June 8, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™
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.
Can Humanity Survive the Accelerating Speeds Its Inventions Create?
Source: Reports of accelerating military technology, autonomous weapons, hypersonic missiles, AI-assisted warfare, and intensifying competition among the great powers continue to show the rising speed and scale of innovation across the world.
A Student of Technology asks:
Why does technological progress seem to bring humanity closer to self-destruction?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
“We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door … The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character … It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”
General Douglas MacArthur, aboard the USS Missouri, September 2, 1945
For thousands of years mankind has used technology to solve problems. The wheel solved the problem of transportation. The plow solved the problem of food. The printing press solved the problem of communication. Every great advance came from the same source: human nature.
What changed was never human nature. What changed was the environment in which human nature operates. Electric technology abolished distance and compressed time. Nations, cultures, religions, and economies suddenly found themselves interacting continuously and all at once. Everybody became present to everybody else, in what McLuhan named the global village.
For the first time in history, all mankind has been forced to live together after thousands of years of living apart. And when everybody becomes present to everybody else, human nature takes command. Old hatreds surface, mistrust multiplies, and reason gives way to fear, rivalry, and the struggle for advantage.
The outcome was not merely Technological Innovation but Rampant Technological Innovation. Every advantage seized by one group forced the others to answer. Innovation became permanent, because no one could afford to fall behind. Rivalries and fears that once played out over centuries now play out in real time.
Yet human nature did not evolve as fast as its tools. The same qualities that produced the wheel and the plow produced the missile and the nuclear warhead. As technological power grew, the consequences of fear, hatred, and conflict grew with it. Electronic technology did not create these qualities. It amplified them.
So the issue is not technology. The issue is human nature operating through technologies of ever greater power. Human nature produced Technological Innovation. Electric technology accelerated it into Rampant Technological Innovation. Electronic weaponry pushed it into overkill.
Human Nature + Electronic Weaponry of Overkill = Global Cosmicide
The challenge facing civilization is whether human nature can master the power it has created before that power produces global cosmicide. MacArthur saw it in 1945. The problem is finally theological, not technical. It must be of the spirit, he warned, if we are to save the flesh.
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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