September 8, 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.
MEDIA SCIENCE 100
LIVING ELECTRICALLY SENDS EVERYONE TO EVERYWHERE ON THE PLANET, NOBODY CAN BE JUST ANYWHERE
Mankind’s Image of Himself Disappears as He Merges with the Electric Crowd
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, if living at the speed of light and beyond sends everyone everywhere, what happens to individual and collective identity?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
At electric speed, everywhere becomes here. The whole world is inside this room. Our physical bodies remain in one place, but electrically we are everywhere. We become discarnate, a no-body standing inside the electric crowd, and a man in a crowd is a nobody. When everyone can be everywhere, nobody can be just anywhere. As we merge with the electric crowd, the image through which we once recognized who we were and where we fitted into society begins to dissolve. Rampant technological innovation simultaneously dissolves the image society has of itself. At these speeds, every decade we live through centuries. Every new technology makes the old map obsolete and takes away the old compass. Mankind must restart its map-making and rediscover where it is situated, how it fits into the new environment, and where it is headed.
Violence has always been a quest for identity. What electric speed does is make the loss of identity, individually and collectively, far more pronounced. Rampant technological innovation makes that loss continuous. Every new technology necessitates a new war for identity because it dissolves the body image by which individuals and cultures recognize themselves. Violence is not merely physical. To the Media Scientist, humanity has a stock response to the loss of identity and orientation: it reacts violently, both physically and psychically. Slang is one form of psychic violence, but it is also an attempt to gain a perceptual foothold in a new and unfamiliar world. The old percepts, which became the old concepts, are no longer relevant to the new environment. By intensifying the new and obsolescing the old, slang becomes one of mankind’s attempts to perceive and make sense of this new world, not necessarily successfully. In the electric crowd, everybody is a nobody because everybody is electrically a no-body, discarnate. Each new technology wipes away the old bearings and leaves mankind once again without a usable map or compass. The task is not to reinvent direction, but to rediscover how we fit into a new environment that itself eludes easy perception.
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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. 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