The other day, I was reading A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan. It was written by media theorist John Culkin, a close collaborator to Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who, back when everyone else was still excited about colour television, predicted the internet.

One sentence, used to distill McLuhan’s line of thinking, stopped me cold: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."

The concept is simple but slightly terrifying.

McLuhan argued that every technology we invent is an extension of ourselves. A wheel extends the foot, a camera extends the eye. But these extensions are not neutral. They demand a price. Once we introduce a new technology, it changes the environment around it. It dictates new rules, new paces, and new patterns of life. We think we are the masters because we built the machine. But to make the machine work, we have to behave in ways the machine understands. We don't just use the tool; we become compatible with it.

It felt distinctly, uncomfortably familiar. And then I looked down at the floor, where a round plastic disk was currently shouting at me because it had eaten a sock.

This Was Marketed Differently

It started with a seductive promise. The advertisement showed a woman drinking coffee and reading a book, two activities I theoretically enjoy but rarely combine, while a sleek, black disc glided silently across the floor, consuming dust and chaos.

It was sold as Automation. It was sold as Freedom.

So, naturally, I bought it. I named him "Dustin" because I appreciate a low-effort pun, and I introduced him to the household. I expected a servant. What I got was a very demanding, round toddler with a Wi-Fi connection and an appetite for eating things that aren’t food.

Three days into our relationship, I realised that Dustin wasn’t working for me. I was working for him. Before I can run the vacuum, I must engage in a frantic ritual I call "The Pre-Clean."

I have to lift the dining chairs. I have to rescue the phone chargers. I have to ensure no socks are left vulnerable on the rug. If I fail in this preparation, Dustin does not simply go around the obstacle.

No. He finds the one stray sock, attempts to devour it, chokes, and then sends a notification to my phone that reads: "Main Brush Stuck. Please assist."

He doesn't say "I made a mistake." He says, "Please assist," implying that I have failed him. I am at work, trying to be a professional adult, when my pocket vibrates with the news that a robot is suffocating in a gym sock in my living room.

I am not the master of the house. I am tech support.

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Living Inside the Machine’s Rules

This is exactly what McLuhan warned us about. I suspect McLuhan never had to pull a cat toy out of a motorised wheel at 7:00 AM, but his point stands.

I have changed my behaviour to accommodate the machine. I walk differently now. I scan the floor constantly, not for dirt, but for "entanglement hazards." I have adopted a minimalist floor aesthetic, not because I have achieved Zen enlightenment, but because Dustin has a boundary issue with cat toys on the floor.

This is Reverse Domestication.

To understand the shift, we have to look at how domestication traditionally works. Historically, humans took wild wolves and, over generations of selective breeding, turned them into Golden Retrievers. We altered their biology and their instincts to suit our needs to guard us, to hunt with us, or to sleep at the foot of our beds. We were the agents of change; they were the subjects.

With "smart" technology, the dynamic is flipped. The machine arrives fully formed, rigid, and incapable of true adaptation. It operates on a coded logic that cannot be bent. Since the machine cannot evolve to suit the complex, messy environment of a human home, the human is forced to adapt to the machine's limited logic.

It fundamentally changes how I perceive my own home. The floor is no longer a surface for living, playing, or carelessly dropping a sock. It has become a processing zone.

We think we are training the algorithms to serve us, but in reality, the algorithms are training us to be better data points. The machine requires a standardised world to function. It cannot handle the messy, improvised nuances of human life. So, to make the machine "work," I have had to become less messy, less improvised, and more standardised myself.

And I pick up my slippers so the vacuum doesn't have an existential crisis in the hallway. I have become the gentle parent to a plastic disc, smoothing out the sharp edges of reality so he doesn't have to face the hardship of a slightly disorganised life.

The Cat’s Review: "0/10, Would Not Hunt"

If I am the stressed employee of the robot, the cat is the unimpressed CEO.

She watches Dustin’s inaugural run with a look that can only be described as deep, anthropological concern. She does not run. She does not hide. She simply sits on the sofa, looking down at this noisy, unintelligent “smart” thing bumping repeatedly into the same table leg.

To her, Dustin is embarrassing. It lacks grace. It lacks stealth. It has no prey drive. It is loud, clumsy, and purely functional, everything a cat is not.

Yesterday, Dustin bumped into her food bowl. She didn't hiss. She just looked at me, then at the robot, then back at me. The look said: "You pay for electricity to feed this thing, yet my bowl is only half full. Explain the economics."

She understands what I am slowly learning: Dustin is not a pet. It is not a helper. It is a loud, needy roommate who refuses to pay rent and occasionally screams for help when he gets lost under the sofa.

A Dopamine Economy for Dust

We buy these tools because we are obsessed with Optimisation. We want to optimise our sleep, our steps, our hydration, and our dust.

But optimisation often feels like just another job. I spend 10 minutes cleaning the robot's brushes, emptying its bin, and wiping its sensors. I spend 5 minutes "pre-cleaning" the floor. I spend 2 minutes rescuing it from the bathroom rug.

In total, I have spent nearly as much time managing the automation as it would have taken just to grab a broom. But the broom doesn't have an app. The broom doesn't give me a "Job Complete" notification that triggers a dopamine hit. The broom is analogue, silent, and honest.

Perhaps that is why we are moving away from it. We prefer the noisy, complicated, "smart" solution because it feels like progress. Even if that progress mainly involves pulling hairballs out of a motorised wheel at midnight.

I looked at Dustin, currently charging in his dock, glowing with a soft, smug blue light.

I picked up a stray sock from the floor. Not because I wanted to put it away. But because I didn't want him to choke.

See you next time. Keep sweeping,

Asena