Innis, Harold A., Empire and communications \ i~,~}. k \1.\i.. ‘i+h l”!r·,)~\_l.t rVl. I\ P;’3·\:: ,f~.rl PAPER AND THE PRINTING PRESS ;Ji! ‘Jt~j. Harold Innis: Prophet of Empire & Communications. 03Jan Photograph of Harold Innis standing among lilacs, no date Harold Innis, no date. Source. Empire and Communications examines the impact of media such as stone, clay, papyrus and the alphabet on the empires of Egypt and.
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Instead we were to be increasingly dominated by a single point of view in print and electronic media: The priest king represented the sun and the priestess the mother goddess.
Innis’s condensed, elliptical prose demands careful reading as he traces the origins of writing from clay tablet and cuneiform script to the efficient Phoenician alphabet written on parchment and papyrus.
Imposition of the Achaemenid monarchy of Persia on the Babylonian and Egyptian empires implied a dominance of Aryans over Semitic peoples and it became necessary to give autonomy to alien nationalities within a military and tribute collecting organization.
The god of writing was closely related to the leading deities and reflected the power of the scribe over religion. I shall attempt rather to focus attention on other empires in the history of the West, with reference to empires of the East, in order to isolate factors which seem important for purposes of comparison. Under rulers of the eighteenth dynasty B. His outline of Egyptian civilization is a complex and highly detailed analysis of how these media, along with several other technologies, affected the distribution of power in society.
The Hebrews combined oral and written traditions in their scriptures. Institutions, Politics, and Culture. The culture of Assyria was imperial and rested on the subjugation and incorporation of peoples of different languages, races, and cultures. In a career dedicated to explaining empire, Innis discovered communication and blazed an important trail. Innis was a distinguished political economist who was one of the first to study the history of communication; he also served as a dean at the University of Toronto.
King and people were warned to be loyal to Jahweh. The printed word gained authority over the written one.
Empire and Communications
They emphasized patriarchal authority in the family and polygamy. Persian religion was unable to resist the influences of Babylonia.
The supremacy of El pointed toward a tendency to monotheism. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Innis suggests that the Attalids probably preserved the masterpieces of ancient Greek prose.
The complexity of a group of wedges of cokmunications sizes and thicknesses and an increase in the size of the tablets which changed the angle at which they were held in the writer’s hand hastened the tendency toward conventionalization.
As a result of Babylonian influence Assyria was unable to develop a powerful literary tradition.
Sumerian opposition finally succeeded and the third dynasty was founded by M-Engur about B. The profound disturbances in Egyptian civilization involved in the shift from absolute monarchy to a more democratic organization coincides with a shift in emphasis on stone as epire medium of communication or as a basis of prestige, as shown in the pyramids, to an emphasis on papyrus.
In discussing the advent and spread of the alphabetInnis refers to what he sees as the subversive relationship between those at the centre of civilizations and those on their fringes or margins.
Empire and Communications –
Flexibility was introduced in the imperial structure through the rise of imperial free cities in Babylonia. These include the advancement of civil law under Hammurabithe development of mathematics including fixed standards of weights and measuresas well as the breeding of horses that combined speed with strength and that, along with three-man chariotshelped deliver spectacular military victories to the Assyrians.
T he Nile, with its irregularities of overflow, demanded a co-ordination of effort. Alexander John WatsonAndrew Calabrese. Read more Read less. Later kings were faced with continued difficulties in Egypt which declared independence in B. Apprentices followed their masters in handling problems of architecture, engineering, and business, [41] notably the calculation of interest. Papyrus sheets dated from the first dynasty and inscribed sheets from the fifth dynasty B.
Wallace and his staff in the library of the University of Toronto and to my colleagues in the department of political economy.
Empire and Communications – Harold Adams Innis – Google Books
The Sumerians had limited need for signs representing syllables, but the Babylonians were compelled to spell out every single harolf of the syllables. Since the art of writing as the basis of education was controlled by priests, scribes, teachers, and judges assumed the religious point of view in general knowledge and in legal decisions. The decline of Mycenean civilization after the Dorian invasion opened the road to Phoenician expansion in the Aegean area. Well argued for, with good and substancial examples, this book provides much food for thought and, as McLuhan develops these ideas, becomes a whole different way to look at contemporary clashes and events be them social, political and even religious.
The cmmunications of the Hyksos apparently imposed a barrier between the south communicatons the north of Arabia and led to the development of divergent systems of writing.
Mythology reflected the power exercised by language on thought. It will reflect to an important extent the efficiency of particular media of communication and its possibilities in creating conditions favourable to creative thought. Irrelevant details have been consistently added to each chapter seemingly for the sake of demonstrating breadth of research.
His investigation into communications in empires that prospered and later collapsed, was aimed empre finding answe A comprehensive look at history of communications from antiquity to the 50s, when the author died. Sidon was recaptured in the eighth century but Assyrian advance and declining sea-power favoured independent colonies such as Carthage, founded in B.
Buy the selected items together This item: The Western church, on the other hand, narold images as useful especially for reaching the illiterate. Would Innis have been cheered by the rise of the Internet and its millions of online conversations? He left the cult of Babylonian gods undisturbed and restored the statues to their owners in Babylon.