Slide 18 of 26
Notes:
We have suggested above that media seem to have “rules” that conform to the possibilities (and impossibilities) inherent in the materials of the medium. If this is true, then different materials are unlikely to have identical “rules.” The notion that a technology that depends upon rapidly fluctuating light emanating from a cathode ray tube should have the same “rules” as technology that depends on critical contrasts in reflected light has got to be, on the face of it, absurd.
Aesthetics has laid out how the factors of time and space differentiate between literature and plastic arts. More subtle differentiations lie between manuscript and print, but become self-evident upon study. Similar “rules” can be articulated for the distinctions between theater and film, radio and television, print and multimedia.
