June 26, 2026

THE DAILY McLUHAN DIALOGUES™ — McDialogues™

An Exploration of Technology Ecology as an Anchor in a Sea of Change™ and Tactical Training in Counter-Propaganda Science

by Nelson S. Thall, McLuhan Media Scientist / Former Director/Chief Archivist, Marshall McLuhan Center On Global Communications, Ross, Ca.

Why Does Everyone Hate Artificial Intelligence?

The Wrong Question.

A Student of Technology asks:

Economist Paul Krugman recently asked why so many people now seem to hate Artificial Intelligence. He points to fears of job losses, powerful technology companies, data centers, environmental costs, and Artificial Intelligence being forced upon the public.

Is that really the right question?

Nelson S. Thall replies:

Marshall McLuhan taught us to begin somewhere else.

He did not ask whether a new technology was good or bad. He asked what effects it produced. Public debate usually concerns the content of a technology. Technology Ecology concerns the environment the technology creates.

People once feared the automobile, the telephone, radio, television, and the Internet. Yet each extended human power, speed, reach, or convenience so dramatically that society reorganized itself around it. The important question was never whether people liked these inventions. It was what they were doing to human perception, behavior, and social organization.

Artificial Intelligence deserves the same approach.

Rather than asking whether people hate Artificial Intelligence, we should ask: What human faculties does it extend? What habits does it make obsolete? What older forms of life does it retrieve? How does it alter the structure of our world?

These are the questions that reveal the hidden effects of a technology.

The debate over Artificial Intelligence has barely begun because most of us are still arguing about its content.

The real issue is the environment it is quietly creating.

That environment 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