Television produced the first images that could be switched on, off, and even over. As Marshall McLuhan repeatedly emphasized, the television image is electric; in other words, it is the image in the age of electrification (McLuhan 1994, 8ff). However, electric light is not only artificial, comprehensive, and transformative (by turning night into day) (Ibid., 52), but also switchable. The electric, switchable television image dominated Western popular culture and the general relations of communication of the later 20th century, and it continues to have a sweeping and formative effect that towers over everything else. It has led us from the age of classical analogue mass media, such as newspapers, film, and radio, to the age of digital networked media. It has thus left its mark on contemporary media culture and practice to an extent that is still not fully comprehended. It has shaped entire ways of life, introduced and accompanied the age of consumption, and given the nuclear family their economy, morality, daily routines, and everyday knowledge. It has defined political power structures. It has exponentially increased the number of images produced. It has created and established temporal structures – from daily and weekly rhythms to the basic understanding of actuality and eventfulness to the practices of expectation and memory. It has occupied dreams. With respect to spatial regimes, it has set into operation massive processes of inclusion and exclusion, and with respect to its programs, it has practiced forms of control over the distribution of knowledge that are still in effect today.