October 11, 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 VOICE THAT COULD SAY YES: It Now Takes a Statute to Reach a Person
A Student of Technology asks:
California’s Right to Human Customer Service Act, signed September 28 and taking effect January 1, 2027, will require covered businesses with more than $500 million in annual U.S. gross revenue to make a good-faith effort, during regular customer-service hours, to connect customers requesting a person within 15 minutes or arrange human contact at a specific appointment within one business day of the request. It also prohibits passing off a chatbot as human. LegiScan Its author, Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, says that during the pandemic he spent hours on hold seeking medication for his mother, then drove to the pharmacy to show the staff that he was still waiting on the telephone. Why does it now take a law to reach another person, and what is all this doing to those of us still on hold? ZBUR
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Consider the picture Zbur gives us: a man standing in a pharmacy, holding up a telephone on which he is still waiting to reach it. The instrument built to bring a distant voice near has become the entrance to a service system that keeps a nearby person out of reach. Professor McLuhan called the telephone “a participant form that demands a partner.” The MMM There is nothing wrong with a machine handling a routine request. The reversal comes when the request is not routine, the menu cannot accommodate it, and the system provides no way through. The means of service becomes a barrier to service. The new law requires a simple route to a human, although not necessarily by telephone. It does not guarantee that the person reached has authority to make an exception. LegiScan That distinction matters. A person confined to a script can leave the caller facing the same wall. Reaching a human is not the same as reaching someone allowed to exercise human judgment. The voice we need is not merely one that sounds human. It is one that can consider our circumstances and perhaps say yes.
Now consider the education such a system can give its caller. He learns its grammar: press the number, name the category, repeat the account details. The danger is that he also learns to approach every institution as a menu, looking for the permitted response instead of expecting his particular circumstances to be heard. The law requires an accessible way to ask for a person, but the customer must still make that request. LegiScan What happens if the expectation behind it weakens? If we become accustomed to systems that cannot reconsider, we may stop expecting anyone to reconsider. Making a case gives way to finding the command that gets a result. Choosing automation for a simple task is not the loss. Ceasing to expect judgment when the task is not simple would be. That is the deeper danger: not merely that companies make human contact difficult, but that we become unpracticed at seeking it. We could write the human voice into law while training ourselves out of listening for it.
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Sources:
California Legislature, AB 1609, Chapter 733, Statutes of 2026, approved September 28, 2026, particularly Business and Professions Code §§ 22625–22628. Chaptered text, reproduced by LegiScan.
Office of Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, “Californians Gain Right to Human Customer Service Under New Zbur Law,” September 29, 2026. Includes Zbur’s pharmacy account and the January 1, 2027 effective date.
Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, “Governor Newsom signs commonsense legislation to make your life easier,” September 28, 2026.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), “The Telephone,” p. 268 in the MIT/Routledge pagination identified by the Estate of Marshall McLuhan’s quotation dictionary, entry 6726.
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