Toronto School

1. Technological Determinism or
Communication Determinism?
The Toronto School: Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan

2. Harold Innis
• Uses concrete examples in order to show how the dominant modes in
communication has had an impact on civilizations
• He uses the term ‘time-biased’ and ‘space-biased’ in order to distinguish
different media forms, and how these forms have particular consequences to the
organization of civilization
• 4 important elements of ‘The bias of communication’
• 1: Emerges from historical analysis, one dealing with the study of communication in history,
and the other addresses the history of communication
• 2: Focus on the actual medium instead of the content
• 3: His economic background enabled him to adapt the theory of monopoly to the study of
communication. He created the term ‘monopoly of knowledge’ in order to show how
communication effects the ways in which people create and distribute knowledge
• 4: Introduces the idea of the time-space divide (I.e. Think about space bias media, such as
radio and mass-produces newspapers and television, and time bias media, such as oral
speech, clay, and stone)

3. “Monopoly of Knowledge”
• But the monopoly of knowledge is not a concept of the past. Take this
quotation from the New York Times for example: “When American
forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they
hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information
that drove them into American gun sights.”
• Here, you can see how new media technologies are utilized for the
purposes of power and control. The individuals whom know how to
use communication technologies for their benefit are the ‘monopolies
of knowledge’ and ‘monopolies of power’.
• Can you think of other examples?

4. “The Medium is the Message”
What does this mean?
• “Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for
brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be
argued that these activities are in some way the “content” of the
electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light. This
fact merely underlines the point that “the medium is the message”
because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form
of human association and action. The content or uses of such media
are as diverse as they are ineffectual in shaping the form of human
association. Indeed, it is only too typical that the “content” of any
medium blinds us to the character of the medium.”
(McLuhan, 1964, p.2)

5. McLuhan’s history according to mediums: The
media environment and social arrangement
1. Civilization of orality (Tribal Age)
• The dominant sense organ was the ear, therefore it was a time of community
• Everyone heard at the same time, which meant that listening became a group activity and a unifying act
• Everything is more immediate and present
2. Civilization of literacy
• A time of private detachment because the eye is the dominant sense organ
• Words were no longer alive and immediate, as they were able to be read over and over again
• When people learned to read, they became independent thinkers
3. Civilization of the printing press (visual culture)
• Printing intensified the visual as the dominant sense organ
• The mass production of books gave people the freedom to consume a vast amount of information, however it also alienated
people from others and from immediacy of their surrounding
4. Civilization of electricity (Retribalization)
• The age of instant communication enabled for a return to an environment with simultaneous sounds and visual as the
dominant sense organs
• Being able to be in constant contact with the world becomes a nosy generation where everyone knows everyone’s business
and everyone’s business is everyone else’s
• = the concept of the ‘Global Village’