June 14, 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.
How Do You Outsmart the Age of Internet?
A Student of Technology asks:
Your website describes itself as “How to Outsmart the Age of Internet: A Publication of Cultural Criticism in the Grammar of Marshall McLuhan.” Can the Internet Age really be outsmarted?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Maybe.
Most people cannot outsmart an environment because they are immersed within it. They accept its assumptions as reality and rarely examine the effects it has upon their perceptions, values, and behavior. Yet some individuals learn to think outside the environment itself. They stop asking what is happening inside the box and begin asking what the box is doing to those who live within it.
The Information Age trains people to focus on content. They become absorbed by news, entertainment, politics, social media, and endless streams of information.
The trained Technology Ecologist asks a different question. He asks:
What is the medium doing?
What assumptions does it encourage?
What habits does it reward?
What forms of identity does it promote?
What forms of perception does it suppress?
The person who learns to examine the environment rather than merely consume its content gains an advantage. He may not escape the environment, but he can begin to understand it. And understanding an environment is often the beginning of outsmarting it.
Marshall McLuhan developed a practical set of tools known as the Laws of Media. Properly understood, these laws allow the student of technology to move beyond the immediate content of an innovation and examine its hidden effects.
Most people spend their lives looking at individual trees. The Laws of Media help us see the forest. They reveal the patterns, invisible forces, and environmental changes operating behind the headlines, controversies, and distractions of the moment.
The person who learns to apply these laws acquires a perspective unavailable to those who remain absorbed by content alone.
He begins to see not only what technologies do, but what they undo.
Not only what they create, but what they replace.
Not only what they replace, but what they revive.
Not only what they promise, but what they demand in return.
Can the Internet Age be outsmarted?
Maybe.
But only by those willing to step outside the box long enough to examine the box itself.
As James Joyce wrote in Finnegans Wake:
“Yes, the viability of vicinals if invisible is invincible.”
The vicinals are the things nearest us, the surroundings we stop noticing precisely because they are always there. The invisible environment is invincible because it operates beneath conscious awareness.
The first step toward outsmarting the Age of Internet is learning to see what has become invisible through familiarity.
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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