October 9, 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 BUTTON BECOMES THE BREAKTHROUGH:Volkswagen Rediscovers the Human Hand
A Student of Technology asks:
On October 9, Volkswagen unveiled its electric ID. Tiguan with physical climate controls, steering-wheel buttons and a volume controller alongside large digital screens. Press a button on the wheel, and the driver’s display can even show the blue-and-red dials of a turn-of-the-century Golf. When restoring a button becomes an advance, what does that tell us about what the touchscreen changed in us?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
The touchscreen is named for the one sense it starves. A familiar knob can be found by feel: it has a shape, a place, a click the fingers learn. Glass gives every fingertip the same flat answer, so the hand must ask the eye where to go. The touchscreen was, in practice, a sight screen, and the heater still heated, but only after the driver looked for it. What Volkswagen restores is a kind of knowledge, the knowledge that lives in the hand and needs no supervision. Notice what returns to each sense. The hand gets the real thing back, the button it can find in the dark. The eye gets only a picture: at the press of a button, the old dials of a turn-of-the-century Golf appear on the screen. Professor McLuhan observed that the content of every new medium is an older one. Volkswagen is keeping its screens, and now they display the instruments they replaced.
The screen also made a new kind of driver: one whose hands have forgotten what they know, who must look in order to touch. Every function lives behind the same pane of glass, and the finger is reduced to a pointer that can only go where the eye has already been. For years the driver has been asked to accommodate the display rather than the display the driver. Each button restored is a small reappearance of the driver, a part of him given back to his own hands. But a carmaker can restore a button more easily than a habit. Hand every skill to the screen, and the hand that is never trusted to know anything will, in time, know nothing. The driver will become a passenger who happens to hold the wheel.
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Sources:
Volkswagen Newsroom, “A Volkswagen bestseller goes electric: world premiere of the new ID. Tiguan,” October 9, 2026.
Adam Ismail, “VW Proves It’s Listening With ID.Tiguan That’s Big on Buttons,” The Drive, October 9, 2026.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/vw-proves-its-listening-with-id-tiguan-thats-big-on-buttons-tds
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), “The Medium Is the Message,”
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