When the Medium Starts Thinking Back

Key points

AI is the first medium that joins our thinking rather than shaping it from the outside.

Its fluency blurs support and substitution, shifting how ideas form in the mind.

We must protect the human elements like curiosity, intuition, hesitation, that AI can’t replace.

Marshall McLuhan’s famous claim that the medium is the message has shaped the way we interpret everything from television to the internet. His point wasn’t about slogans, it was about cognition . While a book encourages private, linear reasoning, television dissolves that "linearity" into a more emotional, mosaic style of perception. And in an "old school" sense, radio, film, and newsprint each reorient the mind in their own way. The medium always leaves its fingerprints on thought.

However, there’s a boundar