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Harold Adams Innis: The Bias of Communications & Monopolies of Power
4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
Harold Adams Innis, a political economist, is widely credited with initiating an important discourse on media from a distinctly Canadian perspective. He directly influenced Marshall McLuhan and continues to be a central figure in communications theory. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
Innis was born in 1894 near Hamilton, Ontario, graduated from McMaster just before WW1 and saw front-line duty in France. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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His war experience, during which he saw Canadian soldiers used as cannon-fodder by the British, marked him for life: not only did he become a dedicated pacifist, he became interested in the way marginalized, colonial nations developed a sense of culture in the shadow of larger, empire-building nations. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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After the war, Innis studied political economy at the University of Chicago where he did his Ph.D. thesis on the Canadian Pacific Railway. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
As a young professor at the University of Toronto, Innis was concerned that Canadians were being deluged with American material, so he set about to remedy that deficit. For his first book, The History of the Fur Trade in Canada, he retraced many of the routes of the early fur traders. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Innis developed the staples thesis, which asserted that the Canadian economy tended to rely on the production of single commodities: fur, lumber, mining, agriculture, energy. As a result, Canada found itself in a dependent, and vulnerable relationship to the major manufacturing nations, first Britain, then the U.S. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Innis’ central focus is the social history of communication media.
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He believed that the relative stability of cultures depends on the balance and proportion of their media. To begin our inquiry into this area, he suggests we ask three basic questions 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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How do specific communication technologies operate? What assumptions do they take from and contribute to society? What forms of power do they encourage? 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Innis said that: The key to social change is found in the development of communication media. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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That each medium embodies a bias in terms of the organization and control of information. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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That any empire or society is generally concerned with duration over time and extension in space. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Time-based media Time-biased media, such as stone and clay, are durable and heavy. Since they are difficult to move, they do not encourage territorial expansion; however, since they have a long life, they do encourage the extension of empire over time. Innis associated these media with the customary, the sacred, and the moral. Time-biased media facilitate the development of social hierarchies, as archetypally exemplified by ancient Egypt. For Innis, speech is a time-biased medium. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Space-based media Space-biased media are light and portable; they can be transported over large distances. They are associated with secular and territorial societies; they facilitate the expansion of empire over space. Paper is such a medium; it is readily transported, but has a relatively short lifespan. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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It was Innis’ conviction that stable societies were able to achieve a balance between time- and space-biased communications media. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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He also believed that change came from the margins of society, since people on the margins invariably developed their own media. The new media allow those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge the authority of the centre. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Latin written on parchment, the medium of the Christian Church, was attacked through the secular medium of vernaculars written on paper. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Oral communication speech was considered by Innis to be time-biased because it requires the relative stability of community for face-to-face contact. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Knowledge passed down orally depends on a lineage of transmission, often associated with ancestors, and ratified by human contact. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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“The oral tradition is inherently more flexible and humanistic than the written tradition which is rigid and impersonal in contrast.” 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Does that make sense in the context of what Innis discusses?
When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy. --Huey Long Does that make sense in the context of what Innis discusses? 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Innis extended the economic concept of monopoly to include culture and politics. If we consider that a society has a network of communications systems, we can see that there are key junctures or nodal points where significant information is stored, and from where it is transmitted to other parts of the system. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Traditionally, the universities have attempted to monopolize certain kinds of information, as have professional associations such as doctors or engineers or lawyers, as have governments. As both Innis and Michel Foucault have demonstrated, individuals or groups who control access to those points wield great power. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Those who monopolize knowledge are also in a position to define what is legitimate knowledge. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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The organized church comes immediately to mind, as does insider trading! The scientific community lobbies not only for a pre-eminent status for the objectivity of knowledge, but also advocates a rigid method for obtaining that knowledge! 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Monopolies of knowledge derive their power from several sources:
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Mastery of Complexity creates a hierarchy of professionals and amateurs. Control of Raw Materials for Media: Ted Turner buys RKO! Bill Gates / Microsoft buys the Bettman Archives! Performativity: Just as Egyptian priests were able to accurately predict the regular flooding of the Nile because knowledge of writing allowed them to make calculations, so does access to pubic opinion allow pollsters to predict elections within certain percentage parameters. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Speed: Advantages accrue to those who have the knowledge first. Business done in back rooms or in the corridors of power are often never reported in the media. Ability to Afford High Costs: The cult of "production value" in design, recording, television, and Hollywood movies makes it difficult for lower budget artefacts to compete for attention. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Monopolies of knowledge encourage centralization of power. Those who control knowledge have the power to define reality. Think of the media blackout during the Gulf War, or (to use Foucault's example) how confession is used to convey the moral teachings of the Roman Church. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Nuclear proliferation is one such example of this instability.
However, monopolies of knowledge promote tendencies toward instability. Competitors and critics are always looking for ways to subvert monopoly power, and perhaps gain it for themselves. Nuclear proliferation is one such example of this instability. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Neither knowledge nor power is a commodity although they are treated as such – Foucault. One cannot own power. Power is a process which must continually be reasserted for its continuance. Foucault draws attention to the ways in which those who are ruled contribute to the empowerment of their rulers. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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In order to understand any medium, we must attend not only to its physical characteristics, but also to the way in which it is employed and institutionalized. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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There is a dialectical relationship between society and technology: they influence one another mutually. Certain social forms and situations encourage the development of new media; these media, operating within existing situations, react back on society to produce a new cycle of change. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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In 2000, the rapid adoption of music-sharing software like Napster provoked an immediate reaction from both the recording industry and the law-makers. New regulations encouraged the development of new (gnu) technologies. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Conclusions According to its characteristics a medium of communication may be better suited to transportation; Or to the dissemination of knowledge over time than over space, particularly if the medium is heavy and durable and not suited to transportation; Or to the dissemination of knowledge over space than over time, particularly if the medium is light and easily transported. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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The relative emphasis on time or space will imply a bias of significance to the culture in which it is embedded. In other words empires are characterized by the media they use most effectively, partially because that’s how others come to know of their achievements. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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However… The relative lightness or heaviness of the medium under consideration is not always a reliable indication of its particular bias. If we compare parchment with papyrus or paper, for example, weight is not really a decisive element. It is more useful to think of the bias of media as related to the ability of the message to survive transmission and have an impact over space or over time. It is not the heaviness of stone that necessarily makes it a time-biased medium, but rather its ability to survive the elements and natural disasters so that it may still communicate its message centuries or millennia later. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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The pyramids, temples, bridges, and cathedrals of the world are still able to communicate something of their essential meaning to us today, if only we know how to decode their empire-building messages. Those messages which have lasted have tended to bias our view of the history of empires. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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It is really the "monopolies of knowledge" which are at stake in the longevity of empires. New media threaten to displace the previous monopolies of knowledge, unless those media can be enlisted in the service of the previous power structures. If priests can gain a monopoly on papyrus and writing, then they will gain power relative to the king who depends on stone monuments. The boundaries of the empire shift, expanding and contracting. The shift of perceptions redefines "knowledge," what those in power claim needs to be known. New allegiances are formed. New monopolies created. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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In our own time, we have witnessed such shifting monopolies in the delivery of news to the masses from newspapers to radio to television to the internet. Each medium has its bias, a bias which changes in relation to the significance of the others in the consciousness of cultures. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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The media, Innis tells us, are inter-related in their impact on the survival of empires. "The social revolution involved in a shift from the use of stone to the use of papyrus and the increased importance of the priestly class imposed enormous strains on Egyptian civilization and left it exposed to the inroads of invaders equipped with effective weapons of attack." 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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In his provocative essay "Minerva’s Owl," Innis suggests that the richest flowering of an empire comes just before its decline and fall: "Minerva’s Owl begins its flight only in the gathering dusk." Innis reasons that "a monopoly or an oligopoly of knowledge is built up to the point that equilibrium is disturbed“. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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Thus we learn from Innis that all great empires are most vulnerable in the moment of their over-reaching. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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From the end of WWII until his death in 1952, Innis worked steadily on an investigation of the social history of communication, studying the communication media of the last 4000 years. From the thousand page manuscript which he left at his death came his two pioneering communications works: Empire and Communications (1950), and The Bias of Communication (1951). In his Introduction to The Bias of Commmunication, Marshall McLuhan suggests that reading Innis shows us a new way to read history. 4/20/2017 Sanjay Ranade, HoD, DCJ, UoM
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