August 11, 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.
Part 1 - How Humans Make Their Reality - Every Technology Spins the Picture. The Purpose of Studying The Effects of Technology Is to Catch the Spin.
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Before we even name today's dominant sense, I want to back up. Why does it matter to a student of technology which sense a society leans on? Why start there at all?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Start with the process, because reality is not handed to the mind, it is made. We even say a man "makes sense" of things, and the phrase is more honest than we know. He makes it. Each man assembles the world from his own senses, and the mind can judge nothing but the picture he builds. That picture is never the thing itself. At best, when the senses are sound and in balance, it is the closest copy the body can make, and that balance is the old meaning of common sense.
Now introduce any technology. Each one favors a single sense and throws the others out of proportion, and the picture it sends up is spun, out of true. You cannot escape this, there is no unspun picture, every medium has its bias. What you can do is learn the process well enough to catch the spin as it happens, to name which sense is being favored and correct for it in the mind. That is the whole use of studying technology. The man who knows how his reality is made can undo the bias and recover a truer view. The man who does not, mistakes the spin for the world.
*This is the first of two parts. The second asks what today's dominant sense actually is,and why it is not the one you would guess.*
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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.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com