September 24, 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
THE MAKER BECOMES THE MANAGER : When AI Does the Work and the Worker Directs It
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, a global BCG survey of 11,749 workers found that 47 percent now spend more time managing and directing AI than doing the work itself. And today BCG described leading companies as moving toward a workplace where machines produce while humans direct and evaluate. If the worker increasingly stops doing the work he was trained to do and instead supervises a machine doing it, what has happened to the worker?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The maker is becoming the manager of his own extension. The engineer still carries the title engineer, and the writer still carries the title writer, but the act that once gave the occupation its identity is moving into the machine. The human briefs, directs, corrects and judges. The old foreman returns, except his crew is made of technological extensions rather than other workers. Professor McLuhan taught us that the message of any technology is the change of scale, pace or pattern it introduces into human affairs. Here all three change at once. The scale of output grows, the pace of production accelerates, and the pattern of work shifts from doing to directing. The extension performs the craft while the human stands outside the performance and decides whether what came back is acceptable.
That produces a strange new worker. He may become enormously more productive; BCG reports that 42 percent of regular frontline users save at least a full workday each week. But productivity and identity are not the same thing. A craft was once learned and maintained through the repeated act of doing it. His value now lies in knowing what to ask for and recognizing whether the machine has made it properly. Yet that judgment was formed by years of making the thing himself. Who will train the judgment of the next generation, who will direct from the first day and never do? The worker remains responsible for the work while surrendering more of the work itself.
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Sources: Boston Consulting Group, "AI Is Reshaping Jobs Faster Than Companies Are Reshaping Work," June 3, 2026; Sagar Goel, Julie Bedard, Matthew Kropp, Ashley Sim and Charikleia Kaffe, "Five Ways That AI Front-Runners Change How Work Gets Done," Boston Consulting Group, September 24, 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