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All About Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis (; November 5, 1894 – November 8, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory and Canadian economic history
The affiliated Innis College at the University of Toronto is named for him
Despite his dense and difficult prose, many scholars consider Innis one of Canada's most original thinkers
He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, wood, wheat, mined metals and fossil fuels.
Innis's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations
He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC
He warned, however, that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity".
Innis laid the basis for scholarship that looked at the social sciences from a distinctly Canadian point of view
As the head of the University of Toronto's political economy department, he worked to build up a cadre of Canadian scholars so that universities would not continue to rely as heavily on British or American-trained professors unfamiliar with Canada's history and culture
He was successful in establishing sources of financing for Canadian scholarly research.
Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures
He believed that independent universities, as centres of critical thought, were essential to the survival of Western civilization
His intellectual disciple and university colleague, Marshall McLuhan, lamented Innis's premature death as a disastrous loss for human understanding
McLuhan wrote: "I am pleased to think of my own book The Gutenberg Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing."