[Harold] Innis thought the real insights come from the provinces, from the margin . . . As Innis read history, the marginal societies have always had a clearer understanding of the world than their imperial neighbours . . .
Innis’s was a dark vision because he saw the “mechanized” media as replacing ordinary face-to-face conversation. Such conversations since Socrates had helped equip free individuals to build free societies by examining many points of view. Instead we were to be increasingly dominated by a single point of view in print and electronic media: the view of the imperial centre.
Would Innis have been cheered by the rise of the Internet and its millions of online conversations? Probably not. As Watson observes, the advent of the web is eradicating margins. The blogosphere simply multiplies the number of outlets for the same few messages.
Crawford Kilian: «Innis Found Truth on the Edge», in TheTyee.ca ; Vancouver : The Tyee, 2006-09-12 (excerpt La Litera información)
