May 8, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™An Exploration of Media 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.
AI Was Already Here Before You Knew Its Name
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public on November 30, 2022. Within five days the system had one million users. Within two months it had a hundred million. The press treats this as the moment AI arrived in the world.
But you have suggested that AI became an environment long before it became a figure. When did AI actually reach environmental status, and what is the hidden ground beneath both the environment and the figure that the public has been given?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The AI environment was born the moment the machine started working in the lab. Frank Rosenblatt filed the patent for the pattern recognition perceptron in 1960 and the patent was granted in 1966 as US Patent number 3,287,649. For sixty two years the boys in the labs, the Skunk Works of corporate and military research divisions, refined the technology in private and shaped the environment the public would eventually inhabit.
By the late 2010s big data and high speed connectivity had scaled that environment to the planet through search engines, recommendation systems, voice assistants and social media algorithms. The label was kept off the consumer interface. On November 30, 2022 OpenAI released ChatGPT and the environment was finally given a face that the public could address by name. Consider the satellite as precedent.
When the satellite circled the Earth in 1957 it enclosed the planet. It put a proscenium arch around the globe and turned the Earth into a stage. Every human being on the planet became a performer on that stage without knowing it. Dress became costume. Sputnik created Beatnik. The behavioural change was global and voluntary and yet no human being had chosen it. AI has done the same on a deeper layer. You do not need to know about a technology for it to damage your perception, your awareness and your identity.
He who controls the search engine controls public reality. Self amputation forbids self recognition. The numbness scrubs off individual Human Identity. Violence is a quest for Identity. No wonder our world is filled with violence. The cause has been operating since 1960. The Patent Office must be highly scrutinized and exposed.
-30-
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. No intellectual contribution or creative authorship is attributed to the AI tool. All rights of authorship and ownership vest entirely and exclusively with Nelson S. Thall.
I can be reached at nelson@themediumisthemessage.com