different ideas of what they're doing,
[1:31:01] Cameron McEwen: we now have sort of one universal lab in which everybody can participate.
[1:31:09] Cameron McEwen: But there's universal confusion about what we're doing.
[1:31:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:31:16] Cameron McEwen: And so what McLuhan is saying is,
[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:31:21] Cameron McEwen: folks,
[1:31:22] Cameron McEwen: let's do some pattern recognition here.
[1:31:26] Cameron McEwen: Let's try and see what's going on in everything we're already doing.
[1:31:31] Cameron McEwen: And if we can come up with the patterns,
[1:31:35] Cameron McEwen: then we don't need a pope that is in charge of the discipline.
[1:31:41] Cameron McEwen: The discipline itself will be what...
[1:31:45] Cameron McEwen: supplies the coherence.
[1:31:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:31:48] Cameron McEwen: Right?
[1:31:49] Cameron McEwen: Because we will have things that we can focus on that people agree we need to focus on.
[1:31:56] Cameron McEwen: And when we focus on them,
[1:31:59] Cameron McEwen: we will make them more precise and they will generate questions and answers on their own.
[1:32:06] Cameron McEwen: And that will be what modulates the environments of the world.
[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:32:14] Cameron McEwen: Nothing at the level of...
[1:32:16] Cameron McEwen: You know,
[1:32:16] Cameron McEwen: national thermostats.
[1:32:18] Bob Dobbs: The global thermostat,
[1:32:20] Bob Dobbs: that's right.
[1:32:21] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:32:22] Bob Dobbs: so maybe that's what the White House is.
[1:32:29] Bob Dobbs: The White House is the attempt to be the thermostat,
[1:32:32] Bob Dobbs: and they don't know what they're doing.
[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: Correct.
[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: And the White House has been that way for years.
[1:32:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:32:37] Cameron McEwen: yeah.
[1:32:38] Cameron McEwen: That's the American experience,
[1:32:40] Cameron McEwen: you could say.
[1:32:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:32:41] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: I mean,
[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: look at how much they make out of the election.
[1:32:45] Bob Dobbs: They never stop.
[1:32:46] Bob Dobbs: It goes on day and every year.
[1:32:49] Bob Dobbs: Somebody gets elected,
[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: then they're on to what's going to happen to the next guy,
[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: or is there going to be a next guy?
[1:32:53] Bob Dobbs: There's just too much ridiculous emphasis on the position of the White House.
[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[1:32:59] Bob Dobbs: they spent $2 billion to get a
[1:33:02] Bob Dobbs: $200,000-a-year job.
[1:33:05] Bob Dobbs: So the—but I'm explaining we know why they are obsessed with the White House.
[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: That's their ontology.
[1:33:16] Bob Dobbs: That's their epistemology,
[1:33:18] Bob Dobbs: is the White House,
[1:33:18] Bob Dobbs: what it represents.
[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: So it's the global thermostat,
[1:33:24] Bob Dobbs: the modulator.
[1:33:26] Cameron McEwen: Which is the Gutenberg Galaxy,
[1:33:28] Cameron McEwen: which is the individual point of view,
[1:33:32] Cameron McEwen: seeing the individual perspective.
[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: And the literate bureaucracy,
[1:33:37] Bob Dobbs: which is not a bureaucracy anymore,
[1:33:40] Bob Dobbs: other than it's an afterimage of a bureaucracy,
[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: what they call the government.
[1:33:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:33:46] Cameron McEwen: And so...
[1:33:47] Cameron McEwen: It's a body for clipping coupons.
[1:33:52] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:33:53] Bob Dobbs: And so you have today,
[1:33:55] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:33:55] Bob Dobbs: we have the image of the government is in chaos and no department is listening to any other department.
[1:34:02] Bob Dobbs: They can't get the Department of Justice to,
[1:34:05] Bob Dobbs: Congress can't get them to investigate anything that Congress is looking to do.
[1:34:11] Bob Dobbs: Right now,
[1:34:12] Bob Dobbs: the Republican-led Congress.
[1:34:14] Bob Dobbs: So...
[1:34:17] Bob Dobbs: I think that was very exciting,
[1:34:18] Bob Dobbs: what we're saying right here.
[1:34:19] Bob Dobbs: We're explaining why this is,
[1:34:21] Bob Dobbs: we have a basic language.
[1:34:22] Bob Dobbs: We have the Esperanto that Joyce and these people were looking for through McLuhan as a jumping off point.
[1:34:29] Bob Dobbs: So Kroker said that he was looking for a language,
[1:34:32] Bob Dobbs: and I think he thought he found the language with his book,
[1:34:35] Bob Dobbs: The Data Trash,
[1:34:36] Bob Dobbs: 1994,
[1:34:37] Bob Dobbs: with Michael Weinstein.
[1:34:39] Bob Dobbs: They thought they had established the language.
[1:34:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: you've got to say,
[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: no,
[1:34:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan got there first.
[1:34:45] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan got the language.
[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: and then see what Kroker adds to it if he uh you know refines changes the McLuhan language but i would say McLuhan got the language first the way you described chemistry he got the elementals and
[1:35:03] Cameron McEwen: that is a way to talk about everything and this closely relates to everything we were saying before um about the art historians and the style historians yeah
[1:35:15] Cameron McEwen: Lewis and Joyce,
[1:35:16] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:35:17] Cameron McEwen: everybody for at least a century and a half has felt this need to find a way of talking about the human fate.
[1:35:33] Cameron McEwen: And we haven't found it.
[1:35:35] Cameron McEwen: That's where we are right now.
[1:35:38] Cameron McEwen: People like McLuhan had great suggestions and they may have found the answer,
[1:35:44] Cameron McEwen: but they didn't.
[1:35:45] Cameron McEwen: They haven't found a way to communicate.
[1:35:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:35:48] Bob Dobbs: I say we did.
[1:35:51] Bob Dobbs: We did find it.
[1:35:52] Bob Dobbs: How do you mean?
[1:35:53] Bob Dobbs: With all kinds of,
[1:35:56] Bob Dobbs: what is the word,
[1:35:57] Bob Dobbs: all kinds of apologies or corrections to what we just said.
[1:36:02] Bob Dobbs: Endless corrections to that sentence.
[1:36:04] Bob Dobbs: We discovered it.
[1:36:06] Bob Dobbs: But I would add that it's not what you thought we discovered.
[1:36:09] Bob Dobbs: And we're not sure what you think we discovered.
[1:36:13] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[1:36:14] Cameron McEwen: For me,
[1:36:15] Cameron McEwen: the proof is in the pudding.
[1:36:18] Bob Dobbs: I'm sick of that pudding.
[1:36:19] Cameron McEwen: I've had enough of that.
[1:36:21] Cameron McEwen: The world is clearly showing that nobody got the message.
[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:36:30] Bob Dobbs: so then we did that quote.
[1:36:35] Bob Dobbs: Eric falls short there for the language purposes.
[1:36:42] Bob Dobbs: And then we have...
[1:36:45] Bob Dobbs: Two quotes to emphasize the liveness at the top of page 144.
[1:36:49] Bob Dobbs: So in War and Peace in the Global Village,
[1:36:51] Bob Dobbs: page 36,
[1:36:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,
[1:36:53] Bob Dobbs: the important thing is to realize that electric information systems are live environments in the full organic sense.
[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:36:59] Bob Dobbs: here it is.
[1:37:00] Bob Dobbs: That's 1968.
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: So,
[1:37:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[1:37:04] Bob Dobbs: 55 years later,
[1:37:05] Bob Dobbs: almost 60 years later,
[1:37:08] Bob Dobbs: a lot of millions of people would understand that.
[1:37:12] Bob Dobbs: think they understood it,
[1:37:13] Bob Dobbs: would accept the words that the environment has come alive.
[1:37:16] Bob Dobbs: That's what they call AI.
[1:37:18] Bob Dobbs: So when McLuhan said in 1970 that
[1:37:22] Bob Dobbs: Eliot's auditory imagination was a common experience,
[1:37:26] Bob Dobbs: but Finnegans Wake was still unknown and unconscious and that was not anybody's experience,
[1:37:31] Bob Dobbs: we now have arrived at Finnegans Wake as people's experience and this point that environments are alive.
[1:37:39] Bob Dobbs: And that's the tech body.
[1:37:42] Bob Dobbs: So then the second quote,
[1:37:43] Bob Dobbs: a few months later,
[1:37:46] Bob Dobbs: March 69 in Playboy,
[1:37:47] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan says,
[1:37:48] Bob Dobbs: Our whole cultural habitat,
[1:37:50] Bob Dobbs: which we once viewed as a mere container of people,
[1:37:53] Bob Dobbs: a container of people,
[1:37:55] Bob Dobbs: is being transformed by these media and by space satellites into a living organism,
[1:38:00] Bob Dobbs: itself contained within a new macrocosm or connubium of a super-terrestrial nature.
[1:38:06] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[1:38:07] Bob Dobbs: I would say that must be what...
[1:38:08] Bob Dobbs: iON's referring to when he says McLuhan was the only one who got intuitive the tech body.
[1:38:13] Bob Dobbs: Those two quotes show that.
[1:38:15] Bob Dobbs: So we're now moving into this living thing and this is phase two of the Android meme coming up to the tech body.
[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: See?
[1:38:27] Bob Dobbs: That's what we're getting.
[1:38:29] Bob Dobbs: We're quite far along in the essay here.
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:38:32] Cameron McEwen: for sure.
[1:38:33] Cameron McEwen: When you think about live environments
[1:38:39] Cameron McEwen: Do you think about them as sort of Janus-faced,
[1:38:42] Cameron McEwen: so that one face is the tech body,
[1:38:48] Cameron McEwen: but another face is the possibility of sort of universal research establishing a new human identity?
[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:39:03] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I mean.
[1:39:05] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:39:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm beginning here.
[1:39:08] Bob Dobbs: with McLuhan establishing something.
[1:39:11] Bob Dobbs: And then the rest of this essay will be trying to figure out what it means or the implications of it.
[1:39:16] Bob Dobbs: So the Janet space could be...
[1:39:19] Bob Dobbs: Tech body versus Android meme.
[1:39:22] Bob Dobbs: Or now we have a new thing,
[1:39:24] Bob Dobbs: and iON's doing a lot on AI.
[1:39:26] Bob Dobbs: AI is the baby of the tech body.
[1:39:29] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:39:30] Bob Dobbs: iON's going into its own eccentric explanation of what AI is,
[1:39:34] Bob Dobbs: and it's a problem right today.
[1:39:36] Bob Dobbs: But stepping back to the tech body,
[1:39:38] Bob Dobbs: which is what I began with,
[1:39:40] Bob Dobbs: I didn't have the AI term,
[1:39:42] Bob Dobbs: which just showed up a couple months ago in iON land.
[1:39:45] Bob Dobbs: So I'm stepping back,
[1:39:47] Bob Dobbs: trying to figure out the tech body.
[1:39:48] Bob Dobbs: So I would juxtapose the tech body versus the Android meme.
[1:39:51] Bob Dobbs: The Android meme is a more passive...
[1:39:56] Bob Dobbs: It's the couch that people sit in,
[1:39:59] Bob Dobbs: and then they put a virtual helmet on their face and massage their brains and being with...
[1:40:05] Bob Dobbs: That's the tech body.
[1:40:08] Bob Dobbs: So the tech body is a psychopathic extension of the Android meme that disrupts the silent sea that is the Android meme.
[1:40:19] Bob Dobbs: So there I am,
[1:40:20] Bob Dobbs: grabbing words,
[1:40:21] Bob Dobbs: trying to make something out of it.
[1:40:22] Bob Dobbs: Don't know if it communicates,
[1:40:24] Bob Dobbs: but
[1:40:26] Bob Dobbs: I want to continue reading as I try to answer your question.
[1:40:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:40:31] Cameron McEwen: there's no problem with that.
[1:40:32] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:40:33] Bob Dobbs: So after those two quotes that nobody paid attention to in the
[1:40:39] Bob Dobbs: 1670s that McLuhan was saying it,
[1:40:41] Bob Dobbs: there were science fiction guys starting to write about it.
[1:40:44] Bob Dobbs: I guess
[1:40:45] Bob Dobbs: Philip K.
[1:40:46] Bob Dobbs: Dick tried to express it.
[1:40:48] Bob Dobbs: in his different stories,
[1:40:50] Bob Dobbs: maybe J.G.
[1:40:51] Bob Dobbs: Ballard,
[1:40:53] Bob Dobbs: maybe some other guys I don't know about.
[1:40:55] Bob Dobbs: But Kroker comes up,
[1:40:57] Bob Dobbs: shows up familiar with those guys and quite informed on McLuhan and has the advantage of later technology to look at.
[1:41:06] Bob Dobbs: So here's what I say.
[1:41:09] Bob Dobbs: By the
[1:41:10] Bob Dobbs: 90s, it seemed that the only writer...
[1:41:12] Bob Dobbs: This is on...
[1:41:14] Bob Dobbs: We're on page 144.
[1:41:17] Cameron McEwen: 44.
[1:41:17] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:41:18] Bob Dobbs: after the two live quotes from 68 and 69 by McLuhan.
[1:41:21] Bob Dobbs: So I say,
[1:41:22] Bob Dobbs: by the 90s,
[1:41:23] Bob Dobbs: it seemed that the only writer tackling the new shrunken digital membrane was Dr.
[1:41:27] Bob Dobbs: Arthur Kroker.
[1:41:28] Bob Dobbs: I coined the phrase Android meme by the mid-90s,
[1:41:33] Bob Dobbs: so I was delighted to see that we were almost on the same page with his terms like android flesh and floating organs without bodies.
[1:41:41] Bob Dobbs: That's in quotes,
[1:41:42] Bob Dobbs: floating organs without bodies.
[1:41:44] Bob Dobbs: Not the Deleuze and Guattari's.
[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: quote,
[1:41:46] Bob Dobbs: bodies without organs.
[1:41:48] Bob Dobbs: These are split off organs floating,
[1:41:51] Bob Dobbs: not just bodies.
[1:41:55] Bob Dobbs: The bodies have been smashed,
[1:41:59] Bob Dobbs: splattered.
[1:42:00] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,
[1:42:01] Bob Dobbs: I created a chart illustrating our kindred visions in 1995.
[1:42:07] Bob Dobbs: So then you can look at the chart.
[1:42:09] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,
[1:42:10] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan enjoyed a minor revival in the 90s through magazines like Mondo 2000,
[1:42:14] Bob Dobbs: in brackets.
[1:42:15] Bob Dobbs: Recombinant synesthesia and neopsychedelia.
[1:42:20] Bob Dobbs: That is,
[1:42:21] Bob Dobbs: Kroker uses the word recombinant.
[1:42:23] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if Mondo did.
[1:42:25] Bob Dobbs: This might be Kroker talking about Mondo 2000.
[1:42:28] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,
[1:42:29] Bob Dobbs: there are the words.
[1:42:29] Bob Dobbs: Recombinant synesthesia.
[1:42:32] Bob Dobbs: So that's technology extending its own synesthesia.
[1:42:36] Bob Dobbs: Recombinant synesthesia and neopsychedelia.
[1:42:40] Bob Dobbs: And also Wired Magazine,
[1:42:42] Bob Dobbs: which in brackets.
[1:42:43] Bob Dobbs: Digital Recombinant Commodities.
[1:42:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:42:45] Bob Dobbs: those Arthur Kroker terms.
[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:42:47] Bob Dobbs: Mondo 2000 doesn't know it's doing Recombinant Synesthesia and Neopsychedelia.
[1:42:53] Bob Dobbs: They're just a bunch of old hippies there in San Francisco.
[1:42:56] Bob Dobbs: And Wired,
[1:42:58] Bob Dobbs: they're celebrating Digital Recombinant Commodities,
[1:43:03] Bob Dobbs: all the digital internet apps that were starting in the
[1:43:08] Bob Dobbs: 90s.
[1:43:11] Bob Dobbs: So McLuhan enjoyed a minor revival because Mondo 2000 and Wired,
[1:43:14] Bob Dobbs: they saw McLuhan as anticipating more of the psychology of their tactile and proprioceptive lifestyles.
[1:43:21] Bob Dobbs: Now everybody is feeling tactile and proprioceptive,
[1:43:24] Bob Dobbs: but they don't know they've been usurped by the Android meme doing the tactile and proprioception,
[1:43:30] Bob Dobbs: independent of people,
[1:43:32] Bob Dobbs: even though it's going inside people.
[1:43:35] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan's program of collective media fasts was not on their horizon of awareness.
[1:43:40] Bob Dobbs: They were actually fulfilling a little-known prediction by McLuhan in 1968,
[1:43:45] Bob Dobbs: millenary ecstatics.
[1:43:47] Bob Dobbs: That was the phrase McLuhan came up with.
[1:43:50] Bob Dobbs: And it was the only place I've ever seen is in this collection of criticism of McLuhan,
[1:43:55] Bob Dobbs: articles on McLuhan called McLuhan Pro and Con,
[1:43:58] Bob Dobbs: edited by Raymond Rosenthal in 1968.
[1:44:01] Bob Dobbs: You'll see the phrase.
[1:44:02] Bob Dobbs: Do you know that phrase,
[1:44:03] Bob Dobbs: millenary ecstatics?
[1:44:05] Cameron McEwen: I didn't,
[1:44:06] Cameron McEwen: so I looked it up.
[1:44:07] Bob Dobbs: Good.
[1:44:07] Cameron McEwen: And it's not...
[1:44:09] Cameron McEwen: in an essay by
[1:44:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan.
[1:44:13] Cameron McEwen: It's in an essay by a guy with a sort of Polish name,
[1:44:20] Cameron McEwen: Klonsky.
[1:44:21] Cameron McEwen: Milton Klonsky mentions it in his essay.
[1:44:26] Bob Dobbs: In that book?
[1:44:28] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:44:28] Cameron McEwen: in that book.
[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[1:44:29] Bob Dobbs: well...
[1:44:30] Cameron McEwen: He says that that was the name of the course that McLuhan gave at Fordham.
[1:44:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:44:38] Bob Dobbs: but you don't think it was?
[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: Oh,
[1:44:40] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.
[1:44:41] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: yeah,
[1:44:42] Bob Dobbs: I'm...
[1:44:42] Cameron McEwen: There's nothing I would argue about.
[1:44:45] Bob Dobbs: Beg your pardon?
[1:44:46] Cameron McEwen: I would not argue about it.
[1:44:49] Cameron McEwen: If Klonsky says that's what he was...
[1:44:53] Cameron McEwen: what the course was,
[1:44:54] Cameron McEwen: I'm happy to accept that.
[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: Oh,
[1:44:56] Bob Dobbs: you mean Klonsky is saying that's the name of McLuhan's course in Marshall McLuhan essay?
[1:45:02] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:45:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[1:45:04] Cameron McEwen: he doesn't exactly say that.
[1:45:05] Cameron McEwen: I'll read you what he says.
[1:45:07] Cameron McEwen: He says,
[1:45:08] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan is well known as a convert to Catholicism,
[1:45:11] Cameron McEwen: bracket,
[1:45:12] Cameron McEwen: now teaching a course in millinery ecstatics at Fordham.
[1:45:17] Cameron McEwen: So it may just be a phrase that Klonsky made up.
[1:45:20] Bob Dobbs: Right.
[1:45:21] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:45:21] Bob Dobbs: wait a minute.
[1:45:21] Bob Dobbs: Now that's page,
[1:45:22] Bob Dobbs: is that page 137?
[1:45:24] Cameron McEwen: Yes,
[1:45:24] Cameron McEwen: sir.
[1:45:25] Bob Dobbs: Because in my mind,
[1:45:28] Bob Dobbs: in the introduction,
[1:45:30] Bob Dobbs: Rosenthal says the title,
[1:45:33] Bob Dobbs: and I thought it was Millennial Ecstatics.
[1:45:37] Bob Dobbs: I've got to go back and look.
[1:45:39] Bob Dobbs: It may be said twice.
[1:45:41] Cameron McEwen: When I search the book,
[1:45:42] Cameron McEwen: the book is searchable at the Internet Archive.
[1:45:45] Cameron McEwen: That's what I have open here.
[1:45:48] Cameron McEwen: And if you search ecstatics,
[1:45:51] Cameron McEwen: you only get one hit.
[1:45:53] Cameron McEwen: So it wouldn't matter if it was millenary or millennial.
[1:45:58] Cameron McEwen: It would still just come up with the one hit.
[1:46:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:46:02] Bob Dobbs: I don't know why in my mind all these years I thought it was an introduction to the book.
[1:46:07] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:46:08] Bob Dobbs: Rosenthal is saying,
[1:46:10] Bob Dobbs: quoting McLuhan,
[1:46:10] Bob Dobbs: saying that's the title of his course at Fordham.
[1:46:14] Bob Dobbs: So I don't know where I got that idea.
[1:46:16] Bob Dobbs: Maybe misread it in 68 and then it stayed there.
[1:46:19] Bob Dobbs: But I had to look up the page number,
[1:46:21] Bob Dobbs: and it's not the beginning.
[1:46:22] Bob Dobbs: It's page 137.
[1:46:23] Bob Dobbs: So I didn't notice somehow,
[1:46:27] Bob Dobbs: it didn't change my image,
[1:46:28] Bob Dobbs: that it was in Klonsky's that he created.
[1:46:31] Bob Dobbs: So I'm not sure about that now.
[1:46:33] Bob Dobbs: Anyways,
[1:46:34] Bob Dobbs: the phrase...
[1:46:35] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:46:35] Cameron McEwen: it's an interesting phrase anyway.
[1:46:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:46:38] Bob Dobbs: so in the Tiny Note chart,
[1:46:39] Bob Dobbs: I have the Dobbs quadrant contains the other four quadrants or frames them.
[1:46:44] Bob Dobbs: And
[1:46:45] Bob Dobbs: I have the characteristic of ecstasy,
[1:46:47] Bob Dobbs: and the others have...
[1:46:48] Bob Dobbs: paranoia or schizophrenia or hysteria or panic.
[1:46:53] Bob Dobbs: So since the Dobbs quadrant swallows the other four,
[1:47:00] Bob Dobbs: I am doing millennial ecstatics,
[1:47:03] Bob Dobbs: and Kroker and these guys are ecstatics in their creations.
[1:47:08] Bob Dobbs: They're just pouring out their stuff.
[1:47:11] Bob Dobbs: So that's partly what I'm being when I'm saying my quadrant is ecstatics.
[1:47:16] Bob Dobbs: I'm thinking of McLuhan.
[1:47:18] Bob Dobbs: framing it with this millennial ecstatic and he says that 68 men
[1:47:23] Bob Dobbs: 30 years later I make a chart of the millennial ecstatic since 68 up till the
[1:47:29] Bob Dobbs: 90s I made the chart 95 so that's part of the thinking in the structure of the chart but anyway
[1:47:37] Cameron McEwen: I just want to note that ecstatic names what McLuhan usually calls extension and extension is
[1:47:48] Cameron McEwen: what is structured by media.
[1:47:51] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[1:47:51] Bob Dobbs: but see,
[1:47:52] Bob Dobbs: and remember extensions is games in Understanding Media.
[1:47:56] Bob Dobbs: Games are extensions of man.
[1:47:57] Bob Dobbs: Now he repeats the title under the chapter on games.
[1:48:02] Bob Dobbs: So everything's a game or art forms.
[1:48:06] Bob Dobbs: The thing is that the ecstatics is the revolutions with the chemical body and all kinds of forms that is the content while
[1:48:16] Bob Dobbs: The chemical body is being completely obsolesced by the beginning of the tech body coming in,
[1:48:22] Bob Dobbs: early phases,
[1:48:23] Bob Dobbs: the Android meme.
[1:48:24] Bob Dobbs: And so everybody's celebrating the triumph of what we have achieved,
[1:48:28] Bob Dobbs: and we don't know,
[1:48:29] Bob Dobbs: we've just offed ourselves,
[1:48:32] Bob Dobbs: which is the fear now of AI making humans extinct,
[1:48:36] Bob Dobbs: right?
[1:48:37] Bob Dobbs: That's the projection of the panic in the
[1:48:41] Bob Dobbs: 60s.
[1:48:43] Bob Dobbs: So millennial ecstatics is the content.
[1:48:47] Bob Dobbs: of human activity in the
[1:48:49] Bob Dobbs: 60s and 70s in the global theater,
[1:48:51] Bob Dobbs: or the Global Membrane.
[1:48:53] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:48:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm trying to say something here,
[1:48:56] Bob Dobbs: and
[1:48:57] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying something's afoot.
[1:49:00] Bob Dobbs: Kroker,
[1:49:01] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[1:49:02] Bob Dobbs: Arthur Kroker picked up where Jean Baudrillard left off.
[1:49:05] Bob Dobbs: Baudrillard was talking about the medium,
[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[1:49:08] Bob Dobbs: medium,
[1:49:09] Bob Dobbs: and the message,
[1:49:09] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[1:49:10] Bob Dobbs: in the late 70s.
[1:49:11] Bob Dobbs: But he overlaid a genetic DNA model because that was the figure.
[1:49:15] Bob Dobbs: of the playing with genes,
[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: cells,
[1:49:17] Bob Dobbs: and viruses,
[1:49:18] Bob Dobbs: which was called recombinant genetics.
[1:49:20] Bob Dobbs: by Kroker remember i was telling you how nothing was changing in the 80s and 90s they were just selling new shinier products the format of computers didn't change no breakthrough in the digital structure like even going beyond digital all
[1:49:36] Bob Dobbs: the products were just replays cliche probes with Kroker calling them digital recombinant commodities that's groundhog day the popular bill murray movie in 1993
[1:49:48] Bob Dobbs: It's a recombinant day.
[1:49:49] Bob Dobbs: Nothing new,
[1:49:50] Bob Dobbs: just devices replayed in different orders.
[1:49:53] Bob Dobbs: Wired magazine was created to sell Wired products.
[1:49:56] Bob Dobbs: Kroker was critiquing Wired for being an agency of leaden consumerism of recombinant commodities.
[1:50:04] Bob Dobbs: As we move into the
[1:50:05] Bob Dobbs: 80s, people are starting to become kings and queens in extremis.
[1:50:08] Bob Dobbs: That's the ecstatics.
[1:50:10] Bob Dobbs: They're beginning to be put on pedestals.
[1:50:13] Bob Dobbs: Media are shrinking.
[1:50:14] Bob Dobbs: People,
[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,
[1:50:15] Bob Dobbs: are getting really big,
[1:50:17] Bob Dobbs: quotes.
[1:50:18] Bob Dobbs: When they acquire their own computer and cell phone,
[1:50:20] Bob Dobbs: they can walk around mobile.
[1:50:22] Bob Dobbs: It's a new kind of psychology,
[1:50:24] Bob Dobbs: not Freudian or Jungian psychology.
[1:50:26] Bob Dobbs: It's the psychology of global theater occupants.
[1:50:29] Bob Dobbs: And that theater is tactile and proprioceptive.
[1:50:32] Bob Dobbs: Doing yoga is proprioceptive,
[1:50:34] Bob Dobbs: for example.
[1:50:35] Bob Dobbs: So
[1:50:35] Bob Dobbs: I don't repeat it there,
[1:50:36] Bob Dobbs: but the theater,
[1:50:38] Bob Dobbs: the psychology of global theater is millennial ecstatics.
[1:50:42] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was enjoying his minor revival,
[1:50:45] Bob Dobbs: and the Android meme was recycling recombinant products.
[1:50:47] Bob Dobbs: both hardware and software,
[1:50:49] Bob Dobbs: but humans,
[1:50:50] Bob Dobbs: humans in quotes,
[1:50:51] Bob Dobbs: because there ain't no humans anymore,
[1:50:52] Bob Dobbs: but humans saw McLuhan as anticipating more the psychology of their tactile proprioceptive lifestyles.
[1:51:00] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people,
[1:51:01] Bob Dobbs: they still were thinking in terms of their bodies and its sensory makeup,
[1:51:04] Bob Dobbs: but it's the tactile structure.
[1:51:07] Bob Dobbs: A lot of people would read Understanding Media and they'd get some personal satisfaction out of it.
[1:51:11] Bob Dobbs: They had no clue.
[1:51:12] Bob Dobbs: They couldn't see the sociological literary aspects of it.
[1:51:18] Bob Dobbs: They couldn't see what environments were unfolding.
[1:51:20] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan described the electrical age as a time of flow and flux.
[1:51:25] Bob Dobbs: People took the flow-flux personally and wanted that kind of imagined freedom while strutting around in a supermarket.
[1:51:34] Bob Dobbs: They interpreted the content of the book as a projection of their tactile...
[1:51:38] Bob Dobbs: I guess I mean McLuhan's book.
[1:51:40] Bob Dobbs: They interpreted the content of McLuhan's book as a projection...
[1:51:43] Bob Dobbs: of their tactile and proprioceptive lifestyles,
[1:51:46] Bob Dobbs: the user is content naturally.
[1:51:48] Bob Dobbs: You don't have to own a computer to be tactile and proprioceptive.
[1:51:52] Bob Dobbs: You just have to be in the 20th century.
[1:51:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:51:58] Bob Dobbs: you don't have to own a computer to be tactile and proprioceptive.
[1:52:00] Bob Dobbs: If you're already tactile and proprioceptive,
[1:52:02] Bob Dobbs: but it becomes an emphasis in your sensory life when you're in a tactile extended environment,
[1:52:08] Bob Dobbs: that's the proper way to say that.
[1:52:10] Bob Dobbs: You just have to be in the 20th century with the extension of tactility.
[1:52:14] Bob Dobbs: In an obscure book,
[1:52:15] Bob Dobbs: a collection of essays on McLuhan by Raymond Rosenthal,
[1:52:18] Bob Dobbs: on page
[1:52:19] Bob Dobbs: 137 there's a little note that McLuhan had been at Fordham University in the Bronx from 67 to 68,
[1:52:25] Bob Dobbs: and he offered a course on millenniary ecstatics.
[1:52:29] Bob Dobbs: Now you're looking at it in the printout there,
[1:52:33] Bob Dobbs: it's millenniary,
[1:52:34] Bob Dobbs: not millennial,
[1:52:35] Bob Dobbs: correct?
[1:52:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[1:52:37] Cameron McEwen: millenniary.
[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: Well,
[1:52:39] Bob Dobbs: I guess I saw it that way,
[1:52:40] Bob Dobbs: even though I used to remember it as millennial,
[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: I think.
[1:52:42] Bob Dobbs: He foresaw a millennial ecstatics as what was parallel to all the serious ecological concerns of the 80s and 90s.
[1:52:55] Bob Dobbs: So as people got more and more stressed out,
[1:52:57] Bob Dobbs: they also had time or another body to do ecstatics in,
[1:53:03] Bob Dobbs: the electric extended body,
[1:53:05] Bob Dobbs: leading up to 2000 Common Era.
[1:53:08] Bob Dobbs: People were having a good,
[1:53:10] Bob Dobbs: that's the year 2000,
[1:53:12] Bob Dobbs: Y2K year.
[1:53:13] Bob Dobbs: People were having a good and unique time in a variety of innumerable ways.
[1:53:17] Bob Dobbs: That was one of the trends he predicted,
[1:53:19] Bob Dobbs: millenniary ecstatics,
[1:53:21] Bob Dobbs: including the religious ecstatics,
[1:53:23] Bob Dobbs: that's in quote,
[1:53:24] Bob Dobbs: of people celebrating how the Bible's book of Revelation wraps it all up,
[1:53:28] Bob Dobbs: ends the human era,
[1:53:29] Bob Dobbs: and Jesus comes back.
[1:53:32] Bob Dobbs: That's a particularly American phenomenon,
[1:53:35] Bob Dobbs: America being a culture that's...
[1:53:37] Bob Dobbs: built on the printed book,
[1:53:39] Bob Dobbs: the average person would go to the Bible as the archetypal printed book that America was based on,
[1:53:46] Bob Dobbs: and that's the icon of identity for Americans,
[1:53:50] Bob Dobbs: the book.
[1:53:51] Bob Dobbs: Also,
[1:53:52] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan wanted people to turn media off,
[1:53:54] Bob Dobbs: have a collective media fast,
[1:53:56] Bob Dobbs: and that was not on the horizon of even the later revival of McLuhan.
[1:54:01] Bob Dobbs: They just wanted to live their druggy,
[1:54:03] Bob Dobbs: allopathic,
[1:54:04] Bob Dobbs: and recreational drugs.
[1:54:06] Bob Dobbs: That's what that means.
[1:54:07] Bob Dobbs: They wanted to live their druggy,
[1:54:09] Bob Dobbs: wired lives,
[1:54:10] Bob Dobbs: while McLuhan on the surface seemed to be a celebrant of that digerati culture.
[1:54:14] Bob Dobbs: They didn't notice he wanted to shut it down temporarily.
[1:54:17] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was digging their digital antics.
[1:54:20] Bob Dobbs: They were replaying 1968's Millenary Ecstatics,
[1:54:23] Bob Dobbs: the simulation of choice for people in the 90s before the dot-com crash of April 2000.
[1:54:31] Bob Dobbs: So that's a big mouthful.
[1:54:33] Bob Dobbs: And then
[1:54:36] Bob Dobbs: I have a quote.
[1:54:37] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used the word brain pan in the
[1:54:40] Bob Dobbs: 60s.
[1:54:41] Bob Dobbs: So why do I say that?
[1:54:42] Bob Dobbs: So in the text,
[1:54:45] Bob Dobbs: after what I just read,
[1:54:46] Bob Dobbs: the Global Membrane,
[1:54:48] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme phase one,
[1:54:50] Bob Dobbs: C above,
[1:54:51] Bob Dobbs: was the actual hidden ground of the 1960s and 1990 period,
[1:54:54] Bob Dobbs: not the global theater.
[1:54:56] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't noticed until the internet.
[1:54:58] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,
[1:54:59] Bob Dobbs: Information Superhighway,
[1:55:00] Bob Dobbs: that was the first term for it,
[1:55:02] Bob Dobbs: was dumped into the brain pan of the super angelic consumer after 1995.
[1:55:08] Bob Dobbs: So then I say where brain pan comes from.
[1:55:11] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan used that word in the 60s.
[1:55:14] Bob Dobbs: The concept of the super angel was probably the most important contribution by McLuhan to the Internet and World Wide Web era.
[1:55:21] Bob Dobbs: The background to the concept slash percept,
[1:55:24] Bob Dobbs: colon.
[1:55:25] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had met Wyndham Lewis in 1943 in the Detroit area,
[1:55:29] Bob Dobbs: and they spent much of their subsequent conversations discussing the concept of the superhuman.
[1:55:35] Bob Dobbs: These discussions are presented in Lewis's novel,
[1:55:38] Bob Dobbs: Self-Condemned,
[1:55:39] Bob Dobbs: which came out in 1954,
[1:55:41] Bob Dobbs: wherein one of the discussants is based on McLuhan.
[1:55:44] Bob Dobbs: He is Professor Ian McKenzie,
[1:55:47] Bob Dobbs: see page 312.
[1:55:51] Bob Dobbs: Ian McKenzie is a person in Dartmouth,
[1:55:53] Bob Dobbs: Nova Scotia.
[1:55:55] Bob Dobbs: One night at a party we were talking and
[1:56:00] Bob Dobbs: I think he said,
[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: he was a younger guy,
[1:56:02] Bob Dobbs: and he said,
[1:56:04] Bob Dobbs: how would you define God,
[1:56:05] Bob Dobbs: Bob?
[1:56:07] Bob Dobbs: And in my memory I think I said something like,
[1:56:09] Bob Dobbs: well,
[1:56:10] Bob Dobbs: God is and isn't.
[1:56:12] Bob Dobbs: And he goes,
[1:56:14] Bob Dobbs: that's it,
[1:56:14] Bob Dobbs: that's it,
[1:56:15] Bob Dobbs: you defined it,
[1:56:16] Bob Dobbs: oh my God.
[1:56:17] Bob Dobbs: He's just running around the party telling everybody I define God.
[1:56:20] Bob Dobbs: Now that was the first time
[1:56:23] Bob Dobbs: I communicated effectively.
[1:56:26] Cameron McEwen: At last
[1:56:27] Bob Dobbs: At last
[1:56:28] Bob Dobbs: It inspired somebody and I've been doing it ever since.
[1:56:32] Bob Dobbs: But what's funny is that years later I find out the guy that I turned on was Ian McKenzie and that's the name of the guy.
[1:56:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,
[1:56:41] Bob Dobbs: so me to Ian McKenzie is Wyndham Lewis to Professor McKenzie,
[1:56:46] Bob Dobbs: or McLuhan.
[1:56:48] Bob Dobbs: Lewis gave McLuhan insights.
[1:56:51] Bob Dobbs: He helped McLuhan see what God was.
[1:56:53] Bob Dobbs: I did it to my personal Ian McKenzie.
[1:56:57] Bob Dobbs: There's the synchronicity of language on a bird's eye view.
[1:57:00] Bob Dobbs: You get it?
[1:57:00] Cameron McEwen: When you say that...
[1:57:07] Cameron McEwen: these discussions are presented in Lewis's novel,
[1:57:10] Cameron McEwen: Self-Condemned.
[1:57:12] Cameron McEwen: You're talking about the discussions between
[1:57:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis,
[1:57:17] Cameron McEwen: right?
[1:57:18] Bob Dobbs: No,
[1:57:19] Bob Dobbs: the characters in the book are Rene Harding,
[1:57:21] Bob Dobbs: based on Lewis,
[1:57:22] Bob Dobbs: when he's stuck in
[1:57:24] Bob Dobbs: North America during World War II,
[1:57:26] Bob Dobbs: and he meets this professor who is modeled on McLuhan,
[1:57:29] Bob Dobbs: literally,
[1:57:30] Bob Dobbs: you can tell.
[1:57:31] Bob Dobbs: And they talk about the superhuman.
[1:57:33] Bob Dobbs: That's what they talk about in the novel.
[1:57:36] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[1:57:37] Cameron McEwen: But what I'm trying to bring out is you're not saying that the superhuman is first treated by Lewis in Self-Condemned.
[1:57:48] Cameron McEwen: You're saying that
[1:57:50] Cameron McEwen: Self-Condemned treats the superhuman as discussed by
[1:57:55] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and Lewis,
[1:57:57] Cameron McEwen: but you're not excluding...
[1:58:00] Bob Dobbs: In 43.
[1:58:03] Bob Dobbs: The book about 10 years later.
[1:58:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:58:07] Cameron McEwen: no,
[1:58:07] Cameron McEwen: I understand that.
[1:58:08] Cameron McEwen: But
[1:58:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm just trying to bring out the point that the superhuman in Lewis is not a new theme in
[1:58:16] Cameron McEwen: Self-Condemned.
[1:58:19] Bob Dobbs: Well, the first time,
[1:58:20] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he has the,
[1:58:22] Bob Dobbs: he might have the word in other essays of the time.
[1:58:25] Bob Dobbs: Is that what you mean?
[1:58:26] Cameron McEwen: No,
[1:58:26] Cameron McEwen: I'm,
[1:58:27] Cameron McEwen: well,
[1:58:27] Cameron McEwen: I mean,
[1:58:27] Cameron McEwen: isn't the superhuman an aspect of the human age?
[1:58:35] Bob Dobbs: Yes,
[1:58:36] Bob Dobbs: let me see.
[1:58:36] Bob Dobbs: see,
[1:58:36] Bob Dobbs: which is what I bring up in the next paragraph.
[1:58:39] Bob Dobbs: I just finished The Human Age.
[1:58:40] Bob Dobbs: Did I tell you that?
[1:58:42] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[1:58:42] Cameron McEwen: we discussed it last time,
[1:58:44] Cameron McEwen: actually.
[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[1:58:45] Bob Dobbs: So I hadn't finished it then,
[1:58:46] Bob Dobbs: but I finished it last week.
[1:58:49] Bob Dobbs: What a great,
[1:58:49] Bob Dobbs: incredible book.
[1:58:51] Bob Dobbs: And here's an interesting pattern.
[1:58:56] Bob Dobbs: Some critic writing about some Lewis scholar,
[1:58:59] Bob Dobbs: he says the missing link is you have
[1:59:03] Bob Dobbs: Aldous Huxley.
[1:59:05] Bob Dobbs: Brave New World,
[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: Orwell,
[1:59:06] Bob Dobbs: 1948,
[1:59:09] Bob Dobbs: 1984,
[1:59:09] Bob Dobbs: and then you jump to the
[1:59:12] Bob Dobbs: 60s, 70s,
[1:59:12] Bob Dobbs: and 80s,
[1:59:13] Bob Dobbs: and you've got
[1:59:14] Bob Dobbs: J.G. Ballard and some other guy I didn't really recognize,
[1:59:18] Bob Dobbs: forget his name.
[1:59:20] Bob Dobbs: But in between,
[1:59:21] Bob Dobbs: on the way from Huxley,
[1:59:22] Bob Dobbs: Orwell,
[1:59:23] Bob Dobbs: to J.G.
[1:59:24] Bob Dobbs: Ballard and the other guy,
[1:59:25] Bob Dobbs: is Wyndham Lewis'
[1:59:26] Bob Dobbs: Human Age.
[1:59:27] Bob Dobbs: It is the missing science fiction thing that is appropriate to our time.
[1:59:34] Bob Dobbs: That McLuhan explained,
[1:59:36] Bob Dobbs: that's what you need.
[1:59:36] Bob Dobbs: We need to throw that in.
[1:59:38] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knows that Lewis did this,
[1:59:40] Bob Dobbs: that he wrote a science fiction novel that goes further than
[1:59:45] Bob Dobbs: Orwell, who was inspired by Lewis and Aldous Huxley,
[1:59:53] Bob Dobbs: but doesn't quite get to the postmodern,
[1:59:56] Bob Dobbs: whatever you call Ballard and those guys.
[1:59:58] Bob Dobbs: Ballard,
[1:59:58] Bob Dobbs: maybe Philip K.
[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: Dick,
[1:59:59] Bob Dobbs: but the writer didn't say Dick.
[2:00:01] Bob Dobbs: He named some other guy.
[2:00:03] Bob Dobbs: So that's really,
[2:00:04] Bob Dobbs: never heard of that before.
[2:00:06] Bob Dobbs: Lewis is human.
[2:00:07] Bob Dobbs: But I didn't know it.
[2:00:08] Bob Dobbs: I hadn't read it.
[2:00:09] Bob Dobbs: Once I read it and then read the review,
[2:00:11] Bob Dobbs: I said,
[2:00:11] Bob Dobbs: that guy's right.
[2:00:14] Bob Dobbs: This needs to be part of the great dystopias,
[2:00:17] Bob Dobbs: I guess you'd call it.
[2:00:19] Bob Dobbs: Brave New World and
[2:00:21] Bob Dobbs: Orwell first,
[2:00:22] Bob Dobbs: and then
[2:00:23] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, and then these later guys,
[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: J.G.
[2:00:26] Bob Dobbs: Ballard.
[2:00:27] Bob Dobbs: It's an important point that I find important.
[2:00:31] Bob Dobbs: We could stick.
[2:00:32] Bob Dobbs: Nobody knows Lewis.
[2:00:33] Bob Dobbs: They don't read him.
[2:00:34] Bob Dobbs: And so they don't know that he's up there with Orwell.
[2:00:39] Bob Dobbs: So back to what you...
[2:00:41] Bob Dobbs: Does he say superhuman in there?
[2:00:44] Bob Dobbs: Maybe.
[2:00:45] Bob Dobbs: It's all about angels.
[2:00:47] Bob Dobbs: And it's all about the devil's,
[2:00:51] Bob Dobbs: Lucifer's project to turn the angels into humans,
[2:00:55] Bob Dobbs: to become humans.
[2:00:57] Bob Dobbs: And you'll see in Exploration No.
[2:01:00] Bob Dobbs: 8...
[2:01:01] Bob Dobbs: At the back of the book,
[2:01:02] Bob Dobbs: there's a bunch of little essays by other people,
[2:01:05] Bob Dobbs: including McLuhan.
[2:01:07] Bob Dobbs: It's called Third Program in the Human Age,
[2:01:09] Bob Dobbs: and he talks about this very point of the Explorations of Hollywood and the angels invading Hollywood to take over the world because they're pissed off that humans have become discarnate angels,
[2:01:25] Bob Dobbs: or superhuman,
[2:01:27] Bob Dobbs: and they're obsolescing angels.
[2:01:29] Bob Dobbs: So this is battle.
[2:01:32] Bob Dobbs: That's what the third book's about,
[2:01:34] Bob Dobbs: one of the main themes.
[2:01:37] Bob Dobbs: That does include the superhuman in retrospect,
[2:01:39] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know if that word is in the human age.
[2:01:42] Cameron McEwen: Right.
[2:01:43] Cameron McEwen: I didn't mean,
[2:01:44] Cameron McEwen: I wasn't talking about vocabulary,
[2:01:46] Cameron McEwen: I was just talking about the theme.
[2:01:47] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:01:48] Bob Dobbs: yeah.
[2:01:50] Bob Dobbs: The Explorations of humans,
[2:01:52] Bob Dobbs: which is the phrase McLuhan used in the
[2:01:54] Bob Dobbs: 70s,
[2:01:57] Bob Dobbs: I think Lewis is saying that because there's a problem for the angels because of that.
[2:02:07] Bob Dobbs: So they have to become a human.
[2:02:09] Bob Dobbs: They've got to flip.
[2:02:12] Bob Dobbs: So it's quite an amazing concept,
[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[2:02:14] Bob Dobbs: in science fiction.
[2:02:17] Bob Dobbs: And this is written the same year that...
[2:02:21] Bob Dobbs: self-condemned comes out i mean he puts uh human age comes out in uh 55 so he wrote it in 51 52 53 54 that's the same years he's writing self-condemned so they go together so
[2:02:36] Cameron McEwen: that and you had you mentioned in here that uh the first uh edition of human age um came out already in the 20s i think 1928 yeah yeah that's child and that is
[2:02:50] Bob Dobbs: What's odd is you don't know if Lewis had this vision,
[2:02:56] Bob Dobbs: which doesn't get done for 25 years,
[2:02:58] Bob Dobbs: in 28.
[2:03:01] Bob Dobbs: I don't think there's anything about angels in Book 1.
[2:03:05] Bob Dobbs: It ends with them just arriving at hell or some preparatory city before you get to hell,
[2:03:15] Bob Dobbs: and it's called the Magnetic City.
[2:03:18] Bob Dobbs: But they're at a camp on the outskirts.
[2:03:20] Bob Dobbs: skirts of magnetic city so you know how McLuhan used that phrase a lot magnetic city that's what it's called in in Childermass so it's um i'd have to well it had to be discussed you'd have to read it and then i see what you think because the first 122 pages which everybody regards as extreme experimental introduction
[2:03:41] Bob Dobbs: to a book you kind of wade through 122 pages of these two guys
[2:03:45] Bob Dobbs: And you don't know where they are or what they're doing or why they're hallucinating on the environment and themselves and their interaction.
[2:03:52] Bob Dobbs: It's quite a mystery landscape that goes on for a long time and most people probably can't read it.
[2:03:58] Bob Dobbs: It just gets too boring and ridiculous because it has no reference point.
[2:04:03] Bob Dobbs: And then they finally get to the camp,
[2:04:09] Bob Dobbs: which is run by the bailiff who works for Lucifer.
[2:04:14] Bob Dobbs: That's how the book ends.
[2:04:17] Bob Dobbs: And you don't get the angel dimension until the end of book two.
[2:04:24] Bob Dobbs: So
[2:04:24] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what
[2:04:25] Bob Dobbs: Lewis, when he figured it out to finish the trilogy that way.
[2:04:31] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.
[2:04:32] Bob Dobbs: Maybe I'll ask a scholar in the next meeting that.
[2:04:36] Bob Dobbs: Do they know this angel point?
[2:04:40] Bob Dobbs: And what would they say to that question?
[2:04:43] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:04:44] Bob Dobbs: so anyways,
[2:04:45] Bob Dobbs: so I have here,
[2:04:46] Bob Dobbs: Lewis published,
[2:04:47] Bob Dobbs: after talking about Self-Condemned,
[2:04:50] Bob Dobbs: where the characters,
[2:04:52] Bob Dobbs: based on conversations McLuhan had with Lewis in 43-44,
[2:04:55] Bob Dobbs: about the superhuman,
[2:04:58] Bob Dobbs: Lewis published two more novels in 1955,
[2:05:01] Bob Dobbs: Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta,
[2:05:04] Bob Dobbs: parts two and three of his trilogy,
[2:05:05] Bob Dobbs: The Human Age,
[2:05:06] Bob Dobbs: begun in 1928,
[2:05:08] Bob Dobbs: I would add,
[2:05:09] Bob Dobbs: with the Childermass,
[2:05:10] Bob Dobbs: or Massacre of the Innocents.
[2:05:13] Bob Dobbs: Wherein McLuhan explored Hollywood,
[2:05:15] Bob Dobbs: no,
[2:05:15] Bob Dobbs: wherein Lewis explored Hollywood as an environment of discarnate angelic humans,
[2:05:20] Bob Dobbs: which caused the original astral angels to invade and take over the city of angels.
[2:05:26] Bob Dobbs: See third program in the human age,
[2:05:28] Bob Dobbs: Exploration Magazine,
[2:05:29] Bob Dobbs: number eight,
[2:05:30] Bob Dobbs: part two,
[2:05:30] Bob Dobbs: page 18.
[2:05:31] Bob Dobbs: So that's what I was referring to.
[2:05:34] Bob Dobbs: And it's called Angel Town,
[2:05:39] Bob Dobbs: this interesting development.
[2:05:40] Bob Dobbs: I won't tell you what happens.
[2:05:43] Bob Dobbs: how that surfaces.
[2:05:44] Bob Dobbs: So then I say,
[2:05:45] Bob Dobbs: just as the angels were outraged that humans developed language,
[2:05:49] Bob Dobbs: this is a replay of that occasion with a later kind of language,
[2:05:52] Bob Dobbs: movies.
[2:05:53] Bob Dobbs: That irritated the angels,
[2:05:54] Bob Dobbs: the same conflict.
[2:05:57] Bob Dobbs: Then I write,
[2:05:58] Bob Dobbs: from superhuman to superangel.
[2:06:00] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan pointed out in the
[2:06:02] Bob Dobbs: 70s that an angel could be anywhere,
[2:06:04] Bob Dobbs: but only there before moving on to another there,
[2:06:08] Bob Dobbs: so in a sequential manner.
[2:06:10] Bob Dobbs: So they could be anywhere.
[2:06:12] Bob Dobbs: But when they were someplace,
[2:06:13] Bob Dobbs: that's all they were.
[2:06:14] Bob Dobbs: They were only there.
[2:06:15] Bob Dobbs: But then they could go to every other there.
[2:06:17] Bob Dobbs: Eventually,
[2:06:18] Bob Dobbs: the angel would or could experience everywhere.
[2:06:23] Bob Dobbs: They'd go to every there or everywhere.
[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: However,
[2:06:25] Bob Dobbs: the human,
[2:06:27] Bob Dobbs: engaging the electronic services of the Global Membrane,
[2:06:30] Bob Dobbs: what McLuhan termed the discarnate condition,
[2:06:32] Bob Dobbs: could be everywhere simultaneously and immediately,
[2:06:35] Bob Dobbs: no sequentiality involved.
[2:06:38] Bob Dobbs: Imagine that you were broadcasting on the radio to half a million people.
[2:06:41] Bob Dobbs: Each one of those private listener environments would have a piece of you in them via the radio.
[2:06:48] Bob Dobbs: And each one of the half million listeners would have a piece occupying your studio,
[2:06:53] Bob Dobbs: passively present in your environment.
[2:06:55] Bob Dobbs: Pieces in quotes.
[2:06:57] Bob Dobbs: Then once telephones for live call-ins were added,
[2:07:00] Bob Dobbs: everybody could potentially be actively in every other listener's home.
[2:07:04] Bob Dobbs: The condition presented on every page of Finnegans Wake.
[2:07:08] Bob Dobbs: Then I quote page 108,
[2:07:10] Bob Dobbs: Here calls everywhere,
[2:07:13] Bob Dobbs: is in
[2:07:14] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake.
[2:07:15] Bob Dobbs: No angel could do this.
[2:07:17] Bob Dobbs: But the human-cum-super-angel did.
[2:07:21] Bob Dobbs: And that's something that
[2:07:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan pointed out.
[2:07:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm quoting McLuhan there.
[2:07:29] Bob Dobbs: I'm not quoting where he said it,
[2:07:32] Bob Dobbs: but he did say somewheres that we are greater than the angels because we can be everywhere simultaneously rather than sequentially.
[2:07:42] Bob Dobbs: It may have been on an audio.
[2:07:44] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[2:07:44] Bob Dobbs: it may not be written anywhere.
[2:07:45] Bob Dobbs: It may be in one of Nelson's classroom recordings.
[2:07:50] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:07:50] Cameron McEwen: it may be in the Global Village.
[2:07:53] Bob Dobbs: Okay.
[2:07:53] Cameron McEwen: He has that chapter on the Discarnate.
[2:07:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:07:58] Bob Dobbs: but he calls the angel visual space and the robot acoustic space.
[2:08:05] Bob Dobbs: He gets it backwards.
[2:08:08] Bob Dobbs: The angel is not visual space.
[2:08:11] Bob Dobbs: It is compared to the super angel.
[2:08:13] Bob Dobbs: There's a bit of positioning there,
[2:08:15] Bob Dobbs: eyeball location when you're there,
[2:08:17] Bob Dobbs: and you can't be any other where,
[2:08:19] Bob Dobbs: any other there,
[2:08:20] Bob Dobbs: until you get there.
[2:08:21] Bob Dobbs: But the invisible extended tactility that humans have been living under in the digital world,
[2:08:31] Bob Dobbs: we all interface with each other.
[2:08:33] Bob Dobbs: We all inside each other,
[2:08:36] Bob Dobbs: which is a quote from,
[2:08:38] Bob Dobbs: I think,
[2:08:38] Bob Dobbs: Stephen Hero by James Joyce that McLuhan has in one of those early...
[2:08:43] Bob Dobbs: 1950 essays on Joyce and the poetic process.
[2:08:48] Bob Dobbs: He begins with that quote,
[2:08:51] Bob Dobbs: that we're all inside each other's digestive system.
[2:08:55] Bob Dobbs: That is the superhuman.
[2:08:57] Bob Dobbs: That's a superangel.
[2:09:00] Bob Dobbs: So,
[2:09:01] Bob Dobbs: okay,
[2:09:01] Bob Dobbs: so I'm bringing in the idea of the superangel.
[2:09:04] Bob Dobbs: But I had been,
[2:09:05] Bob Dobbs: before that,
[2:09:06] Bob Dobbs: talking about the superhuman.
[2:09:08] Bob Dobbs: So
[2:09:09] Bob Dobbs: I didn't say on page 148 at the top,
[2:09:11] Bob Dobbs: this capacity...
[2:09:13] Bob Dobbs: would result in a completely different consequence from that of the old superhuman.
[2:09:18] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had upgraded Lewis's insights.
[2:09:20] Bob Dobbs: So he's discussing the superhuman,
[2:09:23] Bob Dobbs: which is simple discarnate state under analog electric media or radio conditions in the
[2:09:29] Bob Dobbs: 40s, but then that gets reprivatized virtually in the digital social media environment.
[2:09:40] Bob Dobbs: So there you become a super angel.
[2:09:44] Bob Dobbs: So I'm saying here that Lewis goes past.
[2:09:47] Bob Dobbs: Imagine trying to explain this to the Lewis professors.
[2:09:51] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had upgraded Lewis's insight.
[2:09:53] Bob Dobbs: No,
[2:09:54] Bob Dobbs: he didn't.
[2:09:54] Bob Dobbs: He just ripped off Lewis.
[2:09:55] Bob Dobbs: That's what they would say.
[2:09:58] Bob Dobbs: No,
[2:09:58] Bob Dobbs: he altered it and improved on it.
[2:10:02] Bob Dobbs: So then I say the superhuman is the conceptual content of Self-Condemned,
[2:10:08] Bob Dobbs: the novel.
[2:10:10] Bob Dobbs: We're in the guest professor,
[2:10:11] Bob Dobbs: Rene Harding,
[2:10:13] Bob Dobbs: who's based on Wyndham Lewis during the World War II exile in North America.
[2:10:19] Bob Dobbs: Rene Harding is interacting at the university with Professor Ian McKenzie,
[2:10:23] Bob Dobbs: who's based on Marshall McLuhan.
[2:10:25] Bob Dobbs: And it's about the dialogues they had when they met in 43.
[2:10:29] Bob Dobbs: They're discussing Friedrich Nietzsche's Superman or Superhuman.
[2:10:33] Bob Dobbs: They're arguing over the super Gnosticism of the 20s and
[2:10:38] Bob Dobbs: 30s.
[2:10:38] Bob Dobbs: symbolized by people like Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler.
[2:10:41] Bob Dobbs: That's the superhuman.
[2:10:43] Bob Dobbs: But Lewis discovered the angelic competitors of the superhuman.
[2:10:48] Bob Dobbs: Then McLuhan later refined what it meant,
[2:10:50] Bob Dobbs: as explained above.
[2:10:53] Bob Dobbs: Once in the Internet World Wide Web surrounds,
[2:10:56] Bob Dobbs: I write,
[2:10:57] Bob Dobbs: the superangel became her own intelligence agency.
[2:11:02] Bob Dobbs: This is precisely the meaning of the vague phrase,
[2:11:04] Bob Dobbs: the post-human.
[2:11:06] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan got there first in his nomenclature.
[2:11:10] Bob Dobbs: Then I had myself,
[2:11:11] Bob Dobbs: it's not post-human,
[2:11:12] Bob Dobbs: it's the super-angelic happening.
[2:11:15] Bob Dobbs: But all this background exegesis is a preparation for the far more difficult and strange situation of the tech body.
[2:11:23] Bob Dobbs: And that maybe is where we should end,
[2:11:25] Bob Dobbs: but then there's a good quote from Kroker.
[2:11:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:11:29] Bob Dobbs: this is Kroker.
[2:11:34] Bob Dobbs: Why don't I give these...
[2:11:35] Bob Dobbs: sources of it.
[2:11:37] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:11:37] Cameron McEwen: you do on the next page.
[2:11:38] Cameron McEwen: It's all a long quotation.
[2:11:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,
[2:11:41] Bob Dobbs: okay.
[2:11:41] Cameron McEwen: It's extended around your comment.
[2:11:43] Bob Dobbs: All right,
[2:11:44] Bob Dobbs: let's read this whole thing and then we'll go over it next time.
[2:11:48] Bob Dobbs: But it's a pretty good description of the tech body in the
[2:11:54] Bob Dobbs: 90s, before the tech body showed up,
[2:11:57] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.
[2:11:59] Bob Dobbs: Circuited by all the flows of power,
[2:12:02] Bob Dobbs: patterned by code works,
[2:12:04] Bob Dobbs: says Kroker,
[2:12:05] Bob Dobbs: shaped by norms of cultural intelligibility,
[2:12:08] Bob Dobbs: an object of viral invasion,
[2:12:11] Bob Dobbs: with its subjectivity increasingly taking the form of possessed individualism.
[2:12:16] Bob Dobbs: All of that.
[2:12:18] Bob Dobbs: The body can acquire such a powerful epistemological presence as a universal sign because the bodies that we are,
[2:12:25] Bob Dobbs: or would like to become,
[2:12:26] Bob Dobbs: are themselves increasingly dispersed,
[2:12:29] Bob Dobbs: intermediated,
[2:12:30] Bob Dobbs: unfinished,
[2:12:31] Bob Dobbs: spliced,
[2:12:32] Bob Dobbs: straining.
[2:12:34] Bob Dobbs: And then I go,
[2:12:35] Bob Dobbs: a couple of words there,
[2:12:36] Bob Dobbs: I say,
[2:12:36] Bob Dobbs: that's the fate of the chemical body.
[2:12:38] Bob Dobbs: The first two lines above that I just read are qualifiers of the body aspects.
[2:12:43] Bob Dobbs: It's an object of our invasion.
[2:12:46] Bob Dobbs: Quote,
[2:12:46] Bob Dobbs: subjectivity increasingly taking the form of possessed individualism,
[2:12:49] Bob Dobbs: shaped by norms of cultural intelligibility,
[2:12:52] Bob Dobbs: patterned by code works.
[2:12:54] Bob Dobbs: Then we go back to the Kroker quote,
[2:12:57] Bob Dobbs: and he says,
[2:12:58] Bob Dobbs: nothing is as imaginary as the material body.
[2:13:01] Bob Dobbs: So your physical body is now imaginary,
[2:13:04] Bob Dobbs: circulating,
[2:13:04] Bob Dobbs: fluid,
[2:13:05] Bob Dobbs: borderless,
[2:13:06] Bob Dobbs: with no certain boundaries or predetermined history.
[2:13:09] Bob Dobbs: The body has no meaning today other than its intermediations.
[2:13:13] Bob Dobbs: No autobiography that does not possess its own hauntologies.
[2:13:17] Bob Dobbs: That's a word from Derrida.
[2:13:19] Bob Dobbs: And certainly no drift that does not leave a trace of its presence.
[2:13:23] Bob Dobbs: There certainly are codes of gender that can be transgressed only at the price of punishment,
[2:13:28] Bob Dobbs: but there are always...
[2:13:29] Bob Dobbs: That's transgender stuff today.
[2:13:32] Bob Dobbs: Kroker is anticipating that.
[2:13:33] Bob Dobbs: There definitely are codes of gender that can be transgressed only at the price of punishment,
[2:13:38] Bob Dobbs: but there are always gender drifters who remix,
[2:13:40] Bob Dobbs: recombine,
[2:13:41] Bob Dobbs: and...
[2:13:41] Bob Dobbs: splice the codes of gender performance.
[2:13:45] Bob Dobbs: There certainly is a disciplinary regime of sexuality,
[2:13:49] Bob Dobbs: but there are also sex code drifters who make of their own sexual assignment an opportunity to transgress the codes,
[2:13:55] Bob Dobbs: to refuse the normative,
[2:13:57] Bob Dobbs: to overcome the predetermined.
[2:13:59] Bob Dobbs: Against class inequities burned into disciplined laboring bodies,
[2:14:04] Bob Dobbs: there are class drifters who make of their own protesting,
[2:14:07] Bob Dobbs: rebelling,
[2:14:08] Bob Dobbs: insurgent bodies a marker of the struggle for freedom.
[2:14:11] Bob Dobbs: While the age of specialization resulted in the definitive separation of the senses,
[2:14:16] Bob Dobbs: Body Drift begins with a grand unification of the human sensorium.
[2:14:22] Bob Dobbs: That's Arthur Kroker in a book called Body Drift,
[2:14:25] Bob Dobbs: subtitled
[2:14:26] Bob Dobbs: Butler, Hayles,
[2:14:27] Bob Dobbs: and Haraway.
[2:14:28] Bob Dobbs: Those are three feminists.
[2:14:30] Bob Dobbs: And Butler is considered the ideologue that ruined the millennials and younger with the transgender stuff that is a plague today.
[2:14:39] Bob Dobbs: The people investigating it go back to...
[2:14:41] Bob Dobbs: Butler,
[2:14:42] Bob Dobbs: but Kroker is celebrating Butler here,
[2:14:45] Bob Dobbs: and Hayles and Donna Haraway.
[2:14:47] Bob Dobbs: 2012,
[2:14:48] Bob Dobbs: page 3.
[2:14:49] Bob Dobbs: Now,
[2:14:49] Bob Dobbs: what a mouthful of,
[2:14:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to say bullshit,
[2:14:52] Bob Dobbs: but we're certainly going to have to have Cameron go over this and correct a lot of it.
[2:14:58] Bob Dobbs: Right,
[2:14:58] Bob Dobbs: Cameron?
[2:15:00] Cameron McEwen: Well,
[2:15:00] Cameron McEwen: I don't know,
[2:15:00] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[2:15:01] Cameron McEwen: I'll be interested to hear your...
[2:15:03] Bob Dobbs: My corrections.
[2:15:05] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:15:06] Bob Dobbs: It's quite a quote,
[2:15:07] Bob Dobbs: eh?
[2:15:08] Cameron McEwen: It is.
[2:15:11] Bob Dobbs: And that's where,
[2:15:11] Bob Dobbs: you know,
[2:15:12] Bob Dobbs: he does add a Baroque spiral to McLuhan.
[2:15:16] Bob Dobbs: I guess like McLuhan did to Lewis.
[2:15:18] Bob Dobbs: Definitely Kroker is describing a lot more than the simple word discarnate,
[2:15:24] Bob Dobbs: which is as far as McLuhan got.
[2:15:28] Bob Dobbs: You know,
[2:15:29] Bob Dobbs: these details are pretty interesting.
[2:15:32] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:15:34] Cameron McEwen: I think that was a good idea you had to read this.
[2:15:38] Cameron McEwen: and to suggest some thinking about it before the next time.
[2:15:42] Bob Dobbs: Yep.
[2:15:43] Cameron McEwen: Because it's way too much to grapple with on one reading.
[2:15:53] Cameron McEwen: It needs to be reread and rethought.
[2:15:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,
[2:15:58] Cameron McEwen: we'll be going over it a lot.
[2:15:59] Cameron McEwen: That's what I'll do.
[2:16:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:16:01] Bob Dobbs: And it's time to end anyway,
[2:16:03] Bob Dobbs: so perfect.
[2:16:05] Bob Dobbs: That is tremendous.
[2:16:06] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to write down those seven names,
[2:16:08] Bob Dobbs: this new chain reaction we have.
[2:16:11] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.
[2:16:11] Bob Dobbs: From Hildebrand.
[2:16:13] Bob Dobbs: Hildebrand to
[2:16:14] Bob Dobbs: Carpenter.
[2:16:16] Cameron McEwen: Yes, sir.
[2:16:17] Bob Dobbs: All right.
[2:16:17] Bob Dobbs: So thanks a lot.
[2:16:18] Bob Dobbs: Very good discussion.
[2:16:20] Cameron McEwen: Okay,
[2:16:20] Cameron McEwen: Bob.
[2:16:21] Cameron McEwen: Thank you.
[2:16:22] Bob Dobbs: And we'll talk soon.
[2:16:23] Cameron McEwen: Good,
[2:16:23] Cameron McEwen: good.
[2:16:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay,
[2:16:24] Bob Dobbs: bye.
[2:16:25] Cameron McEwen: Bye.