Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communication theory. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of staples such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, mined metals and fossil fuels.Easterbrook, W.T. and Watkins, M.H. (1984) "The Staple Approach." In Approaches to Canadian Economic History. Ottawa: Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press, pp. 1–98. Innis's communications writings explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations.Babe, Robert E. (2000) "The Communication Thought of Harold Adams Innis." In Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 51–88. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC.Heyer, Paul. (2003) Harold Innis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., p. 66. But he warned that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity."Innis, Harold. (1952) Changing Concepts of Time. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p.15.
Communications theories Time and space
One of Harold Innis's primary contributions to the field of communications was to apply the dimensions of time and space to various media. He divided media into time-biased and space-biased types. Time-biased media include clay or stone tablets, hand-copied manuscripts on parchment or vellum and oral sources such as Homer's epic poems. These are intended to carry stories and messages that last for many generations, but tend to reach limited audiences. Space-biased media are more ephemeral. They include modern media such as radio, television, and mass circulation newspapers that convey information to many people over long distances, but have short exposure times. While time-biased media favour stability, community, tradition and religion, space-biased media facilitate rapid change, materialism, secularism and empire. Innis elaborated on his distinctions between time-biased and space-biased media in Empire and Communications: The concepts of time and space reflect the significance of media to civilization. Media that emphasize time are those durable in character such as parchment, clay and stone. The heavy materials are suited to the development of architecture and sculpture. Media that emphasize space are apt to be less durable and light in character such as papyrus and paper. The latter are suited to wide areas in administration and trade. The conquest of Egypt by Rome gave access to supplies of papyrus, which became the basis of a large administrative empire. Materials that emphasize time favour decentralization and hierarchical types of institutions, while those that emphasize space favour centralization and systems of government less hierarchical in character.Innis, Harold. (1950) Empire and Communications. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.7.
Societies that depend solely on time-biased media are oral and tribal. Although leadership tends to be hierarchical, time-bound societies may also operate by consensus. Since, in their purest form, time-bound cultures do not rely on written records, they must preserve their traditions in story, song and myth handed down unchanged from one generation to the next. For them memory is of crucial importance; they revere the wisdom of elders and favour concrete over abstract forms of thought. On the other hand, societies that depend on space-biased media such as printed newspapers and books tend to favour abstract thought and control over space. They have little regard for tradition and when compared with oral societies, their ways of thinking are apt to be more rational, linear and impersonal.See Babe, pp.72–73.
The encounter of European traders from the imperial centres of France and Britain with the aboriginal tribes of North America that Innis chronicled in The Fur Trade in Canada is a poignant example of what can happen when two different civilizations meet --- one traditional and oriented to preserving its tribal culture in time and the other bent on spreading its influence over long distances. European guns used in war and conquest, for example, enabled the indigenous peoples to hunt more efficiently, but led to the rapid destruction of their food supply and of the beaver they depended on to obtain European goods. Conflicts over hunting territories led to warfare, made more deadly by European bullets.Watson, Alexander, John. (2006). Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.150–153. "The apocalypse of culture disorientation that Innis would come to believe followed the introduction of writing and printing, and still later followed the application of power to print reproduction, has its prototype in the collapse of the traditional Indian civilization after the introduction of iron trade goods." And all this, Innis argued, disturbed the balance that "...had grown up previous to the coming of the European." Innis (Fur Trade) pp.388–389.
Balance, bias and empire
Harold Innis examined the rise and fall of ancient empires as a way of tracing the effects of communications media. He looked at media that led to the growth of an empire; those that sustained it during its periods of success, and then, the communications changes that hastened an empire's collapse. He tried to show that media 'biases' toward time or space affected the complex interrelationships needed to sustain an empire. These interrelationships included the partnership between the knowledge (and ideas) necessary to create and maintain the empire, and the power (or force) required to expand and defend it. Innis wrote that the interplay between knowledge and power was always a crucial factor in understanding empire: "The sword and pen worked together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record, signed, sealed and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government."Innis, (Empire and Communications) pp.10–13.
Innis warned however, that such issues tended to obscure the differences between empires. So, he embarked on specific studies of the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Mesopotamia; as well as of the effects of the oral tradition on Greek civilization and the written tradition on the Roman Empire. His reflections appear in separate chapters in his book Empire and Communications along with additional chapters on the combined effects of parchment and paper in the Middle Ages, and paper and the printing press in the development of modern societies.Heyer, p.52: Heyer writes that Empire and Communications received few reviews and they ranged from "lukewarm to negative". Yet, many now see it as a Canadian classic because it "has sufficient detail in its analysis and originality to be regarded as a landmark book."
Biographer John Watson warns against the tendency to apply Innis's concept of media 'bias' in a mechanical or deterministic way. He writes that Innis "emphasizes, in dealing with concrete historical cases, the necessity of a balance of various media whose predispositions [or biases] complement each other to make for a successful imperial project." Watson points out that for Innis, balance was crucial in sustaining an empire. Innis examined each empire to discover how time-binding and space-binding media contributed to the necessary balance between power and knowledge and among ruling groups – religious, political and military.Watson, pp.312–319. As Innis himself wrote: Concentration on a medium of communication implies a bias in the cultural development of the civilization concerned either towards an emphasis on space and political organization or towards an emphasis on time and religious organization. Introduction of a second medium tends to check the bias of the first and to create conditions suited to the growth of empire. The Byzantine empire emerged from a fusion of a bias incidental to papyrus in relation to political organization and of parchment in relation to ecclesiastical organization. Innis, (Empire and Communications). p.216.
Innis argued that a balance between the spoken word and writing contributed to the flourishing of ancient Greece in the time of Plato. Plato conveyed his ideas by recording the conversations of Socrates. His philosophy thus preserved "the power of the spoken word on the written page." Plato's method of using poetic dialogues cast in prose enabled him to arrive at new philosophical positions.Innis, pp.68–69. This balance between the time-biased medium of speech and the space-biased medium of writing was eventually upset, Innis argued, as the oral tradition gave way to the dominance of writing. The torch of empire then passed from Greece to Rome.Innis, pp.99–100. See also, Heyer, pp.49–50.
Monopolies of knowledge
In his 1947 presidential address to the Royal Society of Canada, Innis remarked: "I have attempted to suggest that Western civilization has been profoundly influenced by communication and that marked changes in communications have had important implications." He went on to mention the evolution of communications media from the cuneiform script inscribed on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia to the advent of radio in the 20th century. "In each period I have attempted to trace the implications of the media of communication for the character of knowledge and to suggest that a monopoly or oligopoly of knowledge is built up to the point that equilibrium is disturbed."Innis, Harold. (1951) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.3–4. Innis argued, for example, that a "complex system of writing" such as cuneiform script resulted in the growth of a "special class" of scribes.Innis, (Bias) p.4. The long training required to master such writing ensured that relatively few people would belong to this privileged and aristocratic class. As Paul Heyer explains:
In the beginning, which for Innis means Mesopotamia, there was clay, the reed stylus used to write on it, and the wedge-shaped cuneiform script. Thus did civilization arise, along with an elite group of scribe priests who eventually codified laws. Egypt followed suit, using papyrus, the brush, and hieroglyphic writing.Heyer, p.43. In Empire and Communications, Innis wrote that the ebb and flow of Egypt's ancient empire partly reflected weaknesses or limitations imposed by "the inflexibility of religious institutions supported by a monopoly over a complex system of writing": Writing was a difficult and specialized art requiring long apprenticeship, and reading implied a long period of instruction. The god of writing was closely related to the leading deities and reflected the power of the scribe over religion. The scribe had the full qualifications of a special profession and was included in the upper classes of kings, priests, nobles and generals, in contrast with peasants, fishermen, artisans and labourers. Complexity favoured increasing control under a monopoly of priests and the confinement of knowledge to special classes.Innis, (Empire) p.28.