. . . the television image is a continuously formed 
mosaic with no still shots, no reconstruction of 
actions, no perspective and very little detail. The 
television mosaic is so poor in data, in fact, that it 
must be mostly filled in by the viewer. It moreover 
has not light on , but only light through . So that, 
typically, the television viewer is conditioned to 
expect much activity and to expect knowledge to be 
a kind of total revelation of illumination from within 
both subject and himself. . . . Television, like radio, 
states much less than it suggests. Books and film, 
in contrast, state very fully and suggest much less.

Thomas P. McDonnell, “Marshall McLuhan—The Man