700 words reading response with conections

2

Class one, Jan. 6, 2020

 

-the course proceeds in four units. the first focusses on the work of canadian economics and communications scholar, harold innis, who provides a theoretical framework for thinking about media. the second unit deals with mass media such as radio, tv, newspapers or movies. until the last decade or two, this was the primary meaning, when media were referred to. that is no longer the case. mass media still exist of course but they are only part of what media now means. In some ways mass media have become a part of media history. the third unit deals with what's sometimes called new media and focusses on the Internet. the final unit locates canada in the media context. we will deal with the relationship between culture and media as the course proceeds. the two used to be relatively separate but have grown more linked and overlapped in the era of new media/the internet.

In some ways, the term media did not exist until the era of mass media (radio, film, tv, newspapers). In earlier times there were not enough forms of media to need a term for them. There were simply books and newspapers. With the rise of media like radio and tv, the concept of media developed. In our time, mass media have been overtaken by newer media, or the internet.

 

Harold Innis:

-was Canada’s bestknown, most respected academic in the first half of the 20th century. an economic historian who wrote a series of works on the ‘staple’ resources around which the canadian economy developed. including cod fisheries; timber; the fur trade; the railroads. He founded the ‘staples school’ of economic analysis. he became canada’s most renowned scholar and academic author, respected worldwide for his economic studies

-late in his career turned unexpectedly to ‘communications studies’ which are more commonly called media studies. he rarely used the term, media. this is partly because the field barely existed in his time (he died in 1952). he was one of the creators of the field and he and marshall mcluhan are often referred to as the central figures in the ‘toronto school’ of media studies

-there is a question about the connection between his earlier economics studies and his work in media during the final years of his life. The shift baffled many of his students and admirers a the time, tho he is now probably best known for his writings on media. some think there is a clear link between the phases. others think it is more of a break from his earlier work.

-grew up in southwestern ontario farm country. a very good student and probably read a great deal, as his link to the wider world, and the realm of ideas in those years. perhaps he was someone who books ‘saved’ from a sense of isolation. but he also lived in a society where the oral tradition and storytelling were present. went to mcmaster university theological school(then in toronto, where the royal conservatory now is on bloor). planned to be a minister. this reflected a sense of social responsiblity to others, more than a personal religiosity.  enlisted in army for first world war because he believed in the war’s moral justice and necessity. he wanted to do something meaningful and useful with his life. as a student he aimed to join the christian ministry to fill this purpose. during the war, he served in signal corps in europe. He was horrified at what he saw in the trenches, the waste. (of 65 million men called up by the militaries of all sides, 8 million died, 21 million were wounded. A rate of 6000 soldiers per day died for four and a half years. 12 million civilians died in a time before the existence of serious air power.) had difficulty talking about it even with friends for the rest of his life. almost everything the soldiers had been told about the war through official sources like newspapers or their political and military leaders turned out, based on their real experiences in the trenches, to be false. soldiers started to believe not what they were told but only what they had actually seen, or were told by others who had been witnesses. This began Innis’s skepticism about print media and his interest in the oral tradition, which we’ll discuss at length in class. this was a case of people becoming skeptical about 'fake news' in a much earlier time. it also led to innis's interest in the use of media for propaganda- another word for fake news- which is reflected in the video we watched about recruiting propaganda for the first world war: I'll Make A Man Of You From Oh! What A Lovely War 

he decided not to continue in theology after the war because of the support given to the war by the churches. became a scholar in the field of economic history. he felt he could serve in a different way by trying to understand what had led to the horror of the war, which was widely seen as a conflict between empires, so he studied the ways that empires operated, particularly how they operated economically. he developed the ‘staples thesis’ which explained the patterns of development and behaviour in a country like Canada in terms of the needs of the imperial powers (England, France, later the U.S.) to extract resources from it. when that resource for example was fur, this required a relatively underpopulated landmass with good lines of communication to transport the furs back to europe. if the population was too large, it would destroy the habitats of the beaver or other furbearing animals. this trade in turn required the use of the knowledge developed over many centuries by the indigenous peoples, who were recruited by offering them products, such as knives, firearms, axes and iron pots, which they didn’t possess. this in turn broke down the stable cultural and social patterns of those peoples. innis was always interested in the cultural effects of economic or technological phenomena. this carried over into his work in media and communications later in his life. at the same time he stressed the impact of the colonial economy on the lives of those in the imperial centres like london and paris. he did not think the influences went in only one direction. empires were affected by the enormous wealth they extracted from their colonies and the power they exercised over others. it made them feel superior to the peoples under their control and created a sense of their right to impose themselves. ultimately this kind of imperial mentality is part of what led to clashes like the first world war.

-innis was a proud Canadian and a nationalist, not in the sense that led european nations to go to war with each other because they felt superior to each other, but in the sense that he believed Canadians could make their own unique contribution to scholarship and other areas, since they had a view from the fringes of empire (british, french or american) that gave them insights not available from the centre of the empire. at the time, canadians interested in becoming economists preferred to study at the centres of imperial power like harvard or oxford. but innis felt that those at the centre of the empires were blinded by their own wealth, success and power to what was truly happening to themselves as well as those they ruled. (marshall mcluhan too felt his insights were based on his perspective from toronto, on what was happening in imperial centres like new york. He said that if he had moved there, he would have lost that detachment and the insight it allowed him to gain.)

-innis remained haunted by fear of future catastrophes like the first world war and hoped his insights could help to prevent them. during the 1930s, when he was at the height of his fame as a brilliant scholar of economic history, he became dismayed at two developments: the rise of the global depression and the rise of  fascist and racist political movements like nazism in germany. he sensed the approach of a second world war which might well be even more disastrous than the first. it was as though all his work to understand the way the world functioned and malfunctioned had done no good. In fact he described what he saw happening as the destruction of western civilization. this phrase is of course eurocentric and reflects innis's time but for our purposes, we could think of it simply as human civilization. it’s likely that in this mood he began searching in other directions than economic history to find the sources of what had gone wrong. his final years were spent studying not economics but what he called technologies of communication or what today are known as media. he felt they contained an important clue about where human civilization had gone off track and what might turn it back in the right direction. This was an unexpected break from the path he had followed with great success until then- that is, from the study of economic history- and many of his students and colleagues were surprised by it. Some of them tried to find connections between his economic studies and his explorations of media. Others felt somewhat embarrassed and thought the shift was inexplicable. We’ll discuss these interpretations: continuity or a break

-this uncertainty about what innis was doing with his communications studies arises partly because his writings on media are very different from his clear, lucid books on canadian economic history. in those books on economics, he relied on firsthand research into archives and records, and on interviews during his travels. To study the fur trade, for example, he canoed thru the old trading routes and pored over records from the hudson’s bay company. his writings about media, however, seem fragmentary and disconnnected. he lacked firsthand research when writing about the origins of the oral, written and print traditions. So his media writings are aphoristic and impressionistic. part of this may be due to the fact he was working in a field that barely existed at the time. but it also reflects his sense that the written tradition itself, in which he had worked and been very successful, was partly responsible for the catastrophes of the first half of the 20th century like world war one and the depression. so he was trying to write in a different way about the written tradition itself. we will explore his reasons for coming to such a drastic, unusual judgment about the written/printed word in the coming class, based on your readings.

-innis was admirable for his willingness to question the things he had based his life on- such as reading and traditional forms of scholarship- and to move fearlessly in new directions late in his life. As one example, we talked about something mcluhan recalled innis saying: that the formal essay was invented by a chinese dynasty to prevent intellectuals (“the literati”) from thinking too much. Why would rulers want to prevent too much thought? Because it might threaten their power by causing thinkers to become critical and see flaws in them and their policies. but new ideas and insights arise more from discussion- the oral tradition- where writers or thinkers challenge each other- than by individuals sitting alone and writing lengthy treatises or essays. So, rather than essaysooks and b being the ultimate form of critical insight and thought, innis felt they were an attempt to undermine and diminish it. Yet he himself had assigned and read probably thousands of essays. He had written many esteemed books. We’ll find that innis was remarkably able to question the foundations of his own past and even of his own great success. 

-when he died, the university of toronto cancelled classes for a day. he is the only u of t professor to have a college named after him.