October 5, 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
WHEN EVERYONE IS EVERYWHERE, EVERYBODY IS NOWHERE:AI Glasses Reveal the Nobody We Have Already Become.
A Student of Technology asks:
There is growing public resistance to AI glasses because people fear being photographed, recorded or identified without knowing it. But are the glasses actually destroying our privacy, or are they making visible something about ourselves that has been hidden in the electric environment all along?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
Under electric conditions, the whole world is inside everyone’s room. The man in the electric crowd is a nobody: discarnate, he has no body. When everyone is everywhere, no one can be just anywhere, and everybody has disappeared. AI glasses do not create this condition. They evoke something about ourselves that has remained hidden in the ground. Suddenly the stranger looking at you may also be recording you, transmitting you or placing you into a database. The glasses make visible the condition of discarnate man, who lives everywhere and nowhere. That does not preclude banning or restricting them where their use becomes intrusive. But before simply rejecting the technology, we should understand what it is revealing about us.
In that sense, AI glasses become an art form. Professor McLuhan understood that art can create an anti-environment that makes an invisible environment perceptible. We should study these glasses and rehearse their grammars so that we become conscious of the world they reveal. There is bound to be a play or movie we attend only while wearing AI glasses, where the glasses become part of the experience itself. The technology that exposes our loss of privacy may therefore also become the art form through which we learn to perceive the discarnate condition that produced that loss. AI glasses do not make us nobodies. They allow the nobody in the electric crowd to see what he has already become.
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Source: Norwegian Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance, “Vil innføre midlertidig forbud mot KI-briller” (“Will Introduce Temporary Ban on AI Glasses”), October 5, 2026.
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