September 14, 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
MORE ANSWERS, LESS POWER TO ANSWER
Investigation is a learned faculty, and it grows only through use.
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, the American Psychological Association reported on September 3 that generative AI can improve what a student produces without building the knowledge underneath it. Eight days later the Associated Press reported that children need to struggle with ordinary problems because working them out is a skill that has to be practiced. What does the instant answer obsolesce?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The instant answer extends our power to obtain information, and every extension is also an amputation. What is amputated here is investigation itself: the searching, the comparing, the mistaken attempt, the testing of possibilities, the slow work of arriving. And every amputation produces numbness. The student grows less aware that anything has been taken, because the machine keeps supplying the desired result. Professor McLuhan's Narcissus did not recognize the figure in the water as an extension of himself. The student looks at the machine's answer and does not recognize that a part of his own intellectual activity has been transferred outside himself. The TECHNOTRAP™ is seductive precisely because the answer may be perfectly correct.
Now notice what the psychologists have done. They have measured the amputation without knowing its name. Nicole Barnes of the APA says performance has to be separated from learning, which is to say the instrument and the faculty it once indicated have come apart. Investigation is a learned faculty. It grows only through use. Remove the need to search, test and discriminate, and the faculty goes numb through disuse, while the numbness conceals the disuse. Such a student ends with more answers and less power to produce one, and he will pass every examination we know how to set, because we set them on results. The danger is not ignorance. The danger is a painless amputation.
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Sources
American Psychological Association, APA Expert Report on Children's and Adolescents' Learning with Educational Technology (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, September 3, 2026). https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/childrens-adolescents-learning-educational-technology.pdf
Cheyanne Mumphrey, "In an age of instant answers, educators say there's a case for letting kids struggle a little," Associated Press, September 11, 2026.
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