> Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation.
To clarify, what's being referenced here is probably the fourth chapter of McLuhan's Understanding Media, in which the concept of "self-amputation" is introduced in relation to the Narcissus myth.
The advancement of technology, and media in particular, tends to unbalance man's phenomenological experience, prioritizing certain senses (visual, kinesthetic, etc.) over others (auditory, literary, or otherwise). In man's attempt to restore equilibrium to the senses, the over-stimulated sense is "self-amputated" or otherwise compensated for in order numb one's self to its irritations. The amputated sense or facility is then replaced with a technological prosthesis.
The wheel served as counter-irritant to the protestations of the foot on long journeys, but now itself causes other forms of irritation that themselves seek their own "self-amputations" through other means and ever more advanced technologies.
The myth of Narcissus, as framed by McLuhan, is also fundamentally one of irritation (this time, with one's image), that achieves sensory "closure" or equilibrium in its amputation of Narcissus' very own self-image from the body. The self-image, now externalized as technology or media, becomes a prosthetic that the body learns to adapt to and identify as an extension of the self.
An extension of the self, and not the self proper. McLuhan is quick to point out that Narcissus does not regard his image in the lake as his actual self; the point of the myth is not that humans fall in love with their "selves," but rather, simulacra of themselves, representations of themselves in media and technologies external to the body.
Photoshop and Instagram or Snapchat filters are continuations of humanity's quest for sensory "closure" or equilibrium and self-amputation from the irritating or undesirable parts of one's image. The increasing growth of knowledge work imposes new psychological pressures and irritants [0] that now seek their self-amputation in "AI", which will deliver us from our own cognitive inadequacies and restore mental well-being.
Gradually the self is stripped away as more and more of its constituents are amputated and replaced by technological prosthetics, until there is no self left; only artifice and facsimilie and representation. Increasingly, man becomes an automaton (McLuhan uses the word, "servomechanism,") or a servant of his technology and prosthetics:
That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these
extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions. An Indian is
the servo-mechanism of his canoe, as the cowboy of his horse
or the executive of his clock.
"You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands." [1]
[0] It is worth noting that in Buddhist philosophy, there is a sixth sense of "mind" that accompanies the classical Western five senses: https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Six_sense_bases
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKN9trFSACI