Harold A. Innis (1894–1952)

How much impact had writing in its different incarnations had on world history? How does changes in writing technologies influence the outcomes of empires? This (or something akin to this) is the thesis of Harold A. Innis in this short, but difficult to read (so they say), book.

You don’t have to be a history buff to enjoy this different outlook proposed by Innis. Maybe, as myself, you’ll reach Innis by reading Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy. In any case, Innis’ proposal show more makes you think again about the role writing has had on human culture, history, and even evolution.

Well argued for, with good and substancial examples, this book provides much food for thought and, as McLuhan develops these ideas, becomes a whole different way to look at contemporary clashes and events (be them social, political and even religious). show less

A challenging book to read with few footholds for readers to pause and take stock of the argument Innis is offering. It is best to approach the historical overview chapters as evidence of how political, religious, economic, and other interests are reinforced in the development and proliferation of media through which those interests are communicated and entrenched. It is social construction with an outsized role for media technology.

The style is a little dry, but Dr. Innis makes an interesting connection between the script, the method of writing(Hieroglyph, Cuneiform, alphabet) and the form of an Empire created in the past. A seminal book, that has lead to much historical investigation of Paleography and state analysis. Do read it, you may find some of your preconceptions of the ancient world turned upside down!

My impressions, from reading this book in 1988, were as follows.

A very badly written book. Innis’ prose is atrocious. He uses phrases like “government of space”, “government of time”, and “monopolies of knowledge” without adequately explaining what he means. He is giving to convoluted sentences with annoyingly sparse and/or improper puncuations and seems content to let a footnote pass for proof and/or explanation of his points. He often presents a broad barrage of, at best, show more tenously related facts and fails to provide the connecting skeleton. At first I thought the problem was my lack of knowledge regarding certain areas of history. Then, when he began to talk about Roman and Medieaval history, I realized the problem was Innis' organization. When he talks about post-printing press history, his prose begins to sound like a student who has exhausted his thesis and is only half way through the required length of his paper: Innis begans to virtually babble and gush forth disconnected facts. In fact, this book seldom has to do with empire and communications. A better title would have been The History of the Alphabet and Communication. Without debating Innis’ definition of empire -- (he calls post-Alexandrian Greece an empire as well as modern America, Innis completely misses Burke’s point made in The Day the Universe Changed that technical illustrations were as an important result of the printing press as prose reproduction. Innis also ignores more prosaic examples of communication that are just as vital to governmental organization: roads, horses and animal drawn conveyances, water navigation, messanger services, and telegraph and television and railroads. The title promises a broad, generic study of communication technologies and organizations and doesn’t deliver. Innis concludes his work with the insinuation that America (dominated by a newspaper monopoly -- a thesis he never adequately proves for me) is embarked on an imperialistic course that threatens the British Commonwealth. American media may be constantly moving to media conglomerates, but media “monopolies” do not undertake systematic censorship for idealogical reasons and certainly not at governmental behest. There may be de facto censorship of certain ideas, authors, and works but it is done on the basis of sales (or perceived sales potential, at least). At least for now, small presses and magazines manage to thrive in niches not occuppied by the media giants. Innis’ insinuation seems particularly silly and dated in an age when the term “desk-top publishing” has common usage. Nevertheless, the book did have its good points. There were some good quotes from historical sources. Innis did trace (though he didn’t always relate it to whatever thesis he tried to present) the development of law through history and related it to writing’s development. (I do agree with Innis’ contention that lawyers and their proliferation threaten American society.). He did a good job on showing how writing materials (marking devices and material to be written on) influenced the alphabet’s development) and the point that organizing alphabet’s letters into a fixed order for teaching purposes was a major development in its wide spread utilization by diverse peoples for their own ends. Innis’ makes a good case for the implications for centralization in use of stone, clay, and parchment. However, to me, he fails to prove any fundamental difference in governments using stone and those using clay, and little difference between clay and parchment. The differences between parchment and paper societies lies more in the economics of production than any inherent tendency (particularly in a pre-Guttenberg age) toward centralization on the part of parchment. Again, Innis presents a thesis without sufficiently proving it. All in all, largely a failure of scholarship and thought and certainly a failure in effective communication of author’s ideas. show less