Session 5: 19 October ‘Toronto School of Communication’ III: Innis and The Bias of Communication

Paul Heyer and David Crowley, ‘Introduction to the Bias of Communication’, The Bias of Communication, pp. ix-xxvi Harold Innis, ‘The Bias of Communication, The Bias of Communication, pp. 33-60

A medium of communication has an important influence on the dissemination of knowledge over space and over time and it becomes necessary to study its characteristics in order to appraise its influence in its cultural setting. 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.

Opening Remarks First, let’s recap some key ideas from last class

• namely how literacy ‘artificially’ extends memory of objects and events beyond the verification of sight or recollection

Individuals applied their minds to symbols rather than things and went beyond the world of concrete experience into the world of conceptual relations created within an enlarged time and space universe

In short, literacy expands

i) the time of the world beyond the range of remembered things ii) the space of the world beyond the range of known places

Harold Innis—a professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto—made significant contributions to the early study of media and communication Innis took communication research on a new path in the late 1940s and early 1950s His line of inquiry instigated what would become known as Medium Theory

• i.e. that the central ‘effect’ of a medium is not its content but the way it restructures society and culture

He mapped the rise and fall of ancient civilizations and cultural traits in r/n to the dominant forms of media and communication

The enduring insight of Innis: social, political, and economic change is facilitated by the dvlpmt of communication media

• thus introducing the role of power and the political to the study of communication

• dvlpd an interdisciplinary methodology • grounded in political economy—thus focus on empires

Innis’s basic thesis Each medium has a bias in terms of

• i) organizational forms (political and economic/states and markets)

• ii) the control of information The bias of communication

• time • space

The point is not just that each medium has either a temporal or spatial bias, but that this facilitates

• a) power—over space or time • b) the production of knowledge

In straightforward terms, how can a medium be accessed and preserved

• over time or space • how can it be controlled?

Key Concepts and themes

• 1) Who was Innis? • 2) Historical Context (Ancient Civilizations and Empires) • 3) The bias of communication • 4) Monopolies of knowledge

the life of Innis

• grew up in a small town in Southwestern Ontario and traveled to school each day by train—both a means of transportation and communication

• his university studies were interrupted by WWI, where he served on the front lines in the signal corp (operating communication and information systems)

• he was deeply marked by the carnage, especially the way Canadians (and soldiers form other former colonies) were treated as cannon fodder

• this experience influenced his scholarly focus—how does the centre dominate the periphery?

• he eventually did his PhD at the University of Chicago (on the Canadian Pacific Railway)

• he then wrote about the fur trade, cod fishery, and the wheat trade

• in doing so, he helped dvlp the staples thesis which demonstrates how the Canadian economy dvlpd historically thru. single resources (fur, lumber, minerals, agriculture, energy) in a manner which left the country in a vulnerable and dependent r/nship first to Britain and then the U.S.

The staples thesis anticipates important elements of his later scholarship on media and communication:

a) centre-periphery dynamic b) the spatial characteristics of markets and empires

• ocean transport favoured light and valuable staples (fur) • inland waterways favoured bulk commodities (lumber, minerals)

In short, Innis demonstrates an abiding interest in i) the nature and characteristics of the medium under analysis

• be it fur, clay or papyrus ii) the networks which exploit that medium in the service of a centre

• the periphery is made to serve the interests of the centre in a marginal and dependent manner

Thus Innis always analyzed the political and economic dimensions of media, in addition to the social/cultural He brought forward basic insights into his eventual study of communication:

• information is a resource/commodity (like fur, fish, etc.) • it gets organized under monopolies of knowledge • this structures dependency r/nships b/n the centre and margin

2) Historical Context (Ancient Civilizations and Empires) A Timeline of Ancient Civilizations A chronology of the dvlpmt of key technologies: Fire 500,000 BCE

• Allowed proto-humans to move ‘out of Africa’ to cooler climates • Homo Sapiens (the anatomically modern human species) did not

appear until 200,000 BCE Agriculture 8000 BCE

• a monumental technological advance occurred—the cultivation of grain, followed by the domestication of animals

• Tigris and Euphrates (Iraq), and later along the Nile (Egypt) • thus the term ‘River Valley Civilizations’ (irrigation of crops) • agriculture is a foundational technology because it facilitated

the shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to pastoral (settled communities) societies

• also called the 'Neolithic Revolution' • initiated a broad division of labour • The plow did not appear until 4000 BC • pottery, clay bricks, and linen cloth were dvlpd b/n 7000-6000

BC

Wheel 4000 BCE

• Sumerians were among the first to use carts with wheels Literacy 3100 BCE

• Sumerian cuneiforms appeared first, followed by Egyptian hieroglyphs

• both were forms of pictographs Calendar 2800 BCE

• initially a lunar calendar which required the insertion of an extra month every four years

Papyrus 2300 BCE

• first made in Ancient Egypt • not paper; like woven cloth (spliced stalks of the papyrus plant)

Coins 700 BCE

• Ancient Greece, under King Lydia who advocated their use for trade

Roads 350 BCE

• Rome was the first empire to build an extensive road system • they built 85,000 Km of roads stretching from Spain to Persia

(Iran), and from North Africa to England

Chronology of Ancient Civilizations Sumerians (Mesopotamia) 3500-2370 BCE

• year-round agriculture; writing (Cuneiforms); wheel Ancient Egypt 3200-400 BCE

• hieroglyphs; pyramids Indus (India-Pakistan) 2500-1700 BCE Akkadians (Mesopotamia) 2400-1900 BCE

• linguistic assimilation Ancient China 2400-300 BCE Ur Dynasty (Mesopotamia) 2125-2000 BCE

• built the great Ziggurat Babylonia (Mesopotamia) 1900-1100 BCE

• Code of Hammurabi; early advances in Mathematics and Astronomy; metal-working and textile weaving

Hittites (Turkey) 1700-1200 BCE

• forerunners of the Iron Age; chariots Ancient India 1200-500 BC

Mesoamerica (Mayan/Aztec) 1200 BCE-1492 AD Assyrians (Mesopotamia) 1100-600 BCE

• developed engineering Ancient Greece 1100-50 BCE Persian Empire (Iran) 550-300 BCE Roman Republic 500-27 BCE Roman Empire 27 BC-300 CE

• the largest empire in the world at the time, ranging across Europe to North Africa to the Middle East to the Balkans to Asia Minor

3) The Bias of Communication Innis asks the following basic questions about the role of communication in history:

1) What is the dominant communication media of a given society/civilization/empire? 2) How does that ‘mode of communication’ influence the organizational form of the state/markets, and the production and control of knowledge

Innis theorized the political economic dimensions of communication in an innovative fashion He did this by examining empires—the structure which mediates the individual and civilization He studied the characteristics of empires by considering the form and effects of the dominant ‘mode of communication’ In short, empires are characterized by their dominant mode of communication

• a mode of communication corresponds with an historical epochs • each epoch has its own ‘bias of communication’ (time or space)

Each epoch is distinguished by dominant forms of media that absorb, record, and transform information into systems of knowledge consonant with the institutional power structure of the society in question. (Heyer and Crowley)

Empires seek to endure over time and extend over space

Innisian ‘modes of communication’

1) Orality 2) Literacy

• stone, clay, and parchment 3) Literacy

• papyrus and paper 4) Literacy

• moveable type 5) Electronic

• telegraph and radio Note how Innis breaks down the history literacy into two major periods—writing and printing

i) Writing • Stone and clay—Mesopotamia • Papyrus—Egypt; early Graeco-Roman • Parchment (codex)—Roman empire; early Middle Ages

ii) Print

• China (10th century) • Europe—1450

Remember, he makes this painstaking schematic overview becaue of his central thesis:

Large-scale political organizations such as empires must be considered from the standpoint of two dimensions, those of space and time, and persist by overcoming the bias of media which overemphasize either dimension.

He will demonstrate that in order for any political-economic organization to flourish over time and space, it cannot be dependent upon a single medium

a) Time bias A characteristic of media such as stone and clay (also parchment)

• both heavy and durable • do not move easily • not good for territorial expansion • neglect space, administration and law • good for duration over time • facilitate the production of traditional knowledge • typified by sacred knowledge and a priestly class (hierarchy) • ancient Egypt as archetype

Ancient Egypt Hieroglyphs (sacred script) carved on stone (3200 BCE-400CE)

• mix of single consonant characters (like an alphabet) and logographs (ideograms—representing ideas or things)

• carved on the walls of temples and the pyramids • there were about 5000 different hieroglyphs

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

A modern version of hieroglyphic writing is the rebus:

Mummification and the pyramids express a religious desire for the conquest of time (royalty both divine and immortal)

• oriented toward the past (tradition)

b) Space bias Ancient Rome and the use of papyrus, then paper

• light and portable medium • easily transportable over space • facilitates the spatial expansion of the state (becoming empire) • communication medium is not durable over time • associated with secular societies • hierarchy based on economic power

Ancient Rome is the classic example: a vast empire based on military and economic power A secular state seeking the conquest of space Map of the Roman Empire circa 180 CE

A spatial bias enables the establishment of commercialism, empire and eventually technocracy A temporal bias is grounded in tradition and directed at the present and future (to maintain that tradition) But for any civilization to be stable, there needed to be some equilibrium b/n its temporal and spatial bias Also, recalling his long-time focus on the centre-periphery dynamic, he felt that changes in communication media typically came from the periphery

• the alphabet from Phoenicia • printing press from Germany

The ‘bias’ of Innis

• made no secret of his admiration for oral communication • he categorizes speech (orality) as a time biased medium • required relative stability because of face-to-face

communication • the oral transmission of knowledge has a particular lineage

(ancestors) which emphasizes stability Innis notes the significance of the oral tradition in Ancient Greece

He notes the following written by Plato:

No intelligent person will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason has contemplated, especially not into a form that is unalterable—which must be the case with what is expressed in written symbols.

Greece was still largely in the paradigm of a time-biased medium Yet, for Innis, the oral tradition is most flexible Thus Greece could operate on temporal and spatial axes

• Solon: space-land-geometry • Cleisthenes: time-trade-arithmetic

This balance, according to Innis, allowed Greece to flourish

3) Monopolies of Knowledge For Innis, knowledge relates to politics, economics, and culture In a sense, Innis was a precursor to Foucault, who as we shall see, demonstrated the mutually constitutive r/nship b/n knowledge and power But Innis is interested in how the dominant mode of communication of a given society conditions the possibilities of knowledge production and its control Monopolies of knowledge facilitate the centralization of power—in both state and cultural forms Some use the term cultural monopoly of knowledge

His basic assumption was that the media of communication through which the conceptual systems of an epoch are formed disclose as well the blueprint for its domination. (Heyer and Crowley)

With the control of knowledge comes the ability to

• i) frame reality within that society • ii) to define what knowledge is legitimate (c.f. Foucault)

Monopolies of knowledge under a time-biased medium Here are three examples that Innis offers from time-biased empires A) Ancient Egypt

• there was a royal monopoly of knowledge in Ancient Egypt when the hieroglyph was limited to stone inscription

• the introduction of papyrus undermines the royal monopoly (carried out by the priestly class)

• a new class of scribes emerges • thus writing and thought are secularized

B) Sumer

• Sumer was an ancient civilization in Mesopotamia • it was also the first literate society

Examples of cuneiform

Innis notes that the heaviness of the stone and clay upon which cuneiforms were inscribed, resulted in a decentralized society

• due to the resultant difficulties in political organization, Sumer fell repeatedly

• the ancient city of Babylon was established as the capital under the king Hammurabi

Hammurabi, the Sixth King of Babylon; The Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi was a stone tablet inscribed in 1760 BCE

• it listed 282 different laws • the establishment of those laws were a step toward overcoming

the time-biased medium of stone • it facilitated a legal uniformity and a centralized system of

administration over a vast distance • nonetheless, there remained time-biased limitations

Monopolies of knowledge to an important extent dominated by priestly organizations and protected by complex types of script such as the cuneiform and the hieroglyphic checked the growth of political organization. Escape from these monopolies came from the fringes of Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations in which new languages among primitive peoples demanded simplicity.

C) Phoenicians One of those civilizations ‘on the margins’ (1200-800 BCE)

• maritime trader civilization located in modern-day Lebanon and Syria

• traded across the Mediterranean (from the Middle East to Spain to North Africa)

• Phoenicians had access to papyrus • their trade-based society also necessitated an ability to

communicate in many different languages • thus the shift to the alphabet from the pictogram/ideograph

‘Phoenician Semitic consonantal alphabet’

• Phoenician alphabet as the precursor to all modern alphabets

Monopolies of knowledge under a space-biased medium Monopolies of knowledge also had spatial ramifications

• i.e. knowledge tended to be controlled in the centre and moved in a unidirectional flow to the peripheries

A basic point

i) Time-biased epochs had a theocratic monopoly of knowledge • e.g. the priests and divine kings of ancient Egypt

Remember how the spread of papyrus in Ancient Egypt allowed secular forces (scribes) to wrest control from the Divine Kings

ii) Space biased epochs had a secular monopoly of knowledge • e.g. papyrus-based ancient Rome • an economic and bureaucratic elite

Rome Innis notes how Rome, learning from Greece, benefited from the oral tradition Rome also set the conditions for spatial bias

• plentiful access to papyrus • libraries had been brought from Greece • laws were codified

Overall, this facilitated the unprecedented spatial expansion of the Roman empire But there remained the problem of time which, Innis contends, was never fully resolved by the Roman Empire Instead, it was Christianity

Parchment: time- and space-biased The basic point Innis makes is that parchment facilitates religious control while paper ushers in secular control Rome began to replace fragile parchment rolls with more durable parchment (suitable for books) For the first time there was the possibility of the widespread diffusion of the written word Yet parchment was taken up with far greater zeal by religious organizations than the bureaucratic administration Monasteries (and monks) were core users of parchment and became the key producers of books The process of writing or copying books was extremely time consuming It also gave the Church a new monopoly of knowledge, as it emphasized the production of religious texts over legal ones It also meant that ‘pagan’ knowledge (which included much Greek philosophy) was often forgotten—i.e. those papyrus scrolls were never copied into parchment books

Never in the world’s history has so vast a literature been so radically given over to destruction.

Not only did monasteries gain a monopoly of knowledge by choosing what would be copied/produced, but monasteries were established all over Europe and virtually all of them had scribes As a result, the Holy Roman Empire (Christian) was reestablished centuries after the fall of the (secular) Roman Empire But by the 13th c., the art of paper making was dvlpd in Italy (initially from linen and cloth rags)

Decline of the monopoly of knowledge based on parchment in which an ecclesiastical organization emphasized control over time followed the competition of paper which supported the growth of trade and of cities, the rise of vernaculars, and the increasing importance of lawyers and emphasized the concept of space in nationalism

Thus the monasteries gave way to secular copyist guilds which gave way to the printing press… Some concluding comments

i) Innis prefers oral societies because they are more community oriented and spatially bound

• emphasize dialogue and inhibit monopolies of knowledge, overarching political authority and territorial expansion

• knowledge is necessarily more elastic and less dogmatic—because it depended on dialogue and face-to-face exchange

ii) the shift from a heavy and durable medium to lighter and more portable ones facilitated the decline of absolute monarchies and the rise of democracies

• “thought gained lightness” • but this also makes administration more efficient—enabling

territorial expansion and new empires

iii) Innis saw a spatial bias in the university with disciplinary specialization and control over knowledge—hence his interdisciplinary turn

The conditions of freedom of thought are in danger of being destroyed by science, technology, and the mechanization of knowledge, and with them, Western civilization. (‘The Bias of Communication’)

finally… How does our mode of communication fit into the Innisian model? Are ICTs time biased or space biased? These are key questions we will consider over the coming months…