June 3, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™
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.
The Oracle Machine
Source: The Times (UK), June 3, 2026. Reports indicate that Artificial Intelligence systems are being used to analyze behavior patterns, travel records, social relationships, and online activity in an effort to identify individuals who may become future political dissidents before they commit any unlawful act.
A Student of Technology asks:
Is Artificial Intelligence leading us toward a world where a machine will legally judge you for a crime you have not yet committed?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
No. Artificial Intelligence cannot accurately predict an individual’s future behavior, and there is no reason to believe it ever will. Human beings are far too complex, creative, and unpredictable to be reduced to a statistical forecast.
The more important question is not whether Artificial Intelligence can predict crime. The more important question is what happens to society when it begins relying upon prediction.
For thousands of years, human beings have sought ways of knowing the future before it arrives. Ancient societies consulted prophets, seers, diviners, and oracles. Today, many are turning to Artificial Intelligence. The technology appears new, but its social role is ancient. Artificial Intelligence may be less a new technology than a new form of oracle.
The danger is not that the oracle is always wrong. The danger is that society begins believing the oracle.
There will be a strong temptation to place ever greater faith in these forecasts, because they promise certainty in an uncertain world. Governments, corporations, and institutions will be tempted to act upon probabilities rather than evidence. But McLuhan taught that every technology, pushed far enough, reverses into its opposite. As predictive systems make mistakes, produce false positives, and brand innocent people as future threats, a backlash will follow.
And here is the deepest irony.
The oracle cannot foresee its own effects. Artificial Intelligence may predict patterns of behavior, but it cannot predict how society itself will change once governments, courts, corporations, and citizens begin acting upon its predictions. The law of unintended consequences lies beyond the reach of every oracle, ancient or electronic.
That backlash may bring its own surprise. Society may begin demanding higher and higher standards of evidence before acting at all. In correcting the excesses of prediction, institutions may grow so reluctant to intervene that they wait until crimes are fully committed, making it easier for some offenders to escape timely detection.
Meanwhile, another effect works beneath the surface. People who know they are constantly being evaluated by predictive systems will gradually change how they behave. The issue is not whether the machine is accurate. The issue is that citizens begin acting as though they are being watched by a future court. Prediction itself becomes a form of social control.
The result is an environment in which freedom is quietly narrowed, not by laws, but by the awareness that every action, relationship, purchase, and message may one day be read as evidence of something that has not yet happened.
The danger is not that the machine knows the future.
The danger is that society may begin behaving as though it does.
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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