May 15, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™
An Exploration of Media 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.
The Real Hidden Ground of Artificial Intelligence
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, what is the hidden ground to this new product being marketed under the name Artificial Intelligence?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The hidden ground of AI is not merely the machine itself, but the vast electronic environment required to sustain it. Artificial Intelligence is the visible figure resting upon invisible grounds of big data, high speed connectivity, cloud computation, algorithmic patterning, and continuous electronic surveillance.
The public sees the chatbot, the image generator, or the machine answering questions. But beneath the surface lies a planetary nervous system composed of data centers, fiber optic networks, satellites, server farms, predictive systems, and oceans of harvested human behavior. Artificial Intelligence does not emerge from isolated machines. It emerges from total electronic interconnection. What is called intelligence is largely the rapid processing of accumulated patterns extracted from billions of human actions, conversations, images, purchases, movements, and preferences.
The machine appears intelligent because electronic culture has surrounded humanity with unprecedented quantities of retrievable information moving at near instantaneous speed. Systems such as IBM’s Deep Blue signaled an important reversal. The machine no longer merely extended physical labor but began extending strategic and cognitive functions once associated with the human mind itself.
This represented a profound shift in media history. The externalization not simply of muscle power, but of symbolic reasoning and decision making. The deeper danger is that society may mistake accelerated retrieval and probabilistic pattern recognition for wisdom itself.
Speed, connectivity, and data accumulation create the illusion of omniscience while potentially weakening reflection, contemplation, memory, and independent judgment. Artificial Intelligence therefore represents not simply a new tool, but the culmination of the electric age’s long drive toward the externalization of the human nervous system.
The hidden ground beneath Artificial Intelligence is the electronic environment that makes continuous machine cognition possible. Every medium creates a new human environment. Artificial Intelligence creates an environment in which thought increasingly exists outside the individual and within the network itself.
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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