Marshall McLuhan: A Return Visit in the Age of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
© Howard Gardner 2025
If you know the name Marshall McLuhan it’s likely for one of two reasons:
He coined the powerful phrase, “the medium in the message.”
He appears in a hilarious scene in Woody Allen’s award-winning movie, Annie Hall. (Please see Footnote #1.)
But in fact, half a century ago, McLuhan was arguably one of the most famous—and likely one of the most quoted—scholars in the world. (He might have also been described as a public intellectual.) As a student in those days, I certainly read and monitored McLuhan’s works and considered him to be a “guru.” If I had been dropping the names of books, I would certainly have mentioned The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and/or The Medium is the Message (1964).
I can’t honestly say how much I read or understood those books when first encountering them over 60 years ago. But having recently perused both with some care, I can share three takeaways:
McLuhan was certainly well-read and may have possessed an almost photographic or tape-recorder mind. He cited individuals, works, media presentations drawn from wide swaths of history and numerous cultures.
McLuhan had a knack for pithy, quotable phrases. Most prominently, “the medium is the message,” but also other aphorisms like “the global village.”
There’s no way to give a full and accurate précis of his works—he is not that kind of a writer—any more than was Ralph Waldo Emerson (or, to switch media, nor can one readily convey the flavor of Wes Anderson’s movies).
Question: Why, then, should I take up your time (forgetting mine) with a trip down the McLuhan Memory Lane?
Answer: If we want to understand the ways in which AI (artificial intelligence), particularly AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), are likely to change the world—especially the realm of human experience: we are well-advised to draw on McLuhan’s powerful insights on how at any given time, the prevalent media make and remake our individual and our collective minds.
Chinese woodblock printing
A “Framing” Background
It’s often been stated that the invention of writing changed the human mind and human experience. Indeed, Plato lamented the fact that writing had been invented because it was destined to undermine human mnemonic capacity. And, indeed, one can write messages down, store them, consult them, a keen linguistic memory becomes a luxury, rather than a necessity.
Two millennia later, the invention of printing (both the Chinese version around 700 AD, and the European version, around 1450 AD) again altered human cognitive, social, and emotional strands. Manuscripts—once only available to the wealthy and to select members of religious orders—could now be produced in large numbers: human knowledge (as well as human foolishness) was now far more accessible. And indeed, by the 19th century, it was possible for literate persons in Europe to acquire numerous books as well as magazines and newspapers, and, at least in principle, to make up their own minds about the news and about what was new…and, optimally, what was true, what was false, and how to effect the optimal determination.
Well-read and well-schooled, McLuhan took for granted the invention and proliferation of writing and printing. He was interested in the power—the effects—of 20th century media: particularly radio and television, with their potential for conveying in timely fashion what was happening in the neighborhood, the nation, the wider world. On McLuhan’s intriguing analysis, radio was a “warm” or “hot” medium. Announcing itself loudly and clearly, it dominated your senses: the propaganda speeches of Adolf Hitler, shouted across German arenas and transmitted abroad—displayed radio at it most powerful. In contrast, McLuhan construed television as a “cool” medium—one whose pixels called on the viewer to do more decoding, framing, sense-making.
McLuhan shrewdly demonstrated how, in their various ways, Chancellor Hitler and American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (both, incidentally, in power for the same period of time 1933-1945) mastered radio and effectively captured and indeed enthralled their audiences. In sharp contrast, a generation later, television had become the medium in which news and personalities were conveyed. Making sense of information on video called on more active involvement on the part of the audience.
Evidence
John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debate during the first-ever televised presidential debate on Sept. 26, 1960
In the fall of 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy understood this (at least intuitively) and allowed the viewer of debates to do considerable construction of the input on the screen. In contrast, his opponent Richard M. Nixon came on too strong—as it were, threatening the space, the aura, surrounding Kennedy. Hence, a remarkable (and non-intuitive) outcome: those who listened to the debates on the radio thought that Nixon (a stronger, more assertive, HOTTER debater) had prevailed. But the far larger audience that viewed the debate took advantage of the less-well defined COOLER aura conveyed by candidate Kennedy and judged him the winner—and, ultimately, the victor of a razor-thin election.
Enough of this trip down my memory lane.
Donning the lens and the schema of Marshall McLuhan: What might one infer about how the medium of AGI can make, is making, and can ultimately remake the human mind in the succeeding three quarters of the 21st century?
For the sake of argument, consider the strongest scenario: The creation of AGIs—or at least a single AGI—that can handle all envision-able human tasks, challenges, opportunities better than—or at least as effectively as—the most talented human beings; can do so almost instantly; and does not take offense at challenges or even sheer insults…
There are at least three readily envision-able outcomes:
Total acceptance: “If ChatGPT 2050 can do it all and do it well, I’m content to hand all the work—and perhaps even all the play—over to this entity.”
Total rejection: “I don’t want any entity replacing my cognitive (and affective and motoric) facets. Please count me out…and, to the extent possible, banish the AGI from this planet.”
Case by case: “On some tasks, I welcome ChatGPT—for example, doing my taxes, writing thank you notes after receiving pro forma holiday gifts, prescribing and refilling my medications—it’s all yours. But on other tasks—for example, writing letters to my children, choosing my wardrobe for an important occasion—don’t interfere, keep your hands off. On still other tasks—for example, preparing the annual report to my supervisor on how things have been going at work—a joint-scripting enterprise involving both me and AI.”
My perspective: In the spirit of Marshall McLuhan
For the minority, who reject any AI involvement, the human mind stays mired in the 20th century. Much like those who continue to commit poetry to memory, or who prefer incunabula to conventional printed books, these individuals will remind us what it was like to live in a pre-AI era.
For those who totally accept LLM, it is unlikely that they will retain certain human capacities—those skills will gradually atrophy in the individual and/or fail to be passed on to succeeding generations. Of course, it is possible that new capacities—either individual or collaborative—may emerge.
For those who proceed case-by-case, if able to do so thoughtfully and flexibly, they can have the best of both worlds—like those who read but continue to memorize and recite poetry, or those who write and publish their own books—but of course, they can also become confused, bewildered, or fall between two stools.
Looking ahead
The future education will continue to draw on both strands—see my previous blog on education in the age of AI, linked here.
However: Composing this blog as an individual still residing largely in the 20th—if not the 18th –century: I am able to envision and describe these options. It is quite possible that should AGI take over our own lives, other options will simply fade away. And as one who has written several books about the human mind—I might have to envision a world composed of humans without minds, or mind-less Homo sapiens, or minds in the post-Homo Sapiens era.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to give a loud shout-out to my colleagues John Kao and Anthea Roberts. These admirable contemporary scholars and thinkers—clearly 21st century minds!—have helped me to begin to understand the profound ways in human minds—and, in all likelihood, the human mind—may be changed in the decades ahead
REFERENCES
McLuhan, H.M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. University of Toronto Press, 1962.
McLuhan, H. M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. Routledge.
FOOTNOTE
Probably the most famous, and arguably the best film by controversial director Woody Allen is his Oscar-laden Annie Hall (1977). In one scene, actors (and—at the time—real-life partners) Woody Allen and Diane Keaton (who died in October 2025) are standing in line waiting to secure tickets to see a Hollywood cult classic. Attempting to display to his date his intellectual prowess, Woody Allen invokes the name of scholar “Marshall McLuhan.” The moment that happens, the camera pans a few persons away from the couple—a tall McLuhan appears and seeks to clarify Allen’s opaque remarks. Sic transit gloria mundi.
