A dictionary of Marshall McLuhanβs quotations
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Viewing chapter Innis, Harold Adams (28 quotes)
"My bias is with the oral tradition, particularly as reflected in Greek civilization, and with the necessity of recapturing something of its spirit."
Harold Innis
Chapter:
Innis, Harold Adams
Innis was the first media ecologist
Marshall McLuhan
Reported by Thomas Cooper, heard from MM in a taped interview of April, 1976, as reported in Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan (2025)
Year: 1976
Chapter:
Innis, Harold Adams
β¦he [Innis] shifted his attention from the trade-routes of the external world to the trade-routes of the mind.
βThe Later Innis" Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 60, No 3,Autumn (1953), p 385, reprinted in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 39
Year: 1953
As Easterbrook may have told you I have been considering an experiment in communication which is to follow the lines of this letter in suggesting means of linking a variety of specialized fields by what might be called a method of esthetic analysis of their common features. This method has been used by my friend Sigfried Giedion in Space, Time and Architecture and in Mechanization Takes Command. What I have been considering is a single mimeographed sheet to be sent out weekly or fortnightly to a few dozen people in different fields, at first illustrating the underlying unities of form which exist where diversity is all that meets the eye. Then, it is hoped there will be a feedback of related perception from various readers which will establish a continuous flow.
Letter to Harold Innis, March 14, 1951, in Letters (1988), p 223
Year: 1951
There is one department in which Innis never fails, and in which the flavour of Inniscence is never lost οΏ½οΏ½ his humour. Humour is of the essence of his aphoristic association of incongruities.
Introduction to Innisβs Bias of Communication (1964), p xiv
Year: 1964
[On first reading Innisβs essay βMinervaβs Owlβ in The Bias of Communication] How exciting it was to encounter a writer whose every phrase invited prolonged meditation and exploration: βAlexandria broke the link between science and philosophy. The library was an imperial instrument to offset the influence of Egyptian priesthood.β (p 10)
Introduction to Harold A. Innisβs The Bias of Communication, 1964 edition, p ix
Year: 1964
Innis taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias of distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.
Introduction, Harold A. Innisβs The Bias of Communication, 1964 edition, p xi
Year: 1964
From Adam Smith and Ricardo to Karl Marx and Keynes, economists have ignored all service/disservice environments. This blank in their vision has rendered their analyses sterile and irrelevant. Yet by supplying the needed insights to complete this blank, Innis became unintelligible. That is to say, he was stating actualities which most scholars preferred to know nothing about.
βLibraries, Past, Present, Futureβ (1970), p 8
Year: 1970
It was Max Weber who introduced the new method [law of the situation] into history and the social sciences. In tackling any area of a subject he simply asked: "What is the main prop or factor in this entire situation without which there would be something else altogether?" It was a method taken over by Harold Innis for the study of Canadian politics and economics.
The New Journey for the Magi, 1965, p 3
Year: 1965
Chapter:
Complementarities
Drawn to McLuhan #11
In his analysis of books, authors, and markets, [Alexander] Pope, like Harold Innis in The Bias of Communication, assumes that the entire operation of print in our lives is not only unconscious but that for this very reason it immeasurably enlarges the domain of the unconscious. Pope placed an owl at the beginning of The Dunciad, and Innis entitled the opening chapter of The Bias of Communication βMinervaβs Owlβ: βMinervaβs Owl begins its flight only in the gathering duskοΏ½οΏ½β
βOn Popeβs Duncaidβ, in The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, (1962), p 260, reprinted in The Interior Landscape (1969), p 175
Year: 1962
Even Aristotle was led into the βusuryβ trap by his failure to see the enormous service environments created by writing and coinage as wealth-makers. From Adam Smith and Ricardo to Karl Marx and Keynes, economists have ignored all service/disservice environments. This blank in their vision has rendered their analyses sterile and irrelevant. Yet by supplying the needed insights to complete this blank, Innis became unintelligible. That is to say, he was stating actualities, which most scholars preferred to know nothing about.
βLibraries, Past, Present, Futureβ (1970), p 8
Year: 1970
Dear Innis
Thanks for the lecture re-print. This makes an opportunity for me to mention my interest in the work you are doing in communication study in general. there are lines appearing in Empire and Communications [1950], for example, which suggest the possibility of organizing an entire school of studies. Many of the ancient language theories of the Logos type which you cite in Empire and Communication for their bearings on government and society have recurred and amalgamated themselves today under the auspices of anthropology and social psychology.
Letter to Harold Innis, March 14, 1951, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p 224
Year: 1951
[Innis] takes time but he also saves time. Each sentence is a compressed monograph. He includes a small library on each page, and often incorporates a small library of references on the same page in addition. If the business of the teacher is to save the studentβs time, Innis is one of the greatest teachers on record.
Introduction to Harold A. Innisβs The Bias of Communication (1964 edition), p ix
Year: 1964
As soon as the reader grasps that Innis is concerned with the unique power of each form to alter the action of other forms it encounters, he will be able to proceed as Innis did. He can begin to observe and estimate the action and counteraction of forms past and present. He will discover that Innis never repeats himself , but that he never ceases to test the action of oral forms of knowledge and social organization in different social contexts.
Introduction to Harold A. Innisβs The Bias of Communication (reprint, 1964), p x
Year: 1964
His insight that the American Revolution was in large part due to a clash between the interests of the settlers on one hand, and the interests of the fur traders on the other, is the sort of vision that becomes typical of the later Innis. He changed his procedure from a "point of view" to that of generating insights by the method of "interface" as it is named in chemistry.
Introduction to Harold A. Innisβ The Bias of Communication (1962)
Year: 1962
[Innis] expects the reader to make discovery after discovery that he himself had missed.
Introduction to Innisβs The Bias of Communication (reprint, 1964), p vii
Year: 1964
Most human attention is allocated to the 90% area which is the area of problems. The 10% area is the area of irritation and also of opportunity. It was the genius of Harold Innis that he refused to be distracted by the 90% area of problems.
Introduction to Bias of Communication (1964), p 8
Year: 1964
Chapters:
McLuhanisms & Zingers | Problem Solving
He changed his procedure from working with a βpoint of viewβ to that of the generating of insights by the method of 'interface.' By contrast, a βpoint of viewβ is merely a way of looking at something. But an insight is the sudden awareness of a complex process of interaction
Forward to H.A. Innisβs Empire and Communication, 1972 edition, in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 194
Year: 1972
Innis is the real freak. How did that hick Baptist ever come up with this amazing method of studying the effects of technology?
Macleans interview, 1977, p 9
Year: 1977
Innis recognized that the Newtonian hierarchy of natural events had crumbled. He was not under its spell in the least, because he saw what had to be done was a great leap forward in understanding of organizing human affairs. Approaching the past dynamically as a dramatic action with a world cast, Innis naturally saw history as a mass of ruins and misconceived enterprises. In his power to reveal the pattern of massive imperial events, Innis is a kind of deus ex machine unmasking the actors. This power to expose the hidden motivations of great corporate actors, such as the city-state of Roman or Babylonian bureaucracies, almost puts Innis in the role of a satirist. One no sooner uses the word than its appropriateness to Innis becomes evident.
Forward to H.A. Innisβs Empire and Communication, 1972 edition, in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 194
Year: 1972
The reason for the βdifficultiesβ which many people encounter in reading Innis arises from his participative concern with processes rather than a point of view. As he became better acquainted with the historical processes released by technical innovation, he was less and less inclined to moralize. He came to see historical Fate as the motivated refusal to recognize the patterns of culture already within the various culture. He tackled these matters as practical problems to be solved by direct observation and analysis, developing his perceptual tools by means of historical comparison and contrast. The resulting awareness leaves as little room for moralizing as it does for a point of view.
Forward to H.A. Innisβs Empire and Communication, 1972 edition, in On the Nature of Media (2016), pp 194-195
Year: 1972
[Innis] had discovered a means of using historical situations as a lab in which to test the character of technology in the shaping of cultures. Innis taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias or distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.
Introduction to 1972 edition of Innisβs Empire and Communication, p viii -- entitled the opening chapter of The Bias of Communication, βMinervaβs Owlβ
Year: 1972
Most human attention is allocated to the 90% area which is the area of problems. The 10% area is the area of irritation and also of opportunity. It was the genius of Harold Innis that he refused to be distracted by the 90% area of problems.
Introduction to Innisβs The Bias of Communication, 1964 [locate page]
Year: 1964
Chapters:
McLuhanisms & Zingers | Problem Solving
Until the work of Harold Innis, I have been unable to discover any epistemology of experience, as opposed to an epistemology of knowledge.
Letter to Tom and Dorothy Easterbrook, August 1, 1972, in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987) p 455
Year: 1972
The kind of understanding of social process which Innis achieved is not shared by other historians. Innis is unique in having been the first to apply the possibilities of pattern recognition to a wired planet burdened by information overload.
Foreword to H.A. Innisβs Empire and Communication, 1972 edition, in On the Nature of Media (2016), pp 194-195
Year: 1972
Innis understood that acoustic and visual space were antithetic and complementary, like the written and oral traditions. That is why he has such relevance for the student of libraries. His work is founded on recognition of the fact that there must be some rapport between the written and the oral traditions β between the visual and the auditory β for any society to persist in a state of health.
βLibraries, Past, Present, Futureβ (1970), p 9
Year: 1970
Chapter:
Complementarities
Innis takes much time to read if he is read on his own terms. That he deserves to be read on his own terms becomes obvious as soon as that experiment is tried even once. So read he takes time but he also saves time. Each sentence is a compressed monograph. He includes a small library on each page, and often incorporates a small library of references on the same page in addition. If the business of the teacher is to save the studentβs time, Innis is one of the greatest teachers on record.
Introduction to Bias of Communication [look up page] , [also in Explorations, June, 1969]
Year: 1969
The paradox by which depression comes from inflation and speed-up, and the paradox by which extreme monopolies of knowledge through specialism flip into old-fashioned feudalism in the organization of the community of learning β all these contradictions and conflicts are not only seen by Innis, but can also be deciphered by the reader if he troubles to acquire the multilingual grammar and syntax of the technologies that invest us.
Forward to H.A. Innisβs Empire and Communication, 1972 edition, in On the Nature of Media (2016), p 203
Year: 1972
Chapter:
Paradox
Most writers are occupied in providing accounts of the contents of philosophy, science, libraries, empires, and religion. Innis invites us instead to consider the formalities of power exerted by these structures in their mutual interaction.
Introduction to Innisβs The Bias of Communication (reprint, 1964), p ix
Year: 1964
The late Dean Innis was a pioneer in the study of communication theory and practice. Like most pioneers he got into the new subject by accident.
βProb. of Reading,β a 6 page handwritten item, circa 1952, p 1
Year: 1952