democratise a culture as it is generally very accessible. Internet cafes proliferate and hence make this medium extremely easy to access for reasonably small cost.3
Media, for Innis, bring about social change. He argues that a medium carries built into it a bias in the organisation and control of information and the way it is presented. He is of the view that technological development divides knowledge so that it is hopeless to expect a common point of view (: 190). He sees control by the communications media (through things like the dividing up of knowledge) as a means through which social and political power is wielded and advanced. He suggests that in each of the major periods in human history communications have played a vital role in building up and breaking down old monopolies.
New media can break old monopolies. The medieval Church's monopoly over religious information was broken, for example, by the invention of the printing press. The printing press by-passed the Church and made the Bible and other religious writings widely available. The same contents in the Bible had different effects in different media and were used by the managers of these media to create a desired effect.
Innis also claims that the very medium of communication carries a bias either towards lasting a long time or travelling easily across great distances. Time and space are important for Innis and he, at great length, analyses the impact of both on culture and society and how communications media further aid these two concepts.4
3 Martin Connell writing in America, April 5, 2004, pp 22-27 'Words without Flesh' reflects on the proliferation of computers in Argentina. He says that computers are everywhere and there is a locutorio on every street corner in Buenos Aires. He says that people cannot afford to buy personal computers but using them in internet cafes is cheap and a way in which the internet is made accessible to all - costing only 1.5 pesos an hour. Connell goes on to argue that computers and the internet are reviving a very old heresy - Gnosticism - a new denial of the importance of embodiment and physical inter-personal relationships. In South Africa we have not, as yet, seen the rise of internet cafes on a scale as large as this although they seem to be growing. Another interesting difference is that the cost of internet usage in internet cafes in South Africa is certainly much more still than that mentioned above. For a brief analysis of internet usage in South Africa see Chapter 5: 5.4 The Internet in South Africa.
4 Innis gives an interesting analysis of both of these in his work Bias of Communication.
An empire or society, he argues, is generally concerned with duration within time or extension within space. Time-biased media, such as stone and clay, are durable and heavy. These are somewhat difficult to move and hence do not encourage territorial expansion. They do have a long life and therefore they do encourage the extension of empire over time and bring a sense of stability. Time-biased media aid in the development of social hierarchies (as was found in ancient Egypt where kings were mummified and therefore 'lived' for eternity through their mummification [:66]). Speech is a time-biased medium because it requires the relative stability of community for face- to-face contact. Knowledge passed down orally depends on a number of factors: lineage, transmission and ancestors, and has to be ratified by human contact. Innis writes of his own bias towards the oral tradition. He sees it as inherently more flexible and humanistic than the written tradition which, in contrast, he found more rigid and impersonal (1951:
190). Space-biased media are light and portable and can be transported over large distances. They are associated with secular and territorial societies and they facilitate the expansion of empire over space. Innis argues that the bias of a culture's dominant medium affects the degree of the culture's stability and conservatism as well as the culture's ability to take over and govern large amounts of territory. He cites as an example stone carvings which are, after all, difficult to revise and to move. In contrast, writings on papyrus enabled the Romans to maintain a large empire with centralised government that delegated authority to distant provinces. But papyrus also led to more social change and greater instability as knowledge was used over greater areas. Paper is such a medium - it is readily transported - but has a relatively short lifespan. This means that the message will travel fast but may not live as long as, for example, writing on clay.
It does, however, allow for rapid expansion.
It is important to note how Empires use the media at their disposal with their built-in bias;
if they do so effectively others come to know of their power and achievements. Innis argues that these biases influenced the rise and fall of empires from the Egyptians, Sumerians and Babylonians, to the twentieth century North American and European empires. He believed that stable societies were able to achieve a proper balance between time and space-biased communications media (:64).
Innis argued that change came from the margins of society, because people on the margins invariably developed their own media in reaction to the centre.5 The new media allowed those on the periphery to develop and consolidate power, and ultimately to challenge the authority of the centre. Sudden extensions in communication, he argues, 'are reflected in cultural disturbances' (1951: 31). Latin written on parchment, the medium of the Christian Church, was attacked through the secular medium of vernaculars written on paper (: 128).
Innis also outlines the importance of new media in the Second World War. These were used by armed forces during the war for propaganda purposes at home and against enemies. He says:
i
In Germany moving pictures of battles were taken and shown in theatres almost immediately afterwards. The German people were given an impression of realism which compelled them to believe in the superiority of German arms; realism became not only most convincing but also with the collapse of the German front most disastrous. In some sense the problem of the German people is the problem of Western civilisation. As modern developments in communications have made for greater realism they have made for greater possibilities of delusion (1951:
82).
An analysis of the beginning of Gulf War II in 2003 might reveal the same possibilities of delusion which Innis refers to in our own times and context. The so-called 'war on terrorism' advocated by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, was swept
5 The internet can be a way that people on the margins can communicate and spread the content they wish to communicate at rather low cost yet with great speed. The recent riots on the outskirts of Paris seem to have been engineered and coordinated on the internet. Another example is the recent peaceful pro- democracy marches in Burma in September 2007, during which the military opened fire on protesting monks. Images and news of such events are now transmitted around the world with the help of cellular telephones (which have cameras) and the internet. Unlike in 1988, when similar protests took place and the government reportedly killed more than 3000 protestors, news can now be transmitted (despite the government clamp-down on information) and others in the world informed and mobilized so that action can be taken for a peaceful democratic solution for the people of Burma. Hence we see examples of how people on the periphery can use the internet to mobilize others and co-ordinate action. See also the book by James C Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. (Yale University Press, 1990) regarding the "hidden transcripts" of subjugated minorities.
up in a media frenzy. Newspapers, radio, television news crews and the internet carried a huge volume of opinion and coverage as the events unfolded, and public opinion was shaped by these media. The media, for the most part, portrayed it as an act of justice and pulling a tyrant from power, although there were also minority voices who opposed the war.
Whatever the opinion on the nature of Saddam Hussein, it seems clear in retrospect that it was not just justice which drove Mr. Bush and his allies. However, at that time, the mass media tried to make the world believe that it was in the interest of world peace that drove Bush's decision to go to war. This is a somewhat slanted, if not deluded, state of reality.
Justice and peace, making the world a safer place or saving the Iraqi people from the violence of Saddam Hussein were not the driving factors, and none of the above have actually been the outcomes other than the actual fall, capture and execution of Saddam Hussein. Iraq still remains a very unstable and troubled country a number of years after the mission of the American government and its allies. What we see is not always what we get.
Innis sees a dialectical relationship between society and technology - they mutually influence one another. He suggests that certain social forms and situations encourage the development of new kinds of media. These in turn react on society and cause change to take place. Innis is not a technological determinist and does not seem to say that technology drives social change (a point which might be easily argued in Borgmann's view below), but does think that considerable power is invested in communications technologies and therefore in monopolies of knowledge (which they create), which in turn shape culture. He says:
...it becomes extremely important to any civilisation, if it is not to succumb to the influence of this monopoly of knowledge, to make some critical survey and report. The conditions of freedom of thought are in danger of being destroyed by science, technology, and the mechanisation of knowledge, and with them, Western civilisation (: 190).