Balance

superficial for both media and culture at first glance, it was informed in Innis’ analysis by a moral mission, and here the notion of balance comes in.

Innis was interested in the space- and time-bias of the media because he believed that the flourishing of human societies depended on ensuring a balance between the concepts of space and time.⁵¹⁹ Should any of the two media become dominant to the point of forming a monopoly of knowledge, interests and symbols, the balance would become disturbed, and at several points in history this has caused the disintegration of societies, as argued by Innis in his texts.⁵²⁰ His analysis of the history of media and their influence prompted him to conclude that balance was the key to stability.⁵²¹ Ian Angus has also explained how this relates to the technologies of communication, considering that Innis introduced the concept of balance “to suggest that a society is most successful when it is based not upon one predominant medium of communication but upon several, especially a combination of several media which orient towards competing biases of space and time.”⁵²² As Angus further explains, it is not suggested as being possible to have an “unbiased” perspective, but rather “that a balance of biases can allow a viewpoint which, in a sense, neutralizes the conflicting biases of a plurality of media.”⁵²³ Indeed, such an idea can be found in an essay of Innis entitled the Strategy of Culture, where he argues against “the pernicious influence of American advertising reflected especially in the periodical press and the powerful persistent impact of commercialism”, which Innis considered was destroying Canadian culture, on which he based his analysis.⁵²⁴ According to Innis, Canada could only hold against American cultural imperialism “by attempting constructive efforts to explore the cultural possibilities of various media of communication and to develop them along lines free from commercialism.”⁵²⁵ For Innis, the Greek civilisation and Byzantine Empire represent examples of how balance could be achieved and maintained. For example, the Byzantine Empire, according to Innis, lasted long due to the balance that existed between the power exercised by space- and by time-biased media.⁵²⁶ As Innis explains, it “developed on the basis of a compromise between organizations reflecting the bias of different media: that of papyrus in the development of an imperial bureaucracy in relation to a vast area, and that of parchment in the development of an

519 Innis, Bias. Also Innis, Empire; Also Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom”.

520 Innis, Bias. Also Innis, Empire.

521 Innis, Bias, 64; see also the interpretation of Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom,”34-35.

522 Angus, “The Materiality of Expression”.

523 Ibid

524 See Harold A. Innis, “The Strategy of Culture,” in Innis, Changing Concepts of Time, 1-20.

525 Innis, “The Strategy of Culture,” 20.

526 See Innis, Empire. See also Innis, Bias.

ecclesiastical hierarchy in relation to time.”⁵²⁷ In light of these arguments advanced by Innis, Ian Angus sustains that balance represents a healing intention inherent within Innis’ theory, namely “to restore balance where balance has been disturbed.”⁵²⁸ It is possible to agree with Angus, given that Innis explicitly warns that Western civilisation has extended too much across space and has lost interest in time, thus heading towards its own destruction, with recovering balance representing the solution to this problem.⁵²⁹ However, according to both Frost and Noble, there was more to Innis’ concern for balance, which they related with

“freedom”.⁵³⁰

To start with, Richard Noble, sees a moral liberal theory in Innis’ arguments. In order to explain Innis’ concept of balance, he studies his conception of freedom, which Noble argues was a substantive good for Innis, whose “presence or absence was a measure of a society’s balance and stability, a measure of its ability to produce conditions in which humans can flourish.”⁵³¹ However, according to Noble, Innis “did not believe that freedom should be conceived solely in terms of equal rights for individuals, particularly if this meant, as it did in the United States, equal rights guaranteed by a written constitution.”⁵³² Following Innis’

stated preference for the oral tradition, Noble considers that he in fact associated freedom with cultural traditions and historically evolved institutions.⁵³³ Innis argued that Western democracies were obsessed with space, the centralisation of power, cultural uniformity, and mechanisation, which has destroyed the conditions of freedom of thought;⁵³⁴ so for him, recovering the oral tradition, which resists mechanisation, was the “antidote that can restore balance” in Western societies.⁵³⁵ Constructing on Noble’s interpretation, Frost only partially agrees, sustaining that Innis’ liberalism was set within a broader humanism.⁵³⁶ Accordingly, Frost starts by agreeing with Noble that “Innis' liberal goals remain subject to his fundamental interest in the space/time balance.”⁵³⁷ However, she disagrees with Noble casting this “as a kind of utilitarian concern for the ultimate setting of liberty.”⁵³⁸ Frost believes that Innis was

527 Innis, Empire, 112.

528 Angus, “The Materiality of Expression”.

529 Innis, Bias, 76. Also Innis, Empire.

530 Frost, “How Prometheus is Bound.” and Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom.”

531 Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom,” 34.

532 Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom,” 34. This should be understood in relation with his understanding that each medium had a bias, as well as with his preference for the oral tradition

533 Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom,” 34.

534 Innis, Bias, 190.

535 Noble, “Innis’s Conception of Freedom,” 35-36.

536 Frost, “How Prometheus is Bound”.

537 Ibid.

538 Ibid.

not interested in freedom so that societies might “progress” in a utilitarian sense, but rather so that people could live free of manipulation, upheaval, and brutality.⁵³⁹ As she states, “the moral message to Innis' communications work certainly involves a concern for freedom, for cultural flexibility, and for civilizational longevity. But the backdrop for these objectives was his conviction…that we needed to return to the human scale and that the human experience should again be fully reflected in our dominant communications.”⁵⁴⁰ Therefore, for Frost, Innis’ was a liberal theory yet anchored in humanism; it offered the backdrop for his analysis and any analysis using Innis’ theory “would be incomplete until it accounted for the liberal and humanist implications of a new medium.” ⁵⁴¹ In line with these thoughts, studying the bias of digital technology and its implications for duration and dissemination is also undertaken in this dissertation in light of a concern for the possibilities of balance, which represents not only a moral level of analysis, but the very context in which discussions of bias have been embedded.