June 11, 2026
THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogue™
An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™
by Nelson S. Thall, McLuhan Media Scientist / Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca.
What Happens When Man Loses Both Himself and His World?
A Student of Technology asks:
Electric technology has turned man into a discarnate being, extended into the data bank, where his name is taken away and replaced with a number. To pour a human being into a databank is to sacrifice something of the soul.
It strips away private identity, and the loss of private identity forbids self-recognition, even as the world accelerates beyond any human speed of action. What happens when a man wakes one morning to find that he has lost both himself and his world overnight?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Modern man suffers a double loss.
First, he loses himself. Marshall McLuhan taught that every technology is an extension of the body or the mind, and that every extension is at the same time an amputation. When man pours his consciousness into the electronic databank, he performs a kind of self-amputation, and the numbness that follows forbids self-recognition. Narcissus gazed into the pool and did not know that the figure there was himself. Modern man does the same. He cannot recognize himself in his own technological extensions.
Second, he loses his world. Informational change has accelerated so violently that the world he left behind at midnight has disappeared by dawn. Overnight, new information appears, new crises emerge, new technologies arrive, and new realities become the ground beneath his feet.
The first loss is internal.
The second loss is external.
The self disappears into its extensions.
The world disappears over the horizon.
And the two losses feed each other. The environment that once helped define who you were has shifted overnight, and a portion of your identity shifts with it. The headlines have changed, the markets have changed, the technologies have changed, the fashions have changed, and the fears have changed.
The world has moved on without you.
So modern man awakens each day to discover that both his world and his sense of self have shifted yet again. Atlas shrugs because he can no longer recognize either the world he carries or the self carrying it.
There is an older name for an extension of ourselves that we come to worship. It is an idol. McLuhan saw this plainly. The technologies we build are mirrors of our own faculties, and like Narcissus we fall in love with the reflection. The Psalmist warned that those who make idols grow to be like them, and McLuhan turned that warning on the modern world: we become what we behold. We pour ourselves into our machines, and our machines remake us in their image. A man who can no longer find his own face in that mirror has not gained the world. He has lost it, and himself with it.
That does not serve mankind well.
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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. 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.
I can be reached at nelson@themediumisthemessage.com