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.
Why Are We Reading Less but Buying More Books?
A Student of Technology asks:
If electric technology makes the visual sense less dominant, we would expect people to buy and read fewer books. Yet the reverse is happening. Print sales keep climbing, while the average American now reads about twelve books a year, down from roughly eighteen at the end of the 1990s. People are buying more and reading less. What is going on?
Nelson S. Thall replies:
What is going on is that the book has become a symbol. As reading declines in our electric age, books survive as cultural markers of intellect and status. In an information-saturated, overloaded world, people feel pressure to appear informed. The book endures not so much to be read as to show that we are keeping up with the world, whether we truly read it or not.
Marshall McLuhan noticed that when a technology loses its place as the dominant medium, it does not simply die. It returns as an art form, an ornament, a thing we keep for what it says about us. Print lost its throne to electric media, and in losing it the book was reborn as decoration and as costume.
Walk into someone’s home and the shelf announces who they wish to be taken for. The titles on display are a statement of identity, addressed to every visitor. The coffee table book is not furniture. It is something its owner wears, the way one wears a jacket or a watch, a piece of clothing for the electronic age.
And here is the point McLuhan made his whole life. The message is not the words inside the book. The message is the book itself, sitting there, unopened.
The medium is the message.
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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