Monopolies of knowledge
Mastering the art of writing and reading required long periods of apprenticeship and instruction, confining knowledge to this powerful class.
[5] In his later writings, Innis argued that industrialization and mass media had led to the mechanization of a culture in which more personal forms of oral communication were radically devalued.
The goal is to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons.
"[10] In order to fashion his concept of monopolies of knowledge, Innis drew on several fields of study, including economics, history, communications and technology.
He mentions the growth of cities with people living in large apartment buildings made possible by developments in electrical equipment on the one hand, and the dispersal of populations over wide metropolitan areas as a result of the automobile and paved roads, on the other.
"The demands of population in congested areas, under the direction of scientific work in nutrition," Innis writes, "have shifted from carbohydrates to vitamins or from wheat to dairy products, live-stock, fruits and vegetables.
"[12] At the same time, he adds, city dwellers are influenced by cheap, mass-circulation newspapers which peddle political stereotypes along with department store ads.
[14] Innis's concept of monopolies of knowledge was also influenced by the scholar Solomon Gandz who published a lengthy paper in 1939 on the significance of the oral tradition in the development of civilizations.
[17] The triumph of one type of medium over the other, however, undermined stability demonstrating that unbalanced monopolies of knowledge could gradually lead to the decline and fall of civilizations and empires.
[18] Innis argued this was, in fact, happening to Western civilization which had become dangerously unbalanced partly because of the monopoly of knowledge exercised by space-biased communications technologies such as the daily newspaper.
[20] Newspapers and the news agencies that served them could transmit large amounts of information over long distances, but this speed of transmission and the emphasis on immediacy obliterated continuity and memory.
[31] He repeats the Biblical commandment against worshiping graven images, but suggests that in our unconscious society, this prohibition is not interpreted to apply to the printed word.
Textbook publishers exert a huge influence on education at all levels while schools and universities refuse to accept knowledge in other than printed forms.
"[35] He adds, however, that in open, democratic societies, public education systems are dedicated to breaking this monopoly by teaching students how to read and write, thereby giving them full access to printed knowledge.
