RIP McLuhan L [January 9, 2002 18:20:29 -0800 to July 3, 2008 at 10:02:20 AM

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Subject: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 23:23:53 -0500
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Mark,

From the experience of being a participant on this list for the last
seven years, I would suggest that the best way to get along is to
limit
to zero one's mention of any notions associated with Marshall McLuhan.

Subject: Re: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:25:00 -0500
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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "purple"
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 11:23 PM
> Subject: [MCLUHAN-L] Advice for new member
>
> > Mark,
> >From the experience of being a participant on this list for the last
> > seven years, I would suggest that the best way to get along is to limit
> > to zero one's mention of any notions associated with Marshall McLuhan.
> > Bob Dobbs
>
> Bob, I am curious. Why would you say that? If this list is not about
> McLuhan, what IS it about?

Notice "limit to zero" can mean there are no limits. My ambivalence is
in
the style of all Finnegans.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:27:47 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> From: purple
> >From the experience of being a participant on this list for the last
> seven years, I would suggest that the best way to get along is to limit
> to zero one's mention of any notions associated with Marshall McLuhan.
> ====================================
> That's probably not a bad strategy.
> Just keep in mind that the old list has died,
> and along with it the Sanderson model for
> running it.

You're still acting as the old moderator here. I will follow the
Sanderson
model if I choose. There are no limitations now.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 18:52:22 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> To conclude, I'm NOT the MODERATOR of this list.

Oh yes you are, Peter. It's in your temperament.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 18:10:37 -0500
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Kenneth Armstrong wrote:

> Oh pish-tush, Bob, certainly no more than in yours (hence your obvious
> efforts to control, if not rule over the conversations) and arguably less.
> Peter's frequent contributions have always seemed to me to be the
> contributions of a list participant who wants to see the list succeed. His
> disagreement with someone has never prevented further comment. Except in
> your case, Bob, they never prevented anyone from posting on a thread.
> Complaining about the frequency of his posts is silly. Mr. Stahlman, in his
> last sojourn on the list, outdid even you in the control department. And
> Liss Jeffries' comment on "the boys" has a certain unhappily truthful ring
> to it, allowing that she seems willing to give us a boyful as well as she gets.
>
> The self-promotion....gawd I'm tired of it. Don Theall's is one of the few
> email author names I like to find in my MM inbox anymore, because, whatever
> his agenda is, he puts it second and let's others judge or understand for
> themselves.
>
> You, me, Peter, Carlos----we know/knew our McLuhan. Posts that play the
> percept/idea game are only cutesy, aren't they, and unworthy of the level
> of conversation that MM would partake in. Let's let other people talk.
> You've made whatever point you have to make about the AM and AP. It isn't
> taking. Don't punish us for that. Look to yourself.
>
> Let's hear from others!!!! Mark Stahlman is back in a new and improved
> persona? Well, don't play games, Mark, what are the "advancements" in
> acoustic space? Or was there something about acoustic space MM missed or
> mischaracterized? MM did say, did he not, that Understanding Media was
> meant to be used as tools for further exploration. Well, explore then, but
> for Chrissakes get on with it, get your egos out of it, and bring on the
> percepts!

Ken is obviously way out of line here with his personal invectives. I
propose we
take a vote on whether Ken should be removed from the list.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 18:19:16 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> From: Kenneth Armstrong
>
> You, me, Peter, Carlos----we know/knew our McLuhan.
> Posts that play the percept/idea game are only cutesy,
> aren't they, and unworthy of the level of conversation
> that MM would partake in. Let's let other people talk.
> You've made whatever point you have to make about the
> AM and AP. It isn't taking. Don't punish us for that.
> Look to yourself.
>
> Let's hear from others!!!! Mark Stahlman is back in a new and improved
> persona? Well, don't play games, Mark, what are the "advancements" in
> acoustic space? Or was there something about acoustic space MM missed or
> mischaracterized? MM did say, did he not, that Understanding Media was
> meant to be used as tools for further exploration. Well, explore then,
> but for Chrissakes get on with it, get your egos out of it, and bring on the
> percepts!
> ===========================================================
> Thanks Ken.
>
> There is the fact that both Bob and Mark have discovered
> that e-posts have a certain probing effect, and can be made
> annoying to those who would rather concentrate on the content
> of a message, rather than being constantly distracted by
> the process. As such probes, these messages can ellicit
> differing kinds of responses depending on the responder.
> McLuhan himself was not averse to testing the air in various
> conversations by throwing in what must have seemed like
> red herrings, just to see whether he might get a creative
> response. Such herrings he called probes.
>
> Bob managed to ellicit an interesting exploration of
> institutional attitudes vis-a-vis New York, Toronto,
> Western and Eastern Canada. Not that anything new that
> we didn't already know about came out of it. That's be-
> cause the probe element used was rather cliche to start
> with.
>
> Seems to me that Bob and Mark are excellent guinea pigs
> to use as explorers of this phenomenon. All we have to
> do now is sit back and watch.

"I'll be watching you". Meanwhile, here is an excellent article,
percepts
galore, illustrating a journalist confronting the post-Camp
quadrophrenic AP:

http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage7.asp


Subject: Re: Advice for new member 2
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 20:29:27 -0500
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Kenneth Armstrong wrote:

> Well, explore then, but
> for Chrissakes get on with it, get your egos out of it, and bring on the
> percepts!

It can't be done in this medium - and I mean that as a percept.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member 2
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:25:52 -0500
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Ken Armstrong wrote:

> Bob,
>
> Well, everyone sights a gnat in the crosshairs now and then and mistakes it
> for a duck; of such aim, if you don't mind an impersonal illustration with
> no invective quotient, is your "percept" below.
>
> When you write "it" can't be done, I've got to think that your "it" and my
> "it" aren't, to be Stahlmanesque, communally conversant. If you believe
> that "it" can't be done, what excuse could you have for being on this list?
>
> You can't have it both ways, no matter what medium you're in.

Not only can I have it both ways, but 5 ways, since the constituents
of this
Menippean medium are:

broadcasting,
broadcatching,
narrowcasting,
narrowcatching, and
voluntary ESP,

creating the Rumplestiltskin Syndrome of quadrophrenia as artform. See
chart
at:

http://www.posi-tone.com/BOB/bobwazochrt.gif

I think Arthur Kroker gets a glimpse of this situation with this quote
from
THE POSSESSED INDIVIDUAL (p.27):

"Here, power is only knowable, not as a form of coercion, nor as a
knowledge-vector, nor as a strategy of accumulation, but as a certain
form of
violent mobility, a logistics of fractals in which the hologram of the
whole
can be seen only in the indefinite miniaturization of the dispersed
subject."


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member 2
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:08:15 -0500
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Kenneth Armstrong wrote:

> At 06:25 PM 2/19/2002 -0500, purple wrote:
>
> >Not only can I have it both ways, but 5 ways, since the constituents of this
> >Menippean medium are:
> >
> >broadcasting,
> >broadcatching,
> >narrowcasting,
> >narrowcatching, and
> >voluntary ESP,
>
> This is like a man trying to strike a match in a downpour. No fire and
> utterly predictable. You can't have it both ways, Bob. If you don't get it,
> you don't get it.
> By the way, I've always thought the real deficiency in the world is in the
> area of SP, but making sense is, apparently, not perceived. Good night, Bob.

Man, are you NUTS!!!


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member 2
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 19:00:51 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> Kenneth Armstrong wrote:
> > This is like a man trying to strike a match in a downpour. No fire and
> > utterly predictable. You can't have it both ways, Bob. If you don't get
> it,
> > you don't get it.
> > By the way, I've always thought the real deficiency in the world is in the
> > area of SP, but making sense is, apparently, not perceived. Good night,
> Bob.
>
> Man, are you NUTS!!!
>
> ==========================================
>
> / / / / / / / / / / /
> / / / / / / / / / / / /
> / / / / / _______ / /
> / / / / | \ / /
> / / / (__)| / /
> / / / (oo)| / /
> /-------\/ |
> / | | |^_|
> * ||----|
> ^^ ^
>
> Cow sheltering from English Weather

Yes, MM proposed English literature as the control tower in
communication
study.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Advice for new member 2A
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:37:46 -0500
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Addendum:



[Remember him? The gnome who could turn straw into
gold? Well he's back now, but
you wouldn't recognise him. To begin with, he's
not
an individual gnome anymore. I'm
not sure how best to describe him. Let's just say
he's metamorphosed into an
accretion, a cabal, an assemblage, a malevolent,
incorporeal, transnational
multi-gnome. Rumpelstiltskin is a notion
(gnotion),
a piece of deviant, insidious, white
logic that will eventually self-annihilate. But
for
now he's more than okay. He's cock
of the walk. King of All That Really Counts
(Cash).
He's decimated the competition,
killed all the other kings, the other kinds of
kings. He's persuaded us that he's all
we have left. Our only salvation.] - from
http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm (in Misc. Good Stuff Section - The
Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin)


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Another lesson in perception
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:33:21 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> from section five of T.S. Eliot's THE DRY SALVAGES
>
> To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
> To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
> Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
> Observe disease in signatures, evoke
> Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
> And tragedy from fingers; release omens
> By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
> With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
> Or barbituric acids, or dissect
> The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors --
> To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
> Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
> And always will be, some of them especially
> When there is distress of nations and perplexity
> Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
> Men's curiosity searches past and future
> And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend 200
> The point of intersection of the timeless
> With time, is an occupation for the saint --
> No occupation either, but something given
> And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
> Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.

Since Eliot was intuiting the coming of MM ("Mars"), it was only
fitting
that Joyce assisted this effort:

[Was he pitssched for an ensemple as certain have dognosed of
him against our seawall by Rurie, Thoath and Cleaver, those
three stout sweynhearts, Orion of the Orgiasts, Meereschal Mac-
Muhun, the Ipse dadden, product of the extremes giving quoti-
dients to our means, as might occur to anyone, your brutest
layaman with the princest champion in our archdeaconry, or so
yclept from Clio's clippings, which the chroncher of chivalries
is sulpicious save he scan, for ancients link with presents as the
human chain extends, have done, do and will again as John, Poly-
carp and Irenews eye-to-eye ayewitnessed and to Paddy Palmer,
while monks sell yew to archers or the water of the livvying
goes the way of all fish from Sara's drawhead, the corralsome, to
Isaac's, the lauphed butt one, with her minnelisp extorreor to his
moanolothe inturned? So Perrichon with Bastienne or heavy
Humph with airy Nan, Ricqueracqbrimbillyjicqueyjocqjolicass?
How sowesthow, *dullcisamica?* A and aa ab ad abu abiad. A
babbel men dub gulch of tears.] - James Joyce, FINNEGANS WAKE, 1939,
p.254


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Another lesson in perception
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 22:24:13 -0500
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Mark Stahlman wrote:

> Bob:
>
> > . . . Meereschal MacMuhun . . . ["Finnegans Wake," page 254]
>
> Is this "Marechal MacMahon" (i.e. the French officer in the Crimean War) as
> McHugh suggests or possibly something else of a distinctly "Marsian" sort as
> you're suggesting?

Yes. In McLuhan's private library, in one of his copies of Finnegans
Wake (not
at the National Archives), he has pencilled in the words "me" and
"moon child"
next to Joyce's "Meereschal MacMuhun".

> And, since you are on the radio as I type this message, I fully expect you to
> answer it . . . on the RADIO. (It's now 9:11 AM . . .)

I did, via xenochronous Voluntary ESP, as I am wont to do.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Atlantis - Acoustic Space?
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:03:48 -0500
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[Last month, a team of explorers backed by a Canadian venture
(Canadians found Atlantis, ugh)
confirmed the existence of large,
underwater stone structures off the
coast of Cuba’s Guanahacabibes
Peninsula. The team first spotted
these
structures back in 2000, so
they called in a robot. It went down
in
July and photographed huge,
smooth blocks?looking for all the
world
like cut granite?in circular and
pyramid formations. The researchers
have now identified "a large
urban center" and they believe that
the
submerged Cuban pyramids
predate the Egyptian pyramids by
about
1500 years.

The discovery of what has to be
Atlantis hasn’t made waves in the U.S.
press, perhaps because we’re worried
about a bunch of land-locked
tribesmen, perhaps because the
Canadian
venture that found the city
operates under the auspices of one
Fidel Castro (originally, its
objective was to uncover Spanish
galleons). Stay tuned. More research
is being conducted and when this is
all
over, we might have a whole new
Carnival Cruise line and Club Med. -
New York Press, Jan.16/02]


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: carpenter mumford and toronto school ofcommunications
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 14:19:18 -0500
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STRATE@FORDHAM.EDU wrote:

> And seventh, I think all of this can deepen ourunderstanding and
> appreciation of media ecology and related perspectives. Some people find
> what they're looking for in one particular book, or one particular thinker,
> and that's okay with me. Others keep on truckin', intellectually, and
> enjoy the trip. And then there's Bob Dobbs...

Who would add the eighth and deepest root of media ecology - the
visually-biased British Secret
Service in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
starting with W.T. Stead and H.
G. Wells.

And it was MM's awareness of these roots (with a little help from
private conversations with
Wyndham Lewis) that set him apart from all the schools.

There is enough on that thread deposited at the media ecology listserv
by my go-fer, Mark
Stahlman, back in '98 and '99, to provide grounds for further
research.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Eastern Communication Association Part I
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 20:08:29 -0500
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STRATE@FORDHAM.EDU wrote:

Saturday, April 27, 2002
3.34 McLuhan, Memes and Marx: Methods of Analysing the New Media
11:30 a.m. ? 12:45 p.m.

Sponsor: Media Ecology Association
Chair: Lance Strate, Fordham University

Panelists: Richard Barbrook, University of Westminster
Douglas Rushkoff, New York University


http://www.posi-tone.com/BOB/orphic.doc


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Exploring Acoustic Space
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 20:45:06 -0500
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From: Andrew Dubber [SMTP:andrew.dubber@AUT.AC.NZ]

Some conceptual signposts would be handy at this point - where
can
my brain
get to from here, please?


A colleague wrote:

> > Not only can I have it both ways, but 5 ways, since the constituents of
> this
> > Menippean medium are:
>
> > broadcasting,
> > broadcatching,
> > narrowcasting,
> > narrowcatching, and
> > voluntary ESP,
>
> Looks to me kind of like saying that the constituents of radio circuitry are
> diodes, transistors, chokes, capacitors, resistors, etc. It does not tell us
> much at all about how the systems incorporating these components operate, or
> what they do.

Thanks for requesting more info, colleague.

Go to http://www.posi-tone.com/BOB/bobwazochrt.gif

and match up the above with the clusters around

LaRouche,
McLuhan,
Thompson,
Kroker,
Me,

respectively.

That should help you perceive the Android Meme which provides these
services/disservices.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Exploring Acoustic Space
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 21:12:17 -0500
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Mark Stahlman wrote:

> Short of that, since Donald posits a break around the adoption of writing (as
> a system for generalized *reading*) -- let's say around 500BC -- and cites
> Jaynes (but not Havelock, Ong or McLuhan, I'd guess because he's a
> "psychologist" and they're not) and, since as a student of Jaynes (who
> McLuhan and Ong also found to be helpful), I can fairly closely correlate all
> of these writers work . . . so my guess is that there would probably be
> little debate hereabouts regarding the third "transition" in Donald's scheme.
> Something happened. Something big.

Mark, you might want to take a look at Jean Gebser's EVER-PRESENT
ORIGIN. He
supposes 2 stages (the "archaic" and the "magical") before the
alphabetic and
may be an influence on Donald.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Exploring Acoustic Space
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 13:45:43 -0500
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> BTW, did anyone notice in Finnegans Wake, p. 254, in the paragraph
> after the MacMahon allusion, the word TELEVISION?

That's why MM wrote "me" on that page in his personal copy.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: FYI: Research/ forums at McLuhan Program
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:24:35 -0500
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Here below we have a sad example of BULLDADA and a grand reason why
this list
should remain isolated, if only because we claim to be interested in
McLuhan's
"work", an outline of which follows:

1. McLuhan-Lewis would drop into this eLab et al., spend a few hours,
then write a
satirical blast of its operations for the next issue of Saturday
Night.

2. McLuhan-Eliot would read McLuhan-Lewis's article and promptly seek
funding to
re-start Explorations to support the arts ghetto.

3. McLuhan-Pound would immediately leave the city and take up
permanent residence
at his summer cottage.

4. McLuhan-Yeats would start attending Mass twice a day and spend his
weekends
with Pound.

5. McLuhan-Joyce would begin immediately hacking the byDesign eLab and
get Eric to
purchase the latest viruses on the e-"street".

The point is that Ms. Jeffrey and Co. BECOME WHAT THEY BEHOLD!! That's
fine with
me, but don't claim you are working in harmony with McLuhan's "paying-
attention"
project. Don't even use his name. It's well-known that Derrick says
he's not one
bit interested in anything a la McLuhan. That's fine with me, too (but
that is one
of the reasons Corinne McLuhan has always been uneasy with the use of
the name
"McLuhan" at the McLuhan Program).

You are working in resonance with the Android Meme (AM) and are
completely
oblivious of the new environment of the Anthropomorphic Physical (AP)
so well
represented by the Bush Administration which has the AM down for the
count. The
"Canadian Government", always 5 years behind, is just now rumored to
be offering
$2.5 million to prop up the AM as it cowers before the AP with sublime
irrelevance. And THAT'S fine with me, too!

BUT, put your filter back on, Liss, while we figure out if this
obsolete medium
can be archetypalized or if it has any connection to McLuhanLand.


Bob Dobbs


Liss Jeffrey wrote:

> FYI There is lots of serious and playful experimental research under way at
> the McLuhan Program conducted by those of us who teach within
> the post-McLuhan galaxy at the U of T. Here is a note on some of what has
> not so far been mentioned.
>
> The McLuhan Program and the byDesign eLab (which I incubated there in 1997
> and which is now independent, yet continues to partner with MP) are known
> nationally and internationally for the integrated e-forums and web
> environments that my lab created beginning with the visionary speaker
> series and first electronic commons web site, Canada by design: Building a
> knowledge nation using new media and policy. (Robert von B knows this as I
> presented my work at Derrick's invitation in Amsterdam way back when. More
> recently the book I have edited for Council of Europe, Vital Links for a
> Knowledge Culture: Public access to new information and communications
> technologies (2001), takes McLuhan as point of departure and refers to many
> of the projects that we have done.)
>
> The new media forum in 1998 was created by the eLab and McLuhan Program
> and became Canada's first on-line citizen consultation to form part of the
> federal public record. This work on new media and policy, which is a
> speciality of mine as adjunct faculty member (since 1997), and which I have
> presented at the Kennedy School of Government in a series honouring
> McLuhan, and elsewhere as director of the McLuhan global research network,
> takes as rhetorical inspiration McLuhan's statement that "Nothing is
> inevitable provided we are prepared to pay attention." The eLab/ McLuhan
> global research network research and development is now focused on the
> electronic commons/agora electronique national public space on-line
> network, which will be born again at the end of April, with lots of forums
> that are currently incubating.
>
> As a result of our work on e-forums ( one size does not fit all so we
> combine e-forums with email lists, off-line events and other social or
> technical approaches depending on the purpose and community in question)
> and our many presentations and reflections on how to create and sustain
> effective platforms for meaningful conversations, exploration, engagement
> or consensus, the eLab has just been included in a SSHRC research grant
> received by some west coast partners, to continue our efforts to develop
> open source software to address the technical and organizational flaws that
> we have diagnosed in much forum and email list software and
> moderation/animation approaches. (BTW we have met with one of
> the recipients of the U of Toronto Canadian Foundation for Innovations
> grant, a colleague and friend, Professor Elaine Toms, and her focus is on
> setting up a textual analysis usability lab.)
>
> On perhaps a related note, this month the eLab partnered with McLuhan
> global research network is netcasting and building the web environment for
> a four city national interactive citizen policy forum on Canada's
> partnership with Africa. One of my students currently has post-grad
> research under way into forums and models of web-based engagement. The
> research conducted by associated members of the McLuhan global research
> network, the electronic commons/ agora electronique project, and the eLab
> has the enthusiastic backing of my colleague Derrick deKerckhove and the MP
> (where I am of course a faculty member, direct the global research network
> and serve as executive liaison research and academic)
>
> The grad seminars that I teach as part of the McLuhan program academic
> offerings, extend this research and include students in the making, testing
> and criticism process. We are all co-learners in my research, lab and
> seminars. Last summer's advanced seminar on Understanding McLuhan
> experimented with an online classroom without walls, as I have done in all
> of my courses for years now. Students have played a major role in at least
> 4 of the web spaces that we have done so far. As a class project in the
> Understanding McLuhan course, with eLab we established the first draft of a
> web space (mcluhan.ca is intended as the site of sites for all things
> McLuhan -- New links are up now on the site http://www.mcluhan.ca ) as it
> seemed there was no intelligently organized gateway to the McLuhan-related
> resources out there on the net. We will be extending this connected
> resource (which is young indeed as yet) when the McLuhan grad
> course reconvenes this summer, now with additional status as an affiliate
> of the Knowledge Media Design Institute here at the U of T.
>
> I hope that George Sanderson might make some of his resources available to
> the work in progress that is mcluhan.ca , as we recognize his efforts as
> the clear precursor to all of our own on McLuhan scholarship on-line (and
> of course he had the domain first!). We would be honoured to have the
> opportunity to carry on that labour of love. We plan to present some great
> new materials for scholars, researchers, and citizens, and welcome
> suggestions or materials. By summertime we plan to have our peer-review
> e-journal (working title) Explorations ready (as announced last July),
> complete with fresh opportunities to discuss, debate and reflect critically
> on McLuhan, the Toronto School and other relevant matters within a
> historical and contemporary context. All of this we envision as building on
> and including the communities of interest and practice out there now,
> including this list, in perhaps some unexpected ways.
>
> There are other initiatives currently in play, new on-line journals, and a
> funded web site that Primitive Films in Toronto is planning with $$ from
> the National Film Board. One of the producers interviewed some of us for a
> new documentary about McLuhan, but despite a face to face promise to me to
> share the interview materials, so I could digitize them and put them
> on-line for the mcluhan.ca site, I understand from him that since others at
> McLuhan Program and U of T (including Mike Edmunds) did not return their
> phone calls asking for resources, they have decided not to share the
> interview materials with those of us who would like to gather all of this
> for accessible public on-line use by scholars and researchers. From what I
> also hear, this new web site will have $$ to put on games and dazzles, and
> will be lots of fun for all ages.
>
> Sounds good to me!
> So this research and practice by eLab and the McLuhan global research
> network has been under way for some time now at the McLuhan Program.If
> anyone has an interest in this research, or these approaches, we would be
> pleased to involve you in some way. There is lots of room and much to do,
> in a seriously playful sense.
> Cheers
> Liss J
>
> At 08:57 AM 2/10/02 -0500, Michael Edmunds wrote:
> >We intend to create new on-line forums at the McLuhan Program and are planning
> >that now. Much of the current research at the Program involves "connected
> >intelligence" and tools to facilitate it are being explored. Lists are old
> >technology. However, that's what we have at the moment and if it doesn't suit
> >one's interests the "unsubscribe" is working and is much more soothing than
> >filtering.
> >
> >Quoting purple :
> >
> > > but it still leaves
> > > us
> > > with a problem in this medium. Peter has often suggested that he would
> > > like to
> > > see us do some "serious work" here. He has also mentioned the
> > > ephemerality and
> > > discontinuity of the chatline form. There appears to be a contradiction
> > > there.
> > >
> > > So how does Liss carry on serious examination and discussion elsewhere?
> > > Is it
> > > in a didactic form? Is it with those who see themselves as students? Are
> > > we
> > > too knowlegeable about MM on this list? Do we have to get censorious
> > > about any
> > > "personal" commentary or digressions? Are we playing up to the
> > > anonymous
> > > lurkers (the true ground?) here?
> >
> >
> >
> >michael edmunds
> >Director, Information Commons and Associate Director, McLuhan Program in
> >Culture and Technology, University of Toronto

Subject: Re: FYI: Research/ forums at McLuhan Program
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 08:59:50 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

text/plain (40 lines)


Peter Montgomery wrote:

> You are working in resonance with the Android Meme (AM) and are
> completely
> oblivious of the new environment of the Anthropomorphic Physical (AP) so
> well
> represented by the Bush Administration which has the AM down for the
> count. The
> "Canadian Government", always 5 years behind, is just now rumored to be
> offering
> $2.5 million to prop up the AM as it cowers before the AP with sublime
> irrelevance. And THAT'S fine with me, too!
> ==========================================================
> Well Bob,
> I have some fantasy theories of how the Electranascence works
> myself,

I don't have any theories, I offer only percepts.

> all replete with my own inflated terminology, but I sure
> don't have the guts to spill it all out here.

Good, we shouldn't tolerate "fantasy theories" in McLuhanLand.

> Your take off of the put on is such that I refuse to believe
> you believe a word of it.

Belief or nonbelief doesn't enter into it, but we perceive what I'm
pointing to.

> As for Miss Liss -- she takes me back to the days when I used
> to brag about having the first networked classroom in North America
> and even did a presentation about it at the Nisod in Auston, Tx.
> It's something a person grows out of after a while.

There you go diverting/digressing into personal jibes, again. You
could be
accused of being the sinister agent provocateur on this list.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: FYI: Research/ forums at McLuhan Program
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:40:58 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> From: purple [SMTP:purple@ingress.com]
> >PM> Well Bob,
> >PM> I have some fantasy theories of how the Electranascence
> works
> >PM> myself,
> BD>I don't have any theories, I offer only percepts.
>
> Ah. The McLuhan stock answer whenever the word THEORY
> raises its ugly head. Well then perhaps you might grace us
> with your perception of what a percept is.

I have no idea.

> >PM> Your take off of the put on is such that I refuse to believe
> >PM> you believe a word of it.
> BD>Belief or nonbelief doesn't enter into it, but we perceive what
> I'm
> BD>pointing to.
>
> If that "WE" is meant to include me, it shouldn't.

It does.

> I have already
> registered
> what I perceive your statements as being, even though you think I am
> wrong.

So?

> >PM>As for Miss Liss -- she takes me back to the days when I used
> >PM>to brag about having the first networked classroom in North
> America
> >PM> and even did a presentation about it at the Nisod in Auston,
> Tx.
> >PM>It's something a person grows out of after a while.
> BD>There you go diverting/digressing into personal jibes, again. You
> could be
> BD>accused of being the sinister agent provocateur on this list.
>
> Perhaps a MISS perception on your part. How gauche! I was talking
> about myself.
> The fact that her net style reminds me of how I used to be, does not
> necessarily imply
> that that is how she is. I have no way of knowing if she is like
> that or not.

Knowing what somebody is like has no relevance in this medium.

> I make no claim to be any kind of a special genius, or top
> mcluhanite or the first that
> ever burst about anything. I suspect I could be much more
> legitimately seen as a pro-
> vokee, than provoker, and something tells me that you would be very
> good at knowing
> the difference.

I'm not telling.

Anyway, shall we resume your Carpenter interest?


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: FYI: Research/ forums at McLuhan Program
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 18:45:47 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> From: purple
> > Ah. The McLuhan stock answer whenever the word THEORY
> > raises its ugly head. Well then perhaps you might grace us
> > with your perception of what a percept is.
> I have no idea.
> =======================================
> I've long suspected that.

A true percept.


Bob Dobbs


Subject: Hmmm... hexad showing up?
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 18:05:28 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml



Bob Dobbs

Subject: I Conquer Theory
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 10:53:51 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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I'm featured in the new issue of MORE & LESS #3 (titled Hallucination
of
Theory) along with Salvador Dali, Mike Kelley, Antonin Artaud,
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan,
Jack Smith, Paul Virilio, and more - edited by Sylvere Lotringer of
SEMIOTEXT(E). The journal is put out by the Art Center College of
Design
in Pasadena, California.

My section is called Phatic Communion with Satellite's Machine - a
transcript of my appearance at the Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa
Monica, California, on July 27, 1996.



Bob Dobbs


Subject: Intuitions of the Anthropomorphic Physical by W.I.T. (from p.
57 and p.59 of my book)
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 18:54:12 -0500
Content-Type: multipart/alternative
Parts/Attachments:

text/plain (57 lines) , text/html (54 lines)


[In each case of cultural absorption there was an attendant process of
miniaturization: first the forest had been miniaturized in the clump
of trees of the home-base, then the animals had been miniaturized into
an artistic image and time was miniaturized in a lunar tally stick;
then plants were miniaturized in a garden, and finally women and
neolithic matrilineal culture were miniaturized in the patriarchal
household. In the eighteenth century all nature was surrounded and
miniaturized by culture. The wrought iron and glass structure of the
Great Exhibition of 1851 surrounded the trees and fountains of Hyde
Park and proclaimed for all the world to see that in the Crystal
Palace of industrial technology, wild nature had been turned into a
potted plant. (Small wonder that most Victorian drawing rooms became
civilized jungles of potted ferns.) We historians now see all this, of
course, with 20-20 hindsight. Then people thought they were returning
to nature in romanticism, and the Great Exhibition featured such
camouflage of industrialization as Sherwood Forest Robin Hood Chairs,
Gothic sewing scissors, and rose-decorated sewing machines. Through
the Medieval Court in the Crystal Palace, everyone grooved on
nostalgia, with cute little vines engraved on the legs of the
machines. You can see it all in the world's first Whole Earth Catalog,
the catalog for the Great Exhibition itself.
What was true of Industrialization is true of Planetization. A
nostalgic and false consciousness tried to camouflage the structure
with a romantic content. All the artifacts and cultures of the world
were miniaturized in Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, and although
people grooved on wood stoves and fantasies of self-sufficiency, the
catalog itself was absorbing everything into its giant collage. All
culture was now being absorbed and miniaturized as the preparation for
stuffing it into one of Stewart's beloved space colonies. Just as the
Victorians had once grooved on rose-decorated sewing machines, so
people now grooved on wood stoves, windmills, and solar collectors,
but the folksy nostalgia merely camouflaged the technological
collectivization. When the CoEvolution Quarterly later openly came out
in favor of Herman Kahn and O'Neill's space colonies, it showed the
true skull and bones under the costume: all nature was to be turned
into a potted plant in a tin can, and all culture was to be trashed
into a television-sensibility collage.
But the Whole Earth Catalog and the CoEvolution Quarterly do not
express the full dimensions of Planetization. In what Sri Aurobindo
would call "the descent of the supra-mental", there is a new level of
human consciousness which is now surrounding, absorbing, and
miniaturizing the old civilized and technological consciousness. As
the Supramental surrounds the old mental level, the mind becomes an
artifact, and intellection becomes a mind-dance. Ratio becomes logos
once again and the central icon of the econometric state, the dollar
sign $ falls on its side and the bars that cross it melt and turn it
into a sign for infinity. - William Irwin Thompson, The CoEvolution
Quarterly, Issue No. 20 (Winter, 1978/79).]

Bob Dobbs




Subject: Re: Intuitions of the Anthropomorphic Physical by W.I.T.
(from p.57 and p.59 of my book)
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 22:45:06 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> Dobbs quoted thusly:
> In each case of cultural absorption there was an attendant process of
> miniaturization
> &c. &c. &c.
> =====================================
>
> Good for old Will. Looks like he just discovered the meaning od CAMP.

He wrote it 25 years ago.

> Wonder if he ever camped out?

Yes, he wrote a book on the effects - PASSAGES ABOUT EARTH (1973).


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Kant and McLuhan
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 21:29:24 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Francois Lachance wrote:

> If I recall correctly Marshall McLuhan turns in _Laws of Media_ to
> Aristotle's _De Anima_ for guidance on the deployment of the notion of
> "form." Are there earlier instances in the McLuhan corpus of engagement
> with Aristotle and teh treatise on the soul?

From Cliche to Archetype, p.150


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Kant and McLuhan
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 21:49:21 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Francois Lachance wrote:

> We had a while ago a interesting discussion of McLuhan's take (via
> Aquinas) on Aristotle's notion of formal cause.
>
> Recently I came across a passage which made me think that McLuhan may have
> been influence by some strand of neo-Kantian aesthetics.

In the LETTERS, see p.204 (1948 - "unconscious Kantian esthetics...
behind
all American critical activity") and p.489 (1974 - "Kant flips into
acoustic
subjectivism").


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Media Ecologist? Joycean? Toronto Schoolist?
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 09:43:26 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> Feel better, Bob?
>

Oh no, that wasn't me. See, I never express my personal feelings or
point of view. Anyway, I'm a LaRouchoid. and we don't get angry or
frustrated.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Media Ecologist? Joycean? Toronto Schoolist?
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 20:50:26 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> > From: purple [SMTP:purple@ingress.com]
> > Peter Montgomery wrote:
> > > Feel better, Bob?
> > Oh no, that wasn't me. See, I never express my personal feelings or
> > point of view. Anyway, I'm a LaRouchoid. and we don't get angry or
> > frustrated.
> [PM>] ===============================
> Whew! That's a relief. And I thought you were going to say
> that you feel with both hands.
>
> Either way, I feel for you.

"It is unclear what purpose your snide, silly comments are designed to
serve, nor who actually has so much idle time as to actually read this
sort of thing, but your comments below capture much of what passes for
discussion on this list under your moderation." - Ms. Jeffrey, Feb.
4/02


Bob Dobbs


Subject: media ecology
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:16:09 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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[16] It is not technologies which cause changes in
cultures, but, rather, it is the
replication of the cognitive experience of making
such
discoveries of principle, which
changes the way in which society intends to
cooperate
in applying those discoveries to
change society's physical-economic relationship to
nature. On culture, see my
discussion, in "The Spirit Of Russia's Science," of
cognitive "super-genes" in the
development of scientific and other cultural
progress.

Note 16 by Lyndon LaRouche at

http://larouchein2004.net/pages/writings/2001/011223zbigsept11.htm



Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 16:34:03 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> ... the work of MM, who's revival
> over the last decade is specifically because of his relevance
> to understanding the Internet and new media.

Alex, can you give some examples of what has been revived from McLuhan
that is not already spelled out in Don Theall's BEYOND THE WORD
(1995)?


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 22:56:35 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> Interesting how Bob's reference to Lance re Carpenter has taken us
> into this fun game of one downs man/womanship. Do you suppose
> he did that on porpoise?

Of course I did. "McLuhanism" is one of my favorite hobbies when I'm
not
teaching.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 23:32:31 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> I don't dislike you at all, Peter. I don't know you, although I wonder if
> the online
> personna you project is supportive of intellectual discussion, playful or
> otherwise.
> Liss Jeffrey is correct in asserting that the serious examination and
> discussion of
> McLuhan's work carries on elsewhere. This list fails to live up to what it
> could
> or should be. I'm not interested in "one-down's-manship" or its opposite; I
> was
> reacting to some of your recent comments that seem silly, as also noted by
> the inimitable Mr. Dobbs. The problem with play on the part of an online
> moderator is that others must want to play too.

I agree with your criticism of Peter's style, Alex, but it still
leaves us
with a problem in this medium. Peter has often suggested that he would
like to
see us do some "serious work" here. He has also mentioned the
ephemerality and
discontinuity of the chatline form. There appears to be a
contradiction there.

So how does Liss carry on serious examination and discussion
elsewhere? Is it
in a didactic form? Is it with those who see themselves as students?
Are we
too knowlegeable about MM on this list? Do we have to get censorious
about any
"personal" commentary or digressions? Are we playing up to the
anonymous
lurkers (the true ground?) here?

Is it silly to get as serious here as I hope my questions are
perceived?

I've often thought over the last 7 years on this list that George
Sanderson
hoped the list could be as you say Liss desires and has achieved
elsewhere,
and that he became irritated with the way Peter has moderated the list
since
George dropped off.

But maybe this list can only be as it has been. If so, then let's be
clear and
honest in our descriptions of our environment here.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology - Alex
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 23:06:14 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> Well, you place me at a disadvantage, Bob, as I haven't read that
> particular book of Donald Theall. On your recommendation, and
> with respect for Theall's scholarship, I have however ordered a used
> copy of it from ABE.com. But, perhaps you might like to make your
> point directly, without alluding to a secondary source.

Thanks for responding, Alex, to perhaps a slightly imprecise query.
I'll try
again.

Theall stresses MM's intuiting the coming convergence of media (via
extensions of synaesthesia and coenaesthesia) as very relevant to
developments in new media in the nineties.

My questions would then be: Are there other elements in MM's work that
you or
Paul are thinking of that Theall doesn't mention? Are students
responding to
MM's warnings or his enthusiasms about new media, or just his general
discussion of new potentials for new and old media by the coming
convergence?

> Now, the point I was intending to make is the point that Paul Levinson
> makes in "Digital McLuhan" (1999). Speaking of his student's responses
> to his seminar on MM given during the early 1990's, Paul writes: "The
> student response to those courses corroborated what I already knew:
> that McLuhan's work was, if anything, increasing in relevance, almost as
> if our information age was crystallizing along the patterns of his vision"
> (p. xiii).
>
> I have no problems with your and others asserting the influence of
> modernist writers, especially Joyce, on MM. Those are important
> connections and are important to explore. But, I was reacting to our
> moderator's assertion that the "communications angle was a game
> and a hobby", implying that MM's work on communications was
> a mere sideshow to his more important literary scholarship. I disagree
> with that...

Even though I am an enthusiastic Finnegan, I agree with your point
here,
Alex.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology - Alex
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 20:23:08 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> And after I finish my thesis, I intend to write some articles on MM and
> education. For example, I found a little known article by MM titled
> "Electronics & the Psychic Drop-Out" in a copy of "THIS" Magazine
> (Vol. 1, Issue 1, April, 1966) in an antiquarian bookstore.

I have that article and there are a couple more as a series. Check out
the
archives at U of T because I think that is where I got them 25 years
ago. Also,
drift through the subsequent issues and you will find a series by Eric
that's
worth reading. If you have any trouble finding them, I will check my
archives
for specifics when I get the time.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology - Alex 2
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 22:09:03 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Alex Kuskis wrote:

> I share your enthusiasm for Joyce, but still find the Wake to be hard going!

Perhaps this will help you see the forest from the trees:

http://www.posi-tone.com/BOB/FWten.doc


Bob Dobbs


Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology - Peter
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:36:57 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> So there's my agenda.

After years of paying attention to this and other lists, it is my
finding that
all one can have in this medium is an "agenda". Most posts come down
to that as
far as the main intention for participation goes (see Ms. Jeffrey's
bio in her
recent missive). I call this the Rumplestiltskin Syndrome ( or
Voluntary ESP),
the major extension, along with Menippean phatic communion, provided
by this
environment. Norman Mailer and his ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF was
prophetic, but
like all prophets, would be apalled and overwhelmed at how timid his
projection
was.
Perhaps, you missed this pattern in your study of list behaviours,
Peter.

I propose we accept this effect and work around it by not being upset
with its
inevitability and not try and "police or moderate" its intrusion, but
study its
effects on ourselves. Because that may have been your Catch-22, Peter,
as
moderator in the past - you believed in your bloomin' agenda!! But
now, happily
for all of us, familiarity with this and the other effects might break
the
beaver's dam.

So, as MM and Nevitt used to say, "communication of the new is a
miracle, but
not impossible" (p.142 of TAKE TODAY).


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Speaking of "ecology - Peter
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 20:40:05 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> From: purple
> I propose we accept this effect and work around it by not being upset
> with its inevitability and not try and "police or moderate" its intrusion,
> but study its effects on ourselves. Because that may have been your
> Catch-22, Peter, as moderator in the past - you believed in your bloomin'
> agenda!!
> ==================================================
> A little bit off target, Bob. Loks like you didn't
> read my post,

I responded directly to your post but it looks like you didn't
understand
mine.

> but I suspect you seldom read anyone's
> but your own.

I read all posts very carefully.

> I said I did my very best to run the list
> the way George had and with his style as reflected
> in his owrk. Nor did I get a complaint from him as to
> how I proceeded.
>
> This time around I have also indicated that I am NOT
> in that position. Just the doorman. I will only
> play bouncer if I am so asked.
>
> As to being nasty. Yes I can be nasty.

I didn't say you were nasty, just silly.

> Ken Armstrong's seen me at my worst on
> another list.

I'd love to experience your nastiness. Can I get the URL to that
list's
archives?

> I suspect he would back me up
> in saying I've been a mere lamb on this list
> in comparison.

You weren't a lamb, just silly.


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: Television Addiction
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 16:23:23 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> If, as I have heard, life on the internet HAS made a dint in
> people's
> TV watching time, then one of the reasons may be that the internet
> enhances human commonality by allowing much fuller participation
> than does TV.

Perhaps the internet (Voluntary ESP) enhances TV watching (Cloned ESP)
as one
tires of "fuller participation". All in a day's proprioception for the
quadrophrenic "android processor" (Arthur Kroker).


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: The McLuhan School of whatever
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 11:39:38 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> In a world in which information is shared by everyone
> all at once, what is communication? is it at all?

It's a Menippean phatic form of communication. See Baudrillard's new
book IMPOSSIBLE EXCHANGE.

> I know this is skimming the surface of what Mac dove
> into quite deeply, but not many have foollowed and
> stuck with him to the core of the search.

This is a silly statement. A few HAVE "stuck with him to the core of
the
search" and then found new territory.


Bob Dobbs


Subject: Re: The McLuhan School of whatever
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 20:46:05 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> > From: purple [SMTP:purple@ingress.com]
> >
> > Peter Montgomery wrote:
> >
> > > I know this is skimming the surface of what Mac dove
> > > into quite deeply, but not many have followed and
> > > stuck with him to the core of the search.
> >
> > This is a silly statement. A few HAVE "stuck with him to the core of the
> > search" and then found new territory.
> [PM>] ===================================
> How nice for you. I know skimming is silly, but it
> has its challenges, just like walking on water.

The truest words Liss has said (to Peter) up to this point in her
life:

"It is unclear what purpose your snide, silly comments are designed to
serve, nor who actually has so much idle time as to actually read this
sort of thing, but your comments below capture much of what passes for
discussion on this list under your moderation."

Praise Ms. Jeffrey!!!!


Bob Dobbs


Subject: top-down
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:16:47 -0500
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[8] It is clinically significant, that today's more
popular varieties of wild-eyed
"conspiracy theories," reflect the peculiarly
pathological style in infantile fantasy
associated with the "Lord of the Rings," "Harry
Potter," and "Pokémon" cults, or the
"witchcraft" and related demonic cults spun out of
the
orbit of the trio of the
utopians H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and Aleister
Crowley. The characteristic
form of mental action these cults express, is a
magical power of the will, acting
outside real physical space-time. The gratification
associated with the deluded
patron of such forms of fantasy-life, or so-called
"science fiction" composed on the
basis of the same types of fiction, becomes then a
feeling-state to which the victim
of such cults responds in hysterically adopting a
kindred variety of "conspiracy
theory" as an emotionally gratifying form of belief.
Gnostic religious cults are
premised on the same kind of pathology. For the
benefit of the academically
fastidious, I add the following. From the standpoint
of modern physical science, the
fallacy of such popular forms of conspiracy theory,
is
of the same genre as the
blundering astrophysics of Claudius Ptolemy,
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and
Isaac Newton. Such "conspiracy theories" presume to
impose at-the-blackboard
types of ivory-tower preconceptions about the
universe, on the interpretation of
some sets of facts, such as the common Aristotelean,
ivory-tower presumption that
perfect regular action must be circular. In real
science, contrary to the method of
hoaxster Galileo et al., we are obliged to discover
the physical geometry of the
facts we are investigating, as Kepler did, and
adduce
what is possible in that
universe from discovering, experimentally, the
geometry of the phase-space in which
the facts are actually situated.


Note 8 by Lyndon LaRouche at

http://larouchein2004.net/pages/writings/2001/011223zbigsept11.htm


Bob Dobbs

Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Television Addiction]
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 17:03:08 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
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Peter wrote:

> And what, dare I ask, is quadrophrenia?

Interiorising and acting out McLuhan's 4 Laws.


Bob Dobbs


Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Television Addiction]
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 17:53:27 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> > From: purple [SMTP:purple@ingress.com]
> >
> > Peter wrote:
> > > And what, dare I ask, is quadrophrenia?
> >
> > Interiorising and acting out McLuhan's 4 Laws.
> [PM>] ================================
> "acting out" suggests that it is not a particularly
> healthy or normal conditon????

It's not, but when 6 billion people are doing it, not to mention the
"communication media", what are we two against so many?


Bob Dobbs


Subject: Re: [Fwd: RE: Television Addiction]
From: purple
Reply-To: purple@ingress.com
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 23:11:29 -0500
Content-Type: text/plain
Parts/Attachments:

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Peter Montgomery wrote:

> > It's not, but when 6 billion people are doing it, not to mention the
> > "communication media", what are we two against so many?
> [PM>] ===============================
> Especially if either or both of us might be engaging in
> this four-fold dissociation ourselves.

Oh we are, but I do it consciously - being the first to clinically
diagnose the syndrome.


Bob Dobbs





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