Harold Innis — The Bias of Communication

12 published claims from this book.

• Astronomical periodicity strengthened religious monopoly over time
• Intense present-mindedness makes advanced societies blind to their self-inflicted misfortunes.
• Mechanized knowledge creates monopolies that endanger freedom of thought
• Monopolies in communication media inevitably disrupt society through rapid dissemination.
• Oral transmission yields more internally consistent traditions than written transmission
• Printing and publishing vested interests check the movement of ideas
• Printing emphasized vernacular languages and divided the European intellectual mind
• Radio’s immediacy enables prolonged centralized nationalist political control
• Science escaped time monopolies of knowledge but succumbed to space monopolies
• The post office was an instrument of political control in early America
• The telegraph dismantled centralized political party control anchored in the post office.
• Western present-mindedness drives a reliance on force to solve problems