September 11, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ • McDialogues™
Understanding the Grammars of Electric Culture and Propaganda Science™
An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™ and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science™
by Nelson S. Thall
Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca. and McLuhan Media Scientist, Former President/Director, Marshall McLuhan Centre On Global Communications, Toronto, Canada
A WORLD THAT NEVER LETS GO
When Technology Makes the Dead Seem Present
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, this can lead next to holograms mated to AI, a dead person can now be seen and heard, can appear to walk around the room, and can even seem to take part in the ordinary actions of daily life. What happens to the living when technology makes the dead appear present again?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The technology does not extend the dead person. It extends dreamland. At the speed of light, in the electric environment in which we now live, man becomes discarnate. He increasingly exists as an image, a voice, a number, a piece of information, detached from the physical body that once anchored identity. In such an environment, fantasy increasingly takes the place of reality. Photography retrieved the face, recording retrieved the voice and television retrieved the moving image. AI combined with holography now goes further. It can manufacture the appearance that the dead person is still present in the room, talking, walking, even dancing with the survivor. Professor McLuhan taught us to look at the effect of the technology rather than become hypnotized by its content. Here the effect is the extension of fantasy until fantasy itself can be experienced as reality.
That is precisely why recreating the dead can become so attractive. For many people it may remain a temporary curiosity or comfort, but for those most susceptible to it, grief can now be given an entire technological environment in which to live. Like television, it becomes a high-tech boredom-killing device, except this one surrounds the survivor with an electronic likeness of someone who is dead. Instead of forcing the living person to confront absence and return to the world of the living, the technology can make it easier to withdraw from reality and inhabit a manufactured dreamland. The first death takes the person who died. The TECHNOTRAP is that the simulation can begin to take the survivor with them.
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Source: Associated Press, July 2, 2026, report on AI-generated recreations of deceased relatives in South Korea.
All intellectual property contained herein was conceived, originated and authored exclusively by Nelson S. Thall. Artificial intelligence, aka a pseudo-conscious machine (PCM), was not employed. We hired a stenographer. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com