Empire and Communications

Description

Empire and Communications is one of Innis's most important contributions to the debate about how media influences the development of consciousness and societies. It’s been said that without Harold A. Innis there could have been no Marshall McLuhan. In this seminal text, he traces humanity’s movement from the oral tradition of preliterate cultures to the electronic media of recent times. Along the way, he presents his own influential concepts of oral communication, time and space bias, and monopolies of knowledge. "I can think of no better inoculation against the rampant disease of present-mindedness in the contemporary world than a careful reading of [Innis's] classic, Empire and Communications. This book was the foundation on which he built his understanding of the contemporary world, in particular his view of the United States of America, its foreign policy, and its effects on other cultures. At the time of Innis's death in 1952, his perspective on the contemporary world seemed radical and far-fetched. When we read his work anew over a distance of more than fifty years, it seems fresh and, indeed, prophetic." —Alexander John Watson "This book teaches us to reflect on how the means and processes of communication have been embedded in imperial power. . . . In a career dedicated to explaining empire, Innis discovered communication and blazed an important trail. The time is ripe to reintroduce and welcome this rewarding book, especially to Innis's [U.S.] neighbors. We live in a moment in which the wages of empire weigh heavily on the world." —Andrew Calabrese Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. Despite his dense and difficult prose, Innis was one of Canada's most original thinkers