September 1, 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 TECHNOTRAP™ OF MASS MAN
The Discarnate Condition and the Loss of Identity
A Student of Technology asks:
Professor McLuhan often said that at the speed of light we become “Mass Man,” and that violence is a quest for identity. It makes me think of Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner declaring, “I am not a number. I am a free man!” Was McGoohan recognizing what happens to us in an electric world, where the individual is increasingly reduced to an image, a number and finally an entry in a data bank? If electric technology turns us into images without bodies, how can any of us know who we are?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Living inside electric circuitry creates the environment in which the individual becomes its content, the discarnate content known as Mass Man. But the environment itself is invisible to the untrained eye. Man sees only its content, the “juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” Electrically extended everywhere, Mass Man becomes increasingly discarnate. Without the boundaries of the body, he loses the boundaries of individual identity. Without identity, he becomes angry. Violence becomes the quest for identity. McGoohan’s character is fighting precisely this transformation when he refuses to surrender his identity and be reduced from a person to a number in the system.
The TECHNOTRAP™ occurs because man observes this world with an untrained eye. He fails to examine his percepts, what his senses actually encounter, and instead rushes to form instant concepts about them. Conceptualization, combined with ignorance of the effects of technology, sets the trap. The technological environment doing the real work upon his senses remains invisible while its content commands his attention. He thinks he is examining his world when he is actually examining the bait.
At the root of that ignorance lies an even deeper error: misrecognition. Man mistakes an extension of himself for an alien object. That misrecognition is the Narcissus trap. Technology extends a human power by amputating it from the body and projecting it into space and time. Because the extension now appears outside him, man approaches it as something foreign, separate and alien to himself, when in fact he is confronting a part of himself. Narcissus was not trapped because he loved himself, but because he failed to recognize his own reflection. So does Mass Man. The TECHNOTRAP™ is sprung when man mistakes his own extended reflection for something outside himself. Technology Ecology trains the eye to recognize the extension, perceive its effects and escape the slavery of the trap.
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Sources: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man; The Prisoner, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan.
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