The Chinese used the intervals between things as the primary means of getting 'in touch' with situations. - Marshall McLuhan

With universal literacy, time can take on the character of an enclosed or pictorial space that can be divided and subdivided. It can be filled in. “My schedule is filled up.” It can be kept free: “I have a free week next month.” And as Sebastian de Grazia has shown in Of Time, Work and Leisure, all the free time in the world is not leisure, because leisure accepts neither the division of labor that constitutes “work,” nor the divisions of time that create “full time” and “free time.” Leisure excludes time as a container. Once time is mechanically or visually enclosed, divided, and filled, it is possible to use it more and more efficiently. Time can be transformed into a labor-saving machine, as Parkinson reveals in his famous “Parkinson’s Law.

Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the “content,” which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming. (p. 267)

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.