Ubiquitous Media and Monopolies of Knowledge: The Approach of Harold Innis

In this chapter, Innis’ approach to ubiquitous media will be outlined. It will focus on how and why such media influence taken-for-granted thinking in a given place and time. To explain, the concept “monopoly of knowledge” is applied to two ubiquitous media of Innis’ time: the price system and printing. In the first section, some background concerning the bases of his interest in media and monopolies of knowledge is provided. In the second, what might be called Innis’ approach to ubiquitous media is presented and this, in the third section, is demonstrated through the examples of the price system and printing. In the penultimate section, his approach is loosely applied to the contemporary ubiquity of digital communications technologies. Finally, in the chapter’s conclusion, key parts of the argument presented will be summarized and Innis’ admonition against those treating such an approach as some kind of prognosticative template is underlined

Digital Prosumption and Alienation

Since the hybrid producer-consumer – the prosumer – was conceptualized three decades ago, prosumption has been embraced by both mainstream and progressive analysts. With digital technologies enabling more people to engage in an array of online prosumption activities, one shared claim is particularly striking: the empowering and humanizing implications of prosumption will mark the end of human alienation. In this paper, I assess this extraordinary prediction by, first, establishing that the core of Marx’s conceptualization of alienation is capital’s dominance over human relations, compelling people to become mere tools of the production process. Second, I assess both general and specific digital prosumption developments in light of this understanding of alienation. Third, my analysis concludes that people will participate in prosumption in at least three discernible ways: most will remain relatively powerless tools of capital; some will act as capital’s creative tools; and a minority (those possessing extraordinary capabilities) will have the potential to employ prosumption in ways that redress their alienation

Marx’s Value Theory: a Critical Response to Analyses of Digital Prosumption

Abstract In their assessment of value creation through prosumption and other activities related to the use of digital technologies, despite significant differences, Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) misinterpret Marx\u27s value theory. Through their analyses, a totalizing or new form of capitalism is said to have emerged, but these, I argue, entail demonstrably idealist theorizations. The end result is that these authors occlude more than they clarify in their debates concerning value, exploitation, and the role played by digital technologies. However, once we understand the precision needed to apply Marx\u27s complex theory—including his conceptualization of “labor power” and the distinction he makes between “productive” and “unproductive” labor—it becomes apparent that a more careful reading of Marx is a priority

Neo-Imperialism and the Crisis of Time

This article applies the Innisian concept of media bias to contemporary U.S. foreign policy developments. The author argues that the common sense informing an emerging neo-imperialism has been profoundly influenced by Washington’s general neglect of time. Among others, consumption is assessed as a medium shaping such biases as well as contradictory policies related to the globalization project

Harold Innis and the Greek Tradition: an essay concerning his ontological transformation

The transition of Harold Innis’ work from staples research to communications studies commonly is understood to have been an extension of his earlier research rather than a dramatic break from it. While in agreement, we argue that a significant transformation in Innis’s ontology (but not his epistemology) also took place. This can be understood by referencing his concerns about the fate of civilization and his views on the prospectively strategic role of what he called the Greek tradition. To explain this, herein we concentrate on Innis’ largely forgotten book Political Economy in the Modern State, initiated in 1943 and published in 1946, as a window into his intellectual processes. By the latter year, Innis had come to believe that a second Greek-inspired renaissance was needed. Vestiges of the Greek tradition, Innis thought, had to be recalled through the university and the humanities in order to provide society with the reflective universal perspective needed for survival. This transitional and transformational period involving his embrace of the Greek tradition as a kind of ideal type constitutes an important but under assessed aspect of Innis’s intellectual development

HAROLD INNIS AND \u27THE BIAS OF COMMUNICATION\u27

Fifty years after his death, Harold Innis remains one of the most widely cited but least understood of communication theorists. This is particularly true in relation to his concept of ‘bias’. This paper reconstructs this concept and places it in the context of Innis’ uniquely non-Marxist dialectical materialist methodology. In so doing, the author emphasizes ongoing debates concerning Innis’ work and demonstrates its utility in relation to contemporary analyses of the Internet and related developments

Technological Fetishism and US Foreign Policy: The Mediating Role of Digital ICTs

This article looks back at an Obama administration foreign policy initiative called Internet freedom and discusses US responses to anti-American extremism involving digital communications technologies. It does this by using Marx’s concept of the fetish to argue that technological fetishism played a constitutive and mediating role in policymaking. Through this analysis – relating international relations with political economy and Marxist theory – the empowering implications of these technologies for American state interests are shown to be also disempowering. Most US officials were likely to be aware that digital communications technologies did not have the inherent powers that their policies implied but, nevertheless, they continued to develop and apply Internet freedom and related policies as if they did. This paradox, it will be underlined, is in keeping with Marx’s analysis of the complex reality whereby the fetish performs a mediating role in institutionalized ways of thinking

The Role of Communication in Global Civil Society: Forces, Processes, Prospects

The author examines the concept of global civil society (GCS) through the use of theoretical tools and empirical evidence related to the study of International Communication. He demonstrates that scholarship on GCS tends to simplify the process through which information becomes knowledge and that the state system-GCS relationship often is presented in terms of an ahistorical power dichotomy. In relation to these problems, what the author calls GCS progressives tend to underplay political-economic factors shaping GCS, including the implications of structural power; they tend to emphasize the importance of spatial integration while neglecting related changes in temporal norms; and, more essentially, they often under-theorize the importance of socialization processes and relatively unmediated relationships in the ongoing construction of reality. The author concludes that through a more focused analysis-concentrating on how new technologies can be used to organize nationally and locally, and on lifestyle changes associated with communications developments-more precise analyses and fruitful strategies for GCS progressives may emerge

‘Digital Engagement: America’s Use (and Misuse) of Marshall McLuhan’

Abstract In recent years the United States has turned to digital technologies to buoy its response to anti-Americanism in the so-called “Muslim world.” At least three concepts appear to be shaping this effort. The first is a marketing-based strategy called “engagement.” The other two are derivations of Marshall McLuhan\u27s “global village” and his aphorism that “the medium is the message.” This article focuses on the uses and misuses of McLuhan\u27s work by foreign policy officials in Washington. It argues that their stated purpose—to empower people and further inter-cultural understanding through dialogue—is dubious. Indeed, pronouncements regarding these potentials now sit uncomfortably alongside Washington\u27s use of these same technologies to manage dissent. By assessing digital engagement and a more general initiative called “internet freedom” (both in the light of what McLuhan, in fact, says), American aspirations involving digital communications are shown to be more than just contradictory; they are dangerously misguided