and so i'm going to start and welcome welcome very much to conversations we're now on the air we've been talking quite a while setting up the graphics and so forth and we're talking to one of our favorite friends as  who goes by the title clinton the geek i'm going to ask him why clinton the geek but we'll get into that after a while but he's a brilliant young man if i may say so and he's very very invested autodi in understanding the implications of all the extended communications consciousness technologies that has led to conscious attention and he's just been accepted if i may just let the cat out of the bag his paper has been accepted to a conference is coming up in a couple of months where some of the leading people across the world i guess who are really interested in the in the integrated understanding of the implications of the current situation from a media perspective in terms of the human condition he's been accepted to read a paper which i tried to read last night and i really did i got out dictionaries and everything and i was kind of able to follow this young man's brilliant explication of what happened in the wake of all of the mr mcluhan to understand the electronic media congratulate you on that and on being accepted in the for participation in that conference and so good to see again clinton welcome to new york city and particularly t about this conference if you would and congratulations the paper is brilliant that i read and i congratulate you on that but tell me a little bit about where things are we've done a couple programs in the past maybe to address the fact of this conference if five hours and i was trying to get you know the big dictionary and you know and this syntax and the brain it's hard to follow a brilliant mind and you mind and you actually know what you're talking about in great depth of understanding and i got a really in over my head a lot of the time but i read the whole thing and i sort of understand things the way you do you laid out a great deal of understanding mr mcluhan for one thing and his way of seeing the media and also something that the broader world is very very very interested in how is the implications of all this exponential increasing communications capability that is so roiling the world and there are other examples of it but this conference is an early one and just one other mention is paul levinson was a friend of you and me he's a member of that coterie and they're not just all cyberneticist or something they're people are anthropologists and they're they're very much systems thinking and it's a twenty year thing and congratulations on being accepted to read your paper and i think you're right about that and i can thank you for introducing me to it oh absolutely absolutely yeah part of levinson was one of the founding enough of it thank you thank you but i am mean like this is my first actual serious attempt at doing something i you know and you know in a way you know to the right people the media called you so station is the way people people who i want to actually be talking to so this is just great the papers called mcluhan some tonic approach to computer literacy toppling the pillars of cyberspace so it's available on my website right little side projects bubbling on as it's a hobby but i'd really like to develop i'm just into something more this paper is basically i tried to create an actual computer literate  explanation of cyberspace right site cyberspace is a word which was really huge in the eighty's and ninety's and sort of so it's sort of become passe aware you know but at the time this whole idea of the space behind the screen being actual which grounds it in the material reality of our communications infrastructure and computing as a as a you know physical activity yeah yeah not i yeah but but it's  it's a it's a very important contribution and i think you're on really good ground with mr mcluhan he was a real he was a scholar of high repute he did incidentally was at fordham university i think it was at fordham here when  something when he was here in new york city and mr mcluhan was the most famous name across the continent almost as an intellectual or people are trying to understand in large issues particular systems thinking and so for the implications of the alphabet and of literacy and i think it was a critic of it in a certain sense that is mr mcluhan and and it was also an arrow of  another great thinker of that time that was still with us in memory and in that work buckminster fuller those two were very very korans is the right term for the intellectual community along about nine hundred seventy or so and everything and ok i knew it yeah so and those people are being celebrated and that kind of thinking is being celebrated by this conference which i think is magnificent you have a consciousness that he thought was going to be heavily challenged by a systems understanding by the electronic media coming along if i may be close to avoid it was he was a yes that's it precisely by constant wrong with that perspective in painting so thanks to doing lots of reading artists could start painting and for the perspectives they were able to get out some allies a way to have depth perception and it not only the academic world i think this conference you're going to include a lot of people in the academic world but also people in the business world and in the intellectual community at large but the movement toward high specialization came to be rewarded by the educational system you got people very specialized out on something and the assumption was that you had to be specialized in some particular thing rather than systems thinking which is the way i think that there was that he was favored i think he like james joyce didn't yes what mcluhan liked then and also i guess is still is and the implications of it i wonder if could you share this maybe it's not fair because you've got this conference i want to let the audience be aware of that and make sure we will put some graphics on the end here we could maybe let them at the minimal maybe we could let them have a website or something they might do well to go because people watching this program would be taking interest in intellectual things but is there a website for the people who put that conference together that you could just make available right now out of your yes if you want to learn more about the media culture associations conference in toronto and the people and so forth i've got that printed out and it was really an interesting array of people i'm wondering there's a great deal of interest in trying to understand things comprehensibly particularly a lot of attention now given over to the implications of the media because so much of the roiling of the world in all dimensions is coming from these cyber developments that are are coming along right there let me just say some to get it out of the way in a sense this conference or this organization are there many of the org of these kind of organizations that are allowing for comprehensive understood mr mcluhan would be interested in comprehensive thing rather than specialisation and certainly are there are there other other things going on in the west coast are the things coming up in the north of it in other countries where the implications of the  technological development of communications media is being seen is being called and seriously considered by groups around the world and what are some of them you might be aware of or aware of where you could go we could go to begin maybe to get in touch with some of the people that are in that mode of thinking even because that some of our major intellectuals aren't all right i think that i i have i'm not sure i there are doubtless count like there are countless organizations no doubt which are interested in media you're going to find common says about social media you're going to find common conscious about just you tube of the things in academia let's just say it be a lot of people in academia and people are encouraged to try and get education either in a high school or into a junior college or get a degree and one of the things they wouldn't courage all people to get education is that's going to repair prepare them for participating career effectively and positively in the economic order in terms of being able to find a position where they can have recompense for their work and their attention called a job or whatever there's a great deal of attention in this in the in that realm of  school you know make sure you get an education is something that's going to get you a job at the end of the day and  of getting tested and actually being able to prove that you know that you know something or other is a much different matter i think in the future there's going to be changes in education where you're going to be able to pay just to take the exam and get the diploma at the end when you get all be anything but that having a quotation having a credit or whatever you know just having credits which count towards something provided by a university it might be more likely and better to everyone's best interest like listen i want universities to be on the leading edge of thinking in research in creating you have these institutions all ready to go to do stuff and that same time everyone can go there's lots of people who feel like they're better off  you're given the curriculum or whether you pursue your own interests i do things can be done either on the venue of you know research on the internet or through attending a traditional institution education right right right but still experience of the university education i think is worthwhile or the college education there's so much more you can get in that you know sitting with a bunch of people who are all together interested in the same thing as you write in the same room which experts at your fingertips write like that's there's so much of value in that like i'd like to address that a little bit the experts because they've become expert in to a degree it's p y they've become expert on something specific specialisation is much encouraged in the educational process and what that does is it leads people to become very divided into various areas that they know a great great great deal about but they become specialized and are having a difficult time integrating their special thing with the broader context in which the human soul idea leadership are people who are interested in the systems thinking of many things rather than specialisation but specialization is a way toward reading out the people were very worthy of having a job at some place that's going to be able to deal media studies is just the way that media has grown out of all these traditional stewards right cinema television right music and and radio performance  and and advertising and always different things which you know i've done together and intersection strange new unprecedented ways on the internet and on you you know smartphone that no one's ever really seen before so if you're going to look so well i mean it's a sort of sourced interdisciplinary study just to try to study modern media because you have to handle multimedia you have to handle all of it less right well i've got your people handle multimedia they will be better at handling the details within their discipline than they are at having somebody come along questioning them maybe or bringing up some sort of aspect there's something very from another thing that they don't know about because they're going into territory they're not familiar with and they'd rather just stick with what they know it's called specialization if you ask them much favored in the educational curriculum of the universities system that we have well if you have to master one thing you better know what well and you'll be a specialist in that but nevertheless regardless of that aspect everyone has to cheat sheets and struck the cliffs notes version of every other specialty out there that they can go cheat on and get the gist  to all the other specialties too so it's not like the specialists are totally clueless about any other field everyone has got half baked opinion obsolete every specialisation that everyone else has and people are twenty seven times but everyone else's pie al so i'm not worried about specialisation creating a massive schism between you know cation to ok not to not anymore not in the way you're describing what about of the world in general i mean i think if there's going to be barriers between people it be a logical and it will be linguistic a language i think it would make more sense to look at the english speaking world compared to you know other languages in the world as you know borders or out of a geographic or national borders nations and variety of culture in the world you know people sharing a geographic vicinity where babies vote for them for what they vote for the government and the regulations pertaining to their geographic the senate are going to have an identity but then you have cosmopolitan city centers where you have all that which makes your sort of exposure to to a variety of you know the planet so so i'd like there's a balance is there but when it comes to i've done some thinking and some contact with people and what do you think is easy i know they've got machines where you can go from spanish it comes on english and you know that kind of thing i'm sure what about the attention given because we have about what seven thousand languages in the world i think something like that and a lot of the lesser ones are being the lim unaided being lost and there are people considered trying to save those other languages as part of a cultural heritage and so forth and why isn't there some work being done for there to be a process by which the seven thousand languages could be cyber really connected to where let's just say you got a program coming out i make i put up a great planet it's staggering visualize ation of the process of the world but coming it's all coming out in english and that's a thing that i think mr mcluhan was a little bit alarmed about that because it's coming out in english and why aren't there steps being taken with all the research capability and new capability of the exponentially increasing capability to manipulate information to have the language a visual image coming out in the languages of the world so that you could put the education it isn't only limited to people who can understand english and it could help them sort it all the languages of the world and you could be educating the population of the world to the highest standards by a process like that and is there anything going on to being about this make media that can come out and all the languages of the world and bring that kind of media understanding and education to all peoples of the world rather than a select few  is something that is addressable by algorithms or something no you don't need a good times you just need a translator they need jobs to use the thing you can you've got english speaking fans of some controversies that i see on the internet now with the people translating the media from japan in to english changing it and i just think it and doing the translations so as to you know make them more to learn about junking up a potential market that will drive their system to do that it's all driven by market principles of profit now that may be ok well you know it's a lot of the expansion of culture around the world has been an area of what they used to call the national interest of a particular group of people that included language and so forth and everything but it's the disadvantaged people of the world that are in a certain sense left out of that process it seems to me you know it'll get to the and it's not adequately there in terms of a general understood also just in a certain sense i alpha bad system of communication that has been the way in which the world has communicated inside the nation and around the world and everything and there should be a way of being able to get over that kind of  treatment of language in a way using instantaneous capability for there to be interaction at a level so that you could have multimedia rather than print i think the print and the has gives linear thinking one thing at a time it infer it informs a process of thinking specialisation one thing at a time it's a historical pattern of intellectual endeavor and so forth that is held over by a lot of our universities and so forth but the multimedia presentations that are coming available are now becoming a major source to contain the store of human knowledge in multimedia terms rather than alphanumeric well as we have thing that's going on rather than having it written it will be done  multimedia to much better effect in terms of the way the world really works i would see that as that would that would be catastrophic i know what they want in any way to extinguish literacy the spoken word or alphabets in favor of some sort of some sort of one storm of multimedia sensuous communication i think that would be an absolute abomination  use such strong terms but no one really for us to consider things one part at a time and structured them logically and look at them as a whole one step outside of them and i well back that thought that is that is that is what consciousness is being brainwashed or my being you know shown something they were right like no i think that i suppose that would be and i would think that must be an issue that comes up at the conference by some people they're particularly happy some people from the lesser and well known nations of the world who are being largely overlooked by all the political decision making which is overwhelmingly oriented toward the rich people of the world as it always has been now we don't want to bother bringing them in on it they don't you know what i'm trying to say is there could be a you wouldn't have to you know it they could we don't need to speak in these general terms about by media or whatever what people are going to do five years from now is to me walking around using the phone as a window on what they're looking at and how when they look at through the all operate in the world yeah and the benefit is going to be to just like you said you're going to be able to point it at the chinese food restaurant and that will be you know that are written in chinese will be rendered in english for you to read or you want to be able to point  newspaper when in french and in the lobby i think you say you know what i personally think you may be right but i think that gets in the way all that all that literature gets in the way of there just being a well done  language coming out in ethiopian or in swahili or in some of the languages it isn't getting through they would be able to be brought into without going through all that literature reading or listening with fellow humanity you think you can do that as far as knowledge of the world goes i want to be detached and away from that and a great and indexes are great and you don't want knowledge to come out you know in some way that it  something you put down and pick up you may be right and i think you probably think oh here this storm rational politically correct thinking is in that regard certainly they certainly want to undergird all the systems by which the nations of the world have developed special interest and it's all based upon commercial interests of something that makes it possible to retain the old way but why not just have it coming out you know in a way where the exchange so instead of killing knowledge around inside of them they just know that it's bare and they can pick it up when they want but they're sort of externalized their memory and thus don't remember anything which is what they get it does to people they stop learning stuff because they know  an example of something less ok if you would say we're standing on a headline and in hawaii or something and we want to convey the beauty of it that kangaroo jumped away and then there came a tiger's not supposed to be there and all kinds of little drama going on and all of that and we could do that and we had poets who can do that and put down great works of art you know once upon a midnight and this and that and all of that kind of stuff all of which in reality would be conveyed in one moment wouldn't have to be breaking it all down into its component parts breaking it down into the component parts is good for marketing it's a marketing ploy the alphabet and it's a sacred thing because that's where all our sacred books are but it probably i think gets in the way of what's going to be able to become available it's instantaneous translation in the languages of all the world's material well there isn't what do when you go through the war or when you communicate with someone you don't have a bunch of words getting in between it and your mediation you have a direct communication like you do that's fine for people in english or people who speak the same language or bookkeeping or something you know but in terms of the social order that is now becoming available to us i think we would have the a bit rather than building another tomic bomb or some damn thing in order to have the the you know who's who's intimidating who are blowing up the world and all the rest of the politics we've inherited and all of that kind of stuff we would have a world where everybody can communicate everybody and everybody can be brought into it and see that landscape in their own language because the thing is brought to them and the visual they can see everybody can not where a library of congress are legal systems all of those kind of things are all written down all right so the writing is very very dependent upon the way the system has been established it's only been a couple years anything other than writing for dry to keep track of anything and maybe somebody over that how much human knowledge is something so beautiful that it is best represented in the form that you speak and how much you know i don't y instantiate the inherited institutions out of history which was a nightmare of injustice for most of the people i think you were going to be coming into a world of justice elementary justice for all which is something that is never been thought possible it still isn't everything still most people but that it was possible in fact people are thinking that it's possible and making endeavors to do so like people have thought it's possible all the time that's why currently in the united states in certain areas than seven hundred eighty nine france we're not making a lot or it's necessary or maybe becoming available to us in a way that never been possible to people that have been lifted out of poverty in the past twenty years has far exceeded even the most optimistic expectation is the number of people who have been given the bare essentials of life in you know in histories where they were starving  line to get some attention to something radical like trying to get the store of new human knowledge being stored not in the stacks remember stacks they used to have stacks we had to go and get a book where you had half an hour the book would be delivered you could go and you know the store of human knowledge in multimedia terms every day that's right so so i'll tell you what's good and bad about that ok what's good about it is that yes if i want to sit there and watch a lecture or in audio visual terms and see the presenter talking to me like the people who are watching but even when i converse right now or whatever i can listen to the voices of experts and have and see their stuff i can read a book or read a transcript at my own leisure and  but also cyberspace is so big so much information out there that there's always more people stealing it with nonsense or filling it with cults like thinking rolling in the all of a better way in which you can  bad if you put it that way and right now in the way that we've structured our internet it's a free for all and anyone can put anything they want out there and so you can go and meet mark and there may be a large market institution well yeah right looking to also you know upset yes and we and we have we have been developed have been depending upon the alphabet and written knowledge in order to contain that store and carry it on and we're very we're or all given over to that and it probably will stay for quite a while because it's very convenient but it's been also are we are we  getting to a point where are we going to let the current situation is there a hope for there to be a liberation of the whole of the human society rather than a few of the people who manage to get some sort of a situation where they and their family and their friends can do well but the rest of the world is still in a position of poverty and this  affection and in terms of what's available to that the just nature of the world writ large we're just still roiling the earth i have faith that continued dialogue and free  people will result in the ever improving conditions for everyone but that's about as far as i can say on such a great and such a grand question it's rather beyond me to out right ok well y perhaps the mcluhan but that we have in our capability we have what they call haves and have nots that's in an ecological order and they're presenting each of the world population given our extended capability of consciousness in technology the percentage of the world population that can be seen as i add by standards that can be measured has risen answer none of the capability we have a capability of providing for everybody in a way where they will be able to be in the world in a way where they're educated to that but instead we put upon a four throat no it's built upon the assumptions that we've come out of is free with then our being kicking and screaming dragged into a new world outside the safety of the wall of history history i'll say it again history is a nightmare of injustice from what you were attempting to awaken will we ever have a just world order for all like all that paper which which might which might be relevant to talk to this question and that's the idea of technological determinism ok and that is people who don't know what they're looking at don't understand the technology and somehow you know not knowing what it's going to do or how others are going to use it or not knowing what it's for and so education up right what you're talking about here when you talk about you know the capabilities of doing the specifics of the engineering behind it the specifics of how soon as an agriculture is made and produced and distributed the specifics of how economies work the specifics you need to be have lots of specifics because that's what it is so instead of wailing against railing against you know specifics and you know bad necessarily it's more like there needs to be more interdisciplinary kus communication to allow humans to overcome in my mind what my papers talking about is how computers exist in our world and what they play in the infrastructure of communication in entertainment in governance prevent d computers give people something to take their mind off of the hard work of going out there and socializing and integrating themselves into the fabric of society better if you know if you put off in the right like wasting time  computers are great when phones are well great ways of wasting time and in so going self development when they could be great tools of education in all the various things that are necessary to creating a better world the logistics of handling things on the size of the reality which is on the table for assigning political and economic decision making for the operation of what bucky fuller called spaceship earth are we ever going to have a system that is inclusive of all rather than having zero as a given for wonder when somebody else has to lose which you would have to sell it properly based on the that's very good that's very good and who has offered a thing but i just think it's like leaving the warmer something history we're leaving the womb of history and it's been into a new way of being it's like almost it's almost like speciating or some it happens in the process of speciation you get a qualitative not a quantitative change of two hundred thousand years system but you get a qualitative change into something new it introduces into a new way of being and universe but that's another thought listen thank you very much oh it's so good to talk to you my brother i hope it goes really well with the current time we're rolling and people are doing well to be in touch with this fellow and i want to be in search of you about the conference as it gets closer ok oh yeah i'll keep you in the loop what is it now then is through the bout when  we appreciate having talked with pollutants ignatov a major young man i think everyone ought to keep an eye on and all you people at the conference pay attention to this young man he's a calmer ok that's my prediction doing will be coming back tomorrow good talking to you about i think you're out of time yeah we're out ok so now we can stop talking because it'll all be off the air