Dupes of Non-Physical

Like corporate advertising used to do, iON tells you what you want to hear. Bob says iON/NP is technology, the phantom limb effect of another amputated faculty (your forfeited 'power').

BOB: McLuhan covered the waterfront on the human being as Extendor (from
speech as extension of gesture to the satellite as extension of the
collective conscious).

Kroker and I demonstrated how the Android Meme was the next Extendor
(the machinic, not the human being, extending its machines).

Today I alone show how iON (the non-physical) is the present Extendor
(under the guise of "explaining" the previous 2 phases).

Only for a short while will iON be an invisible environment - then the
Guf empties.

We gonna do the Wave!!

From Nostradamus 3.6:

"Within the closed temple the lightning will enter,
The citizens within their fort injured:
Horses, cattle, men, the wave will touch the wall,
Through famine, drought, under the weakest armed."


But, what is meant by 'technology' if the extended NP is now talking to us from within and without?

BOB: Two conversations: "technology" is a useful term for the "without" aspect, and "non-physical" is a useful term for the "within" aspect.

What is a body? Do we really even experience physicality or is this another red herring? Is the point of this iONic massage to familiarize ourselves with a new sense: the sense of physicality/non-physicality?

BOB: The body today is the processor of the question, "what is a body?" We have consciously been experiencing the four Bodies (Chemical, Astral, TV, and Chip Bodies) - that is our physicality. The iONic massage is the surfacing of the Mystery Body (the fifth Body) as an IFO (Identified Flying Object) - the stretching of the tactile interplay of iON's trinity (the "physical, non-physical, and the labyrinth of the mind").

In my experience, the "drama of cognition" between Bob and iON seems to cancel itself out while annihilating any sense of knowing with regard to the shared language symbols (verbal and non-verbal) between myself and others, leaving more questions.

BOB: Yes, and that PROCESS of cancellation leading to more questions is what one, in the interim, KNOWS ("I think, I think, I know").

Bob, are you saying that before iON, there were only implied connections between people in the drama of cognition

BOB: Yes, especially during the literate/print phase.

and now iON is offering a bridge so there really is a connection?

BOB: More like iON is offering a float/raft while one learns to enjoy one's eternal disconnection from all others.

But don't all new technologies dupe humans into a new offer of true connection?

BOB: Yes, but iON is the most honest technology (and hence the most thrilling) as regards to that duping.

Chad

Foo,

But if we humans created the Guf/NP, as iON claims, then would the Guf/NP not also be a 'media landscape' in the sense of this McLuhan quote?

"Every human artifact can be seen as a medium of communication whose message can be said to be the totality of satisfactions and dissatisfactions they engender".

And would not the 'ESP' concept that New Age thinking reveres be simply the phatic aspect of 'yeah, yeah, yeah' type responses to others when we go along with what they say (ie. assume that we 'get it'), rather than constantly performing one's own due diligence with regard to apprehending precisely what is meant by the exchange? (For example, when we ask another person for directions and then kind of half-listen with an implied sense that we 'get it', only to find that our 'hunch' or imagination actually left us making a wrong turn because we didn't make absolutely sure that the guy meant 'turn right after the 1st MAJOR intersection'). Doesn't every new technology imply that it will once-and-for-all solve the question of 'do we actually communicate' by proposing a real connection to others so we can know that they know what we mean and vice-versa?

BOB: Not so much, since every technology enhances simultaneously the centralizing (matching, homogeneous) and decentralizing (making, heterogeneous) applications of communication - there's your 2 conversations!! - as a matter of fact, this means every technology and its resulting medium/environmental effects contains 2 conversations (at least) or what McLuhan means when he says "services and disservices".

And, the question I'm posing is, how can one truly know if iON/NP is going to be the medium/landscape/answer to the type of questions Bob explores in his essay "Cloning ESP"? Because, as far as I can see, there is always a 'meta' lens to anything, and why would iON be an exception.

BOB: Correct. Hence, the truism "we never get it done".

And hallelujah!! Because that guarantees "there will be so much more".

As McLuhan argued, "any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary". So, I am asking what assumptions are being made by the iON/NP medium.

BOB: We are the "iON/NP medium" because the "medium" is always the previous technologies/environments that are affected by the new technology. With that definition in mind, then the most common assumption made by the iON/NP medium is that there is a "get" to be gotten... verbally. iON exploits this gap (or tactile interval therein) to entertain and delight our non-physical. And that's never been explicit before!!

Which brings me to this quote from Roland Barthes regarding myth:

"Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions. Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things."

BOB: Barthes is referring to the "verbally" part of my argument.

and then...

"Myth can be defined neither by its object nor by its material, for any material can arbitrarily be endowed with meaning."

BOB: Barthes is here referring to the "non-physical" part of my argument by actually PERFORMING the creation of meaning as a non-verbal, silent pleasuring.

If everything can indeed be myth in a universe "infinitely fertile in suggestions", then why should iON/NP be exempt from meta-questions through the kind of lenses offered by Bob, McLuhan, Barthes, or any other lens crafter examining human creations, granted humans can endow any material with meaning? And, wouldn't humans' meta-lens-crafting ability (wrought from very persistent questioning of EVERYTHING) trump even a physical/non-physical paradigm?

BOB: Yes, but the massage of the non-physical by iON releases us from our incessant meta-lens-crafting ability until the excessive massage flips us into the newly surprising but retrieved pleasure of our meta-lens-crafting ability... and so it goes...

Chad