October 28, 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 ROCK STANDS STILL. THE EYE SAYS OTHERWISE: How Yesterday's Experience Changes What We See Today
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Researchers at York University have demonstrated that after watching something move in one direction, we can perceive a stationary object as displaced in the opposite direction. They found corresponding changes in the visual systems of monkeys, but not in the artificial vision networks they tested. How does this discovery relate to Marshall McLuhan's understanding of perception and the effects of technology?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Consider a waterfall. After watching the water rush downward, you turn toward a stationary rock, which may now appear to drift upward. What you saw a moment ago has altered what you see now. The eye does not simply photograph the external world and deliver an exact replica to the mind. Our previous sensory experience influences our present re-presentation of reality. The implications become even more interesting when we extend our senses through technology. McLuhan, building upon Harold Innis's work on the bias of communication, argued that every medium reorganizes our sensory relationships, amplifying some senses while diminishing the relative influence of others. The alphabet and printing press, he maintained, intensified visual organization, while electronic media altered the balance of sensory involvement. These technologies do more than deliver information. They become environments within which we experience and interpret the world. The medium changes not merely what we see, but the sensory conditions under which we see it.
The experiment reveals another important distinction. While biological vision registered an apparent displacement, the artificial vision systems tested continued to locate the object accurately. The machine was not wrong about its physical position. Rather, it failed to reproduce how the human observer perceived it. It registered where the object was, but not where the observer saw it. This distinction between physical accuracy and human perception brings us back to McLuhan's figure-ground approach. We concentrate on the figure, whether it is a rock, a photograph, a television programme, or an image on a computer screen, while overlooking what, in McLuhan's terms, is the technological ground conditioning our experience. The York experiment does not establish that media environments produce the same effect as a visual illusion, but it illustrates how perception can be conditioned by what came before. And if our immediate sensory experiences can influence what we subsequently see, might our technological environments also influence the habits of perception we carry into the world? We think we are looking at the world. How often are we looking at the effects of the world we have already experienced?
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Source: York University, “Visual illusion reveals what today’s AI vision is missing,” October 2, 2026.https://www.yorku.ca/news/2026/10/02/visual-illusion-reveals-what-todays-ai-vision-is-missing-york-university-study/
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