Empire and Communications - Paperback

by Harold A. Innis (Author), Andrew Calabrese (Foreword by), Alexander John Watson (Other)

It's been said that without Harold A. Innis there could have been no Marshall McLuhan. Empire and Communications is one of Innis's most important contributions to the debate about how media influence the development of consciousness and societies. In this foundational work, he traces humanity's movement from the oral tradition of preliterate cultures to the electronic media of recent times. Along the way, he presents his own influential concepts of oral communication, time and space bias, and monopolies of knowledge.

Author Biography

Harold A. 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. In addition to Empire and Communications, his other influential communication works include The Bias of Communication and Changing Concepts of Time. Innis died in Toronto in 1952.