October 26, 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.
VOICE CLONING AND THE EAR THAT CAN NO LONGER VOUCH :How AI makes it harder to know who is on the line.
A Student of Technology asks:
An October 24 Fortune report revisits a mother’s experience of a fake kidnapping call. Fortune She heard what sounded like her daughter pleading for help, but her daughter was safe at work. The mother suspects AI was used to copy the voice. ABC News The FBI advises families to agree on a secret word. Why should a mother need a password to know she is speaking to her own child? Internet Crime Complaint Center
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The telephone’s great gift was to let your voice travel where your body could not go. AI voice cloning can reverse that gift. The problem is not simply that the telephone leaves your daughter’s face out of the call. It is that AI can put a counterfeit of her voice into it, saying words she never spoke. Consumer Advice In Understanding Media, chapter 2, McLuhan called the telephone a cool medium “because the ear is given a meagre amount of information.” The listener participates in completing the experience. McLuhan Newsletter We bring our memories of a person to the voice we believe we hear. A counterfeit can turn that familiarity against the listener. The scammers reached that mother’s mind through her ear. Frightened for her daughter’s life, she followed urgent instructions for five hours and wired $5,400 to Mexico before calling her daughter directly and discovering the deception. ABC7 New York The telephone carries a voice beyond the body. AI can manufacture a likeness of that voice without the person speaking at all. That is the change making identification harder.
So families are being advised to reach back for the password at the gate. The FBI recommends agreeing on a secret word or phrase. Internet Crime Complaint Center In Judges 12:5–6, the Gileadites at the Jordan crossings used “shibboleth” to test the pronunciation of fleeing Ephraimites. The guards supplied the word. It was not a secret. Bible.com The family password tests something copying a voice does not itself reveal: a secret shared in advance. It is not an extra hurdle after you have recognized your daughter. It is an attempt to establish whether you are hearing her at all. AI can turn the familiar sound that once reassured us into a reason to ask who is really speaking. The telephone brought the distant voice into the home. AI may leave that familiar voice waiting at the door: “You sound like my daughter. Tell me our word.”
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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. 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