As forms, as media, the book and the newspaper would seem to be as incompatible as any two media could be. The owners of media always endeavor to giv… - Marshall McLuhan

Here I must repeat that the newspaper, from its beginnings, has tended, not to the book form, but to the mosaic or participational form. With the speedup of printing and news-gathering, this mosaic form has become a dominant aspect of human association; for the mosaic form means, not a detached “point of view,” but participation in process. For that reason, the press is inseparable from the democratic process, but quite expendable from a literary or book point of view.

The “hard” sell and the “hot” line become mere comedy in the TV age, and the death of all the salesmen at one stroke of the TV axe has turned the hot American culture into a cool one that is quite unacquainted with itself. America, in fact, would seem to be living through the reverse process that Margaret Mead described in Time magazine (September 4, 1954): “There are too many complaints about society having to move too fast to keep up with the machine. There is great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole pattern at once and the whole group together — and the people themselves must decide to move.

The Gutenberg galaxy was theoretically dissolved in 1905 with the discovery of curved space, but in practice it had been invaded by the telegraph two generations before that. (p. 286)