Page 47 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

36 Chapter One

However, as Edward Comor and others have noted, Innis was no techno-
logical or media determinist. 150 He maintained, rather, that a medium’s influ-
ence in terms of space or time can be understood only within “the social-
economic context of [its] use.” 151 For example, Innis initially thought that ra-
dio, due to its reliance on sound and its apparent recalling of the oral tradi-
tion, would counterbalance the space bias of the newspaper. Given the com-
mercial context of American media, however, Innis soon realized that radio
amplifies the space bias of the press, rather than neutralizing it. 152 Similarly,
although paper was invented in China centuries before its use became com-
mon in Europe, the political-economic conditions in ancient China coupled
with the absence of a phonetic alphabet meant that paper did not have the dra-
matic space bias in China that it later had in Europe. Innis carefully selected
such terms and phrases as “bias,” “hastens,” “facilitates,” and “helps to de-
fine,” to indicate that media emphasize, but do not determine. 153
The absence of hard technological determinism in Innis’ writings is illus-
trated as well by his stance toward scholarship. On the one hand, Innis be-
lieved, scholars (like everyone else) are affected by the biases of their era as
supported particularly by the predominant media of communication. In fact,
he expressed great concern that the universities were being captured by the
“present-mindedness” characterizing military and corporate communications.
On the one hand, it is lucrative for universities and scholars to work on be-
half of the economically dominant interests. On the other, writing—the very
means of scholarship—tends toward space bias and present-mindedness.
Hence, in his preface to Empire and Communications, he cautioned, “All
written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality
of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization.” 154 And again, later in
the same work: “The letter killeth and the concern has been with the diverse
means by which different types of letters bring about their deadly results.” 155
In brief, writing, and hence scholarship, have an inherent and potentially
deadly bias. 156 However, Innis’ response, obviously, was not to quit writing.
Nor was it to try to de-authenticate theories and other “grand narratives.”
Rather, he endeavored to take the inherent bias of writing into account and
compensate for it—a practice known as reflexivity: “Thought in the social sci-
ences,” Innis wrote, “grows by the development and correction of bias.” 157 An
important aspect of scholarship for Innis, then, was recognizing and adjusting
for the biases that the means of communication present and encourage. 158
Innis was also cognizant of his bias as an economist. In the preface to The
Bias of Communication he confided: “With the bias of an economist I may
have extended the theory of monopoly to undue limits.” He then justified his
approach, however, by claiming that “it is part of the task of the social scien-
tist to test the limits of his tools and to indicate their possibilities,” 159 indicat-