McLuhan’s Playground

Co-authored by Perplexity AI
https://www.perplexity.ai

Abstract

Here, the interplay between human intervention and AI assistance becomes part of the story itself, illustrating how technological tools—no matter how advanced—are never fully autonomous but exist in dialogue with the human creativity that guides them.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence, Marshall McLuhan, Fashion

While working on a chapter for the volume McLuhan: Then and Now¹, the idea emerged to create a visual narrative about the revolutions in fashion, viewed through the lens of media theory. This is how McLuhan’s Playground: From Movable Type to Algorithms in the World of Fashion came into being. Our aim was to craft a short comic about breakthrough technologies that have, quite literally, reshaped the human world: the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg, the development of the loom by Joseph Marie Jacquard, electronic media era and, finally, the rise of contemporary artificial intelligence. Each of these innovations not only transformed industry and aesthetics but also reconfigured the very structures of perception, production, and power.

The concept is simple yet far-reaching: each of these inventions “programs” the way we think and communicate—precisely as Marshall McLuhan argued. Media are not neutral tools; they shape the scale, pace, and pattern of human experience. In this comic, fashion becomes a playground where movable type, punch cards, and algorithms reveal their hidden continuity—a story of code long before the digital age, and of the human body entangled in the logic of its own creations.

These themes are of particular interest to us in the realm of fashion—fabrics, garments, accessories—and in the profound transformations set in motion by new technologies of production, even though their consequences extend far beyond any single discipline. Fashion, after all, is never merely decorative; it is a sensitive interface between body and medium, matter and meaning. The narrator of this story is Marshall McLuhan himself. Although he seldom addressed fashion directly or reflected extensively on its social significance (apart from his incisive commentary on the seams in women’s stockings in The Mechanical Bride), he left us an extraordinary instrument of inquiry: a way of recognizing, analyzing, and understanding—above all, of grasping the real effects of yet another extension of the human body that we continue to invent.

The Jacquard loom of 1805 emerges as a particularly compelling protagonist in this narrative. By employing punched cards to automate the weaving of intricate patterns, it effectively embodied what may be considered the first true “computer program” in history. As such, it forms a powerful bridge between the age of print and the era of artificial intelligence. Movable type, perforated cards, and algorithms may belong to different centuries, yet they share a common logic: each encodes instructions, each organizes perception, each reshapes the sensorium. In different yet interconnected ways, these technologies teach us how to “think” and how to “feel,” and in doing so they transform not only our tools but the very texture of our societies.

The most unexpected twist in our story? Confronted with a rather serious logistical dilemma—none of us can draw (and even if we could, certainly not well enough to produce something compelling enough for publication, whether online or in print)—we chose to invite artificial intelligence into the creative process as our collaborator. The comic was therefore illustrated by AI; more precisely, by Perplexity AI, whom we gratefully acknowledge among the authors, working in close dialogue with us.

In this way, AI has, to a significant extent, told a story about itself and its own predecessors. The project thus becomes a living demonstration of Marshall McLuhan’s famous insight that “the medium is the message,” for here the medium itself becomes part of the narrative it conveys. McLuhan serves as our guide, leading readers on a journey through successive technological revolutions, showing how Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type and the punched cards of Joseph Marie Jacquard, passing through the era of electronic media, flow seamlessly into today’s algorithms and shape the contemporary world of fashion. What began as a practical necessity has evolved into a conceptual gesture: the latest extension of human intelligence helping to narrate the genealogy of its own becoming.

The process of creating the images was itself a rather laborious endeavor. At every step, the prompts had to be increasingly detailed and carefully calibrated to avoid errors; the image and style shifted with nearly every iteration, requiring multiple rounds of refinement. Despite dozens of attempts, we were unable to generate speech or thought bubbles through AI—we wrote the text ourselves-ultimately deciding to insert them manually. Yet in a way, this perfectly embodies the spirit of Marshall McLuhan’s insight that “the medium is the message”: sometimes it is the older, more familiar medium that proves most useful when the new medium falls short of our expectations.

Here, the interplay between human intervention and AI assistance becomes part of the story itself, illustrating how technological tools—no matter how advanced—are never fully autonomous but exist in dialogue with the human creativity that guides them.

The Human Authors

References

1.  This contribution by Kalina appears in this monograph: K. Kukiełko. (2026). “Weaving the Future: Revolutions in Fashion and McLuhan’s Media Theory.” In McLuhan: Now and Then, edited by L. C. von Grabbe, A. McLuhan, and T. Held, 99–113. Marburg: Buchner.