Monopolies of Knowledge - Origins of The Concept - History and Classical Studies

History and Classical Studies

Innis's concept of monopolies of knowledge was also influenced by the scholar Solomon Gandz who published a lengthy paper in 1939 on the significance of the oral tradition in the development of civilizations. Gandz advanced the idea that the control of language in the oral tradition was grounded in religious institutions which ensured a civilization's continuity by preserving its traditions. At the same time, however, religious elites often shared their power with political elites who controlled the use of military force, thereby ensuring a civilization's success in conquering and holding territory.

Innis incorporated these ideas in his concept of time-biased and space-biased media. He argued that civilizations and empires flourished when there was a balance between time- and space-biased media. The triumph of one type of medium over the other, however, undermined stability demonstrating that unbalanced monopolies of knowledge could gradually lead to the decline and fall of civilizations and empires.Innis argued this was, in fact, happening to Western civilization which had become dangerously unbalanced partly because of the monopoly of knowledge exercised by space-biased communications technologies such as the daily newspaper. For Innis, the newspaper reflected an obsession with what he termed "present-mindedness." Newspapers and the news agencies that served them could transmit large amounts of information over long distances, but this speed of transmission and the emphasis on immediacy obliterated continuity and memory. "Time," Innis wrote, "has been cut into pieces the length of a day's newspaper." The advent of electronic media—radio and later, television—added more speed and immediacy contributing cumulatively to the erasure of cultural memory. Moreover, these space-biased media could be used by political elites to mobilize large populations—as in Nazi Germany—to support disastrous wars of conquest.