August 28, 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 THE BIOLOGICAL MISTAKE KEEPS LIVING:
The Monster We May Create.
A Graduate Student of Technology asks:
Mr. Thall, I read that scientists used Artificial Intelligence to design gene-editing tools that do not occur naturally, and some of them worked better than the natural versions. If people can now design biological tools that nature never produced, what exactly are we doing? Are we creating something new, or rearranging what was already there?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
We are rearranging what already exists, and the experiment itself tells us why that distinction matters. The researchers did not begin with nothing. They began with living cells, inherited molecular structures, known biological functions and patterns already present in nature. When the designs ranged too far from the inherited relationships that made function possible, recognition failed. The versions that worked had to return to those relationships. The machine became useful only when it remained answerable to an order that preceded it. Professor McLuhan said that “the job of the artist is not to sign but to read signatures,” because existence is already “richly and radiantly signed.” The technologist may now read those signatures more deeply and rearrange them more quickly, but he does not become the author of the order that makes the rearrangement live.
The technology also changes the old search. Instead of hunting through nature’s existing catalog for an enzyme that happens to fit the task, researchers can generate candidates and select among them, retrieving the ancient practice of breeding for a wanted trait at molecular speed. But the reversal is already visible in the result. The farther the design wandered from the inherited relationships that made function possible, the less useful it became. Function returned when the design obeyed them again.
Technical mastery of the part is not understanding of the whole. Mary Shelley gave us the older warning in Frankenstein: the maker may possess the power to bring forth what he does not possess the wisdom to understand or control. Jurassic Park gave the same warning an ecological form: life does not necessarily remain inside the enclosure designed to contain it. These stories are not proofs. They are cultural memories of a danger that modern biological technology makes less imaginary. A precise intervention can enter a living environment whose total consequences are beyond the designer’s sight. Mankind repeatedly hazards himself into technologies whose effects become environmental before his understanding catches up. In biology, the danger is especially serious because a mistake may reproduce, mutate, spread, and continue interacting with living systems after the experimenter has lost the ability to undo what he started. McLuhan spoke of discovering the “orchestral analogies in things themselves.” The scientist can alter an instrument, but he did not write the score that holds the ensemble together. The danger is not merely that man may make a mistake. It is that he may make one that keeps living after he can no longer control it. That is the monster we may create.
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Source: Dario Ummarino, “AI-assisted design of synthetic gene editors,” Nature Biotechnology, August 11, 2026. The article reports that researchers used structural and evolutionary constraints to generate synthetic TnpB gene editors sharing only 50–60% sequence identity with natural versions, and that selected variants showed greater editing activity while retaining comparable specificity.
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