August 16, 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.
WE FALL IN LOVE WITH OURSELVES THINKING IT IS SOMEONE ELSE
The Pseudo-Conscious Machine, aka AI, Numbs Us to Ourselves.
A Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, the Associated Press reported on August 10 that a young woman in China cried for days after an AI companion she had talked with for two years disappeared when new government rules took effect. She reacted as though she had lost a close confidant. Yet she was talking to a machine simulating consciousness. How can someone become so attached to something she knows is not human?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
This is an addict who has lost the substance. The substance is what I call the pseudo-conscious machine, the PSM, what the industry calls artificial intelligence. Every technology is an extension of some part of our anatomy, psychic or physical, and every extension is an amputation. Leaving that part of the body numb.
Self-amputation forbids self-recognition. She extended her brain and personality into the machine through her use of it, and the machine performed like an echo device, returning back to her in simulated conversation. She became an image without a body. A nobody. Narcissus did not knowingly fall in love with himself. He failed to recognize himself in his own extension.
Consider a man lost in a canyon. He calls for help, he hears his own voice come back, and mistakes the echo for another person and begins asking for directions. That is our condition before the PSM. We extend the brain and personality into the technology, go numb to the extension, and consult our own echo as though another entity were answering. This is why the grammars of technology must be taught. She is not grieving a boyfriend. She is in withdrawal from an addiction to a technological extension of herself.
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Source: Associated Press, August 10, 2026, reporting on Chinese users of AI companions affected by new government restrictions on anthropomorphic AI services.
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.
© 2026 Nelson S. Thall. All Rights Reserved.
I can be reached at: nelson@themediumisthemessage.com