How Prometheus Is Bound: Applying the Innis Method of Communications Analysis to the Internet

Abstract

This article argues that Harold Innis' method of communications analysis is sufficiently modular that it can be applied to a medium not addressed in his own work - the Internet. It further argues that Innis developed this method because he believed each new medium faces us with a moral choice, and that his concern for the space/time balance represents a moral level of analysis focused on a medium's implications for freedom and humanism. Once applied to the Internet, this analytical method identifies reasons to be concerned for the social and political impact of this technology.
 
 Résumé : Cet article soutient que la méthode d'analyse en communications d'Harold Innis est suffisamment modulable pour pouvoir s'appliquer à un média qu'il n'a pas pu étudier de son vivant, Internet. L'article soutient en outre qu'Innis a développé sa méthode parce qu'il croyait que chaque nouveau média nous donne l'occasion de faire un choix moral, et parce que son souci pour un équilibre espace/temps représente une approche qui est elle-même morale, axée comme elle l'est sur les conséquences des médias pour la liberté et l'humanisme. Cette méthode analytique, quand on l'applique à Internet, indique qu'on a raison de se préoccuper des impacts sociaux et politiques de cette technologie.

The Vanishing Table, or Community in a World that is No World

“…Directly or indirectly, Innis's concerns about dislocation are at the base of much of the contemporary concern about the negative impact of digital communication technologies on community. See, for example, Frost (2003).…”

Activism in the Fast Lane: Social Movements and the Neglect of Time

“…The Internet can reach virtually anywhere in the world, provided sufficient infrastructure and the availability of telephony; therefore, all its information potentially has a global reach.3 But the ability to transmit and receive information from almost any part of the world instantaneously has been accompanied by a growing neglect of duration: as Innis recognized, to the extent that a medium excels at controlling space, it is generally less efficient at controlling time. Thus, while the Internet's infrastructure itself is robust, the messages transmitted online are highly perishable and are easily obliterated with the push of a button (Frost 2003). According to web archivist Brewster Kahle, the World Wide Web has a "memory" of about two months (cited in Brand 1999:48).…”

“…(Cobarrubias and Casas 2007) The lack of cultural and institutional memory identified above is magnified through the Internet and other spatially biased media. The Internet represents a communicative environment wherein users are encouraged to "click onto the next thing" and where website designers work under the basic premise that they have mere seconds to grab the viewers' attention before they surf away to find something more interesting (Frost 2003). In this respect, the Internet shapes the very mode of thought in modern society by affecting attention spans and memory.…”

“…He maintained that as a result of the dominance of the visual, "'perception' becomes replaced with sensation' as the central function in human consciousness" and that "sensory imbalance and political instability" represented "two sides of the same phenomenon" (ibid). In a similar vein, Frost (2003) argues that "visual media promote specific, limited modes of perception and understanding and of economic and spatial organization, which shape the society and culture in which they circulate." Visual media are conducive to inducing feeling, not critical, reflexive thinking.…”

“…It is important to note that such dynamics, of course, are not new; they have long generated the annihilation of space and time and can be explicated in terms of 3. Of course, as Frost (2003) and others have pointed out, the digital divide remains a serious obstacle to Internet connectivity around the world, and that in many places even basic telephony is not available.…”