6/3/2015 cmns -130 camurray history of communication

04/18/23 CMNS -130 CAMurray

History of Communication


Today’s Agenda

History of Communication in Canada: the Transmission model ( Part One)

Historical Narratives: Media and Modernity ( Part Two)

Part Three: Harold Adams Innis and the Bias of Communication


Part One: Technologies & Communication Theory

Key Assumptions

Key Events

Adoption of Innovation

Technological Bases of Modern Society


Key Assumptions

Communication involves the transmission and extension of information and knowledge

The medium of transmission/shapes a society.. The medium is the key to unlock the riddle of social, economic and political development

More extreme view asserts that the medium of communication technology determines society


Ideas about Historical Causality

Each communication technology changes the process of selection, production,organization and interpretation of information

Each technology involves a struggle between economic producers of the time for control over the profits and powers arising from the new medium: may contribute to rises of new classes

Each technology is also assessed by the State for its salience in governance & control


Key Historical Trends

Space and time are compressing

Media are moving from social to individual forms

Each generation of communication technology spreads faster in advanced industrial economies

But, while some media have been displaced( eg. Telegraph) each successive generation of technology causes a restructuring in the priorEg. Talking pictures and radioRadio and TV


Space/Time Compression

Waves of adoption are compressing in time: In less than three years, the Internet’s World Wide Web

spawned some 10 million electronic documents at a quarter of a million Web sites.

By contrast, the Library of Congress took 195 years to collect 14 million books (Source: Tim Miller, New Media

Resources,1995)


History of Canadian Communication Studies

Originally tied to policy studies in the university ( policy, political economy and geography disciplines) SFU’s school created in 1983

The second national policy: like the railroad, communication seen as important for the transmission and reception of ideas, goods and services throughout Canada


The Transmission Model

This view sees communication like transportation: in which some thing is transported from one place or person to anotherThis transmission model is defined in Grossberg et al, page 16Source/Sender-Message/Content-ReceiverKey to the history of communication studies in Canada


Canadian Transmission Model

Defining markers of transmission model: Size of country: second largest in the world Low population density: 32 million () 200 mile corridor along the 49th parallel: US Initially dependent upon natural resource ( staple) exports, needing

good communication links from centre to periphery or colony Like the railroad, after Confederation, communications

infrastructure seen as central to: Western settlement Economic infrastructure Social development

Much early spending by the Canadian State ( rail, hydroelectric power, telegraph, post system, heavy regulation of telephones to ensure extension of service, and provision of public radio)

What Aitken, a noted economist calls Canada tradition of ‘defensive expansionism’


Canadian Communication Studies II

Recognized by influential US historians ( James Carey, Daniel Czitrom) as producers of radical and elaborate thinkers Grounded in political economy ( English Canada) Bilingual: strong influence of Quebec Catholic

social thought (French Canada) and emphasis on cultural studies: importance of language and culture


Adoption of Innovation

Telegraph & rise of international news agencies 1850s-1900s Canada longest telegraph network in the world Canadian inventor introduced standardized time

Telephony-1900s Canada site of first transatlantic phone message

( Cape Breton: Alexander Graham Bell)

Film 1920s-1930s


Adoption Cont’d

Radio-1930s-50s Canada first radio service on its rail service (CPR)

Television-1950s-70s First and fastest nation to widely disseminate cable

television

Satellite—1980s Canada first geostationary domestic satellite system

Internet—1990s Canada among fasted adopters of Internet: now over 2

in 3 citizen users Among first 3 nations to wire up all schools ( School Net)


Adoption/ Cont’d II

Canada is among the most developed communications infrastructures in the world

Many key inventors, medium theorists, rapid adoption of communication technologies, often regulated by State


Paradoxes

Paradox: not a major manufacturer of communication technologies ( TV equipment, computer signalling equipment, satellites, although emerging in fibre etc) where it is still dependent on imports Paradox: content development ( message, production) not kept up with transmission/distribution development– eg. School NetTheme: technological nationalism


• Part Two : Overview

Social Histories:’Narratives’

Three Main Epochs

Key Canadian Thinkers:Harold Adams Innis What is the bias of communication?What is the relationship between empire

and communication?


Main Ideas Today

1. History of Communication involves a Selective Story

2. The Story revolves around technology and its relationship to society, communication and culture

3. The development from oral to print to electronic cultures must be understood as the Western story of Modernity.

4. Communication media both help invent/determine and construct our idea of Modernity


Ideas II

1. Canada’s story is one of technological nationalism- Use of communication technologies to settle the country

from sea to sea- Associated with national railroad( telegraph)- Assertion and protection of national sovereignty in journey

from colony to nation - reflected in the policy focus in the study of communication

itself

2. Major thinker: Innis contributes to political economy and cultural approaches to the study,and produce seminal ideas without borders


Social Histories: ‘Narratives’

Mediamaking ( Grossberg et al, 2000) argues typically that the history of communication is presented as a ‘march of progress’ or ‘triumph of National Will”

a series of adoptions of technological inventions—which then shape the movement from oral to print to electronic cultures of communicationThis tendency to technological determinism at the heart of a transmission model of communication


Overview

Origin of Communication

Major EpochsPre modern Modern ‘Post’ Modern

Additional reading: Gasher and Lorimer, pages 12-27


Origin of Communication

People have always ‘communicated’:Used non verbal signs, language and later symbols to exchange meaning in all agrarian and hunting societiesto exchange meaning the two people have to share assumptions about what the words or symbols mean, to agree that they mean the same thing to bothExchange of meaning then depends not only the word but its cultural, economic and social contextAs technology begins to mediate communication, the relation of the words to their context changes: another person distant over space and time may experience a word or meaning fragment from a totally different contextFrom orality to literacy From pre modern to modern From human to mass communication


Major Epochs of Communication History

Pre Modern ( oral and early print media)

Modern ( late print and electronic media)

Post Modern ( digital media)


Pre Modern ( 1000 BC to 1500s)

Pre ModernClose association of control of

communication with Church or rulers or monarchs

Agrarian, dispersed societies ‘divine right’—rulers chosen by god Elite production and dissemination of

communication ( poets,scribes, monks, priests work by hand)


Pre Modern Cont’d

Much reliance upon spoken word transmission of values by word of mouth, elders oral communication Epic poems, sacred myths, storytelling Focus on flexibility, traditional community knowledge Major historical event: invention of the alphabet and rise of clay

tablets, parchment manuscripts Custom, cosmology, unwritten rules Time bias: social goal is to conserve and transmit core values of a

society over generations ( Innis in The Bias of Communication) Oral communication has its limits:

Michelle Martin, page 11: Orall communication lasts only as long as it takes one to speak and it only

reaches those within earshot Yet social organizations have an eternal drive to communicate with long

lasting and ever more far reaching effect


Oral Culture ( from prehistory to 1200s)

No recordsHistory is preserved only in the telling of the story: different sense of time ( see Grossberg, p.39)Past is present only in the speech and social institutions of a peopleCMNS 110: studies Walter Ong


Oral Culture/Cont’d

Public culture: telling, not authorship is valued, therefore there is a tradition of collective intellectual property ‘ownership’More intimate: reliant on face to face communication, personal and socially involvedOften reinforced hierarchies of ‘elders’ or other truth tellers in society: culture seen as resistant to changeCritical view saw it as a ‘closed’ conservative society Contemporary thinking now realizes oral culture ( common sense ways of knowing, alternative “word of mouth” persist as important communication dynamics today Strictly: Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw decision accepts

native oral history as a valid basis for pursuing land claims


Tensions: Oral/Written Cultures

Socrates ( 400 BC) emphasised oral debate at the heart of early city states

Socrates feared that the written word would threaten public discussion

Socrates student, Plato, (300 BC) sought to banish poets-his view was that written poems prevented face to face association and mediation of disputes


Key Events in Transition to Modernity:

Gutenberg,1454Printing Press: technology of moveable type Key to industrialization, rise of colonial trading

empires, and transition to capitalism Associated with the rise of logical, linear thought,

rise of rule of law, individualism, science A technology of modernity Portable: could extend over large territory Space bias ( Innis: the Bias of Communication)


‘Reading’ Gutenberg

The Printing Press is presented as probably the most revolutionary development in media historyMechanical production of books allowed wider spread of knowledge Book the first mass-marketed communication

medium– duplication: replaced manual labour; sped up distribution; made books more affordable


‘Reading Gutenberg’

Press also standardized the alphabet, techniques of public communication

Broke elite control over book production and consumption

BUT: as Martin notes in the custom courseware, technologies of marketing, shipping and distribution take many centuries to become efficient


The Historical Perspective

Michelle Martin: even in the early stages of the transition between oral and written cultures we can see that the change in the form of communication was not only related to economic factors, but also to political factors, such as legislation that allowed the state to use the new technology to wield ever greater control over the masses.( page 13-14) EG: the development of the book as a mass medium waited until

paper from wood technologies was cheaper then sheep or calfskin, until the state began to require written and signed copies of contracts; and until education in writing and reading began to spread ( literacy)

Contributes to state intervention in licensing guilds and typographers

Note: profession of author born of printing and so was the concept of copyright as legal protection of mental labour


After Gutenberg

The invention of the Telegraph important for solidifying military and economic control over a distance ( 1850s)Invention of radio ( communication over the airwaves, and not via a printer or electrical impulse down a wire) ( 1900-1910)Invention of television and then satellites ( 1940s)Invention of the Internet ( 1950s)


Against Gutenberg I

Innis: The conditions of freedom of thought are in danger

of being destroyed by science, technology and mechanization of knowledge

In Empire and Communication Why? The printing press ( has) permitted the production of

words on an unprecedented scale and increased the difficulties of thought: words have become powerless,

Gutenberg succeeds only in the devaluing of words, information and knowledge


Against Gutenberg II

Communication history criticised for its Western bias Asian Scholars: printing press not a Western

invention: existence in China centuries before did not have the same social consequence—therefore Gutenberg /technological determinism less strong than supposed

Read Custom Courseware: Martin page 18-19


Part Three: Famous Canadian Historians of Pre

Modern PeriodHarold Adams Innis


Harold Adams Innis

1894-1952Associated with U of T’s school of political economyWrote extensively about the US, communication and the McCarthy era( purge of communists)Writes about the transformation from oral to print to electronic cultureKey Ideas: Oral versus Print Cultures Time versus Space Bias ( or tendency) Empire and Communication Space and Time bias ( medium theory)


Innis’ Empire and Communication

The fundamental basis of political and social power is to control the media of communication—this is the power to define what reality isRulers and Governors struggle to achieve ever more perfect/control over means of communicationMonopolies on knowledge are built up until the point that equilibrium is disturbedTechnological inventions compel realignmentsInventions often developed at margins, then penetrate to centreThe introduction of print allowed others to attack the temporal monopoly of the church, foster growth of capitalism, rise of nation stateEach improvement in long distance relations leads to a dialectic of de/ re centralization


Innis’s Space and Time Bias

Posits a dialectic/tension/opposition/between space and time biases in medium theoryIf medium is durable, hard to transport quickly ( eg. clay tablets): a time bias ( pre modern)If medium is light, easy to transport with reasonable speed eg. paper: space bias. ( modern)Ideal type of time bias: oral culture: GreeceIdeal type of space bias:print culture: Rome


Print Culture ( emergence of Modernity)

Writing changes relationship between communicator and audienceCan widen over space and timeEarly print media centralized and made knowledge hierarchical

The beginning of Empire: ( Innis, quoted in Grossberg et al, p. 41).In a writing culture, fixed written rules or codes of law can developThe individual reader emerges as separate from the community


Print Culture/Cont’d

Literacy allows power to be hoarded

This transformed with Gutenberg/ but printing press allowed the emergence of new classes ( no longer priest but merchant classes) but then a rehoarding of power

Innis: monopolies of knowledge can develop/be challenged and reemerge which challenge the rigid hierarchies of Church or State


Electronic Epoch

Emergence of electrical messages ( telegraph)

Allowed almost instantaneous transmission over space and time

Fostered international rationalization of time ( standard time a Canadian inventors’ invention)


Electronic Epoch cont’d

Carey thesis quoted in Grossberg et al: Telegraph (1840s)marked the decisive separation of

‘transportation’ and ‘communication’ Telegraph key to rise of international news/newspaper industry Finalised the transformation of information into a commodity or

thing Together with the institution of advertising, contributes to rise of

mass marketing, Industrialization Rise of computers, satellites, internet further compress space

and time

Early electronic era ( radio, TV) organized around nation states, and national massesSearch for larger markets/theory of mass society


Electronic Epoch Cont’d

Characterised by general interest /mass communicationLate electronic era ( satellite, internet) organized globally, and with global individualsCharacterized by specialised, personalised contentsRarely linear or logical


“Post Modern Epoch”

Corresponds to digitization, internet and beyondPost industrial capitalism: flexible post production, consumption, individuationGlobalisationShift from nation state to global governanceIncreasing mobility of people and communicationGlobal village: versus villages


Conclusions

1. History of Communication involves a Selective Story

2. The Story revolves around technology and the relationship to society and culture

3. The development from oral to print to electronic cultures, must be understood in the context of Modernity


Conclusions II

1. Canada’s story is one of technological nationalism/protection of sovereignty in journey from colony to nation reflected in the policy focus in the study of communication itself

2. A major thinkers: Innis contributes to political economy and cultural approaches to the study, with the notion of time and space bias

3. BACK TO LECTURE NOTES4. BACK TO INDEX

6/3/2015 cmns -130 camurray history of communication

Documents

bias of communication

canada slide

camurray ideas

tv slide

good communication links

markers of transmission

governance control slide

receiver key