Class Notes from Jan 12, 09 to March 23, 09: Courtesy Jessica Fabrizio

Jan 12^th 2009

The Rise and Fall of Communications Empires and The Bias of Communication

Group L: March 2^nd

Focus:

• why is a focus on the medium of communication itself so important?
• How do different types of communication technologies develop and shape their host societies?
• How do communications favour the development of particular organization structures?

Information Revolutions

• series of revolutions from recorded information to reliable storage outside the brain
• definition of information revolution important
• long wave transformation
• political formations and economic structures are affected by series of transformations
• in order for information revolution to success entire populations must be ready for them
• the cause/effect relationship between social change and media
• social or political turbulance is often a necessary basis in the information revolution structure

Take the Ice Age…

• Ice Age Man – devt of symbolic language
• Marshack speaks of this man
• petroglyphs, engravings, etc – as early as 15 000 BC signified the development of an increasing complexity of human kinds economic life
• markers of important cultural events – something serious was happening over time
• notations marked an event
• separate symbol systems had different meanings/imagery; each of which was used differently and had separate meanings

The Bias of Communication

• the relationship between exercise of power and the way knowledge is preserved
• bias of communications – where forms of communications are vital in understanding how societies evolved
• i.e. technologies like cell phones can lead to attention deficit disorder
• media and forms of communication emphasize different effects – not what they say, but what they are
• monopolies of knowledge
• shapes environments – political, social and religious
• Harold Innis believed that communications was anything but a neutral medium

Some Really Old Examples

• Tigris/Euphrates Valley – combination of developments
• Used clay
• Egypt and Imperial organization
• Papyrus made it easier to keep extensive records
• the Prophet Isaiah – the ABCs and Paper (a more extensive/simplified alphabet)

Oral VS Written

• an important distinction
• orality – spoken cultures
• oral tradition
• flexibility (a tendency)
• weak on political unity
• written
• decline in power of expression? Once it was written people felt like they didn’t have to think anymore
• Control of knowledge and monopolies of knowledge

Space vs time

• the ying and yang of civilizations- expansion and extension (space) vs duration and longevity (time) – rarely are these in balance
• communications media tend to favour one of the other (oral/written)
• Egyptian examples
• Papyrus gave society the means to progress
• If it is passed from one society to another it may cause unrest
• The emergence of the profession of scribes
• writing and thought were secularized
• Administration (papyrus was able to extend a law across)

Monopolies of Knowledge

• domination of information flow by a particular group
• new communications techniques often undermine these monopolies
• useful as a tool of understanding who’s got the power, and who doesn’t; and who keeps it, too
• Cuneiform, hieroglyphics – I know the language and you don’t
• simplicity of alphabet meant it was more accessible

Know Your Alphabet

• what good are they, anyway? If they are written on papyrus it was facilitate the growth of trade, the emergence on smaller nations dependent on distinct nations, political organization
• Hebrews led to abstract in writing – opened the way to a critical advance in civilization; the supremacy of blood relation
• Emphasis on a monotheistic god
• Ethical
• Prophet
• The Persian Empire

Talk, Talk, Talk: The Oral Tradition

• Greeks and the oral tradition and discussion
• Emphasized political ferment
• Tried to avoid monopolies of knowledge built around complex script
• And what a culture they built (500BC)
• Innis relates the decline of Greece to the emergence of writing

Some Further Examples:

• Christain writing and parchment- caused Christianity to flourish
• The Rule of St. Benedict – to preserve books as a sacred duty
• Monolpolies of knowledge based on parchment vs paper

Communications and Knowledge

• monopolies of knowledge
• monastaries – books were here (The Benedictine Rule)
• copyist guilds
• the printing press – the high cost of book led to this; gothic style writing also led to this
• how these changes affected (paper) economic and political life
• not to mention dividing Western Christianity in two (Reformation)

Literacy and its Discontents:

The Case of Classical Athens and The Roman Republic/Empire

The Problem of Literacy:

• hard to take an objective view
• changing assumptions about orality and literacy
• value of oral tradition more recognized

Athens Example:

• 4^th and 5^th Centuries BC – Athens’ vibrant culture and democracy
• Greece as the test case for orality
• A transitional period – oral and written combine
• Understanding the interplay between oral and written Athens
• Socrates and Plato – dialogue with the written word
• Orality and literacy not mutually exclusive
• There was a strong distaste and distrust of the written word—it was not thought of a adequate proof
• A civilized man in Greece had to be able to speak well in public
• Plato attacked the written word – he stopped writing things down near the end of his life – he was suspicious of it

Alphabetic Writing in the Greek World

- Debuted in the 8^th century

• don’t forget the Phoenicians
• inventing an alphabet and the literate basis of modern thought
• the link between literacy and the Power of the Idea
• the alphabet allows one to transmit an I dea (recognized, read, re-read)
• pre-alphabetic cultures were in a sense pre literary, pre philosophical, pre scientifical
• present day Chinese do not have an alphabet yet succeeded

Earliest Uses of Writing

• initial development and use
• writing things down – take 2 tablets and don’t forget to write
• poetry, cursing, dedications
• Ostraka (ostracized)– charges against a particular politician and place it at the city limits and the person would be banished
• If you didn’t know how to write you could get a note-taker

Jan 19^th 2009

The Spread of Writing

• the mystery of the spread of literacy
• the proliferation of uses- embedding itself in societies
• growing numbers of the literate
• the written word not always positive
• if you couldn’t read or write, you could have someone do it for you
• the functions of writing needed to multiply – mainly in terms of legal uses and business procedures and within the public life of the city
• writing was a new medium in the city—and it started to creep into the oral world
• the uses of the written word were not seen as totally positive; even among educated men; it generated suspicion
• the Greeks felt like it was deceitful

Writing and the Public Sphere

• the impact on the city-state in Greece
• written laws
• lists of officials
• written sacred laws
• The Written Law- a qualified advance
• Basis for equality and justice
• It is also based on who is writing the law
• It is apart of a social and political system and it a product of each of them
• Who writes the laws and who enforces them
• Advertising- selling yourself
• The unwritten laws were also powerful and belonged to rememberancers (memonis)

Politics and Writing

• correlation between ancient democracy and public records?
• Democracy and the written law go together…
• Democracy (Athens) promoted openness and accountability—which demand an easier access to records and laws
• Oligarchy (Sparta) neither publicized or made available public documents which cultivated secrecy; was not a good idea to ask for these documents
• But it takes a lot more than a parchment to guarantee your rights
• The legal and the political system behind the legal laws had to be democratized before it could be available to all citizens
• The Other uses of the written word:
• Administration and authority
• The written record was used to oppose Athenian power
• By the 4^th century BC we get the first instance of someone reading quietly
• Up until 4^th century reading quietly was not conceivable
• Written documents proliferate – why? Athens was developing a democracy and a complex administration

The State, the Individual and the Written Record

• social status and literacy
• the Athenian assembly was dealing with more assembly and administration
• Stlai- recorded settlements
• Writing became more trustworthy—used in court cases (who said what, when)
• Social status was: slave, free, owned something
• Literacy was important….but not essential
• Writing used as a means of communication and a way of oppression

Roma – SPQR

“The Home of Empire and of all Perfection” – Ammianus Marcellinus

• Lots to read – a more documentary society
• Roman society in the late republic is far more dominated by books and documents
• Latin literature inherited the heritage of Hellenistic scholarship – and they could build upon it while in Athens, they did not have such circumstances
• A wide reading public – 2^nd century AD
• Written word important in: taxation, trials, deliberation of citizen body, in the circulation of literature and in everyday life
• Performance: oral presentation was very important in Roman life – you could not succeed in Rome without public speaking
• Written text were used extensively in teaching purposes—members of the audience pooled their notes together

Writing Develops

• 450 BC Law of the Twelve Tables – allowing the lower classes of Rome to have knowledge of their relationships to the law (these are your rights and your responsibilities)
• persistence of the oral tradition
• developent of law – LEX in the ascendant
• as the law became more vital to the definition, it had to be written down, a manual to regulate
• women had more responsibility
• Roman law persisted for 2 millenniums

The Spread of Writing

• power of Rome is all around the Mediterranean and some of Africa
• Latin had reached maturity and this time, the power of written word had almost become as important as oral speech
• Effected Roman Society—extending the Greek influence
• Roman dominance of Egypt gave more access to Papyrus
• More books, lowered the Greek dramas
• Major problem of Rome: govern large areas
• required an emphasis on bureaucratic administration which leads to a weakening of democracy
• the spread of writing contributes to the downfall of the republic and the emergence of the empire

The Spread of Writing II

• late republic and the principate – the spread of literacy in Roman world
• the empire could reach you much easier
• the more laws, the more people were impinged upon
• the letter of the law becomes supreme
• books are not just transmitters of the Hellenistic period but of propaganda
• centralized administration – Rome became dependent on the army and territorial expansion
• by the 4^th century BC that texts of various kinds were vital to political and economical power
• Roamns used receipts, political slogans, kept records of who became a citizen, who was in their army, books advocating religious beliefs, used graffiti, commemorated the dead
• Politics and Literature remained oral

The Change

• rise in literacy from 250-100 BC
• followed by a decline in 200 – 400 AD
• functions of writing expanding during this period – increasing reliance on the written word in Rome
• other factors: supply of papyrus, educational philosophy at the time
• in the late Roman empire, decline in literacy among some regions—history is the reason for it
• decline of administrative use in the this period

Christianity and Writing

• spread by writing, or word of mouth?
• Uses of writing: sacred texts had wide-ranging importance
• Ordinary Christians and literacy
• Produced the gospels; felt for be powerful instruments of relationships with the devine
• 2^nd century AD cities would have a body of written material in their possession (canonical writing)
• General decline in literacy

How Many?

• the question of literacy rates in the empire
• 10%
• wide regional variations
• the real question: its uses and impact rather than the numbers

The Consequences:

• economic
• political hegemony and authority
• cultural extension
• imperial expansion – Rome
• does literacy facilitate exploitation?
• A very small class of literate people and a large one of illiterate
• Class distinctions still made a big difference
• Literacy could intensify the exploitation though
• Being able to write ones own notes did not guarantee anything but it gave a minimal sense of security
• A degree of protection against tyrants
• Opposition of Roman emperors took written form
• When reading and writing spreads to a group, it leads to them creating their own writes which prevents domination

Caveat Auditor

• effects of literacy should not be exaggerated – class, politics, etc
• positive effects: creation of defence for citizens

The Meaning of Writing

• instrument of power.. but also empowerment
• positive and negative effects
• the writing down of ideas acted as a resource for those who came afterwards

Intellectual Consequences

• progress made – in spite of use
• slowed some aspects of creativity and diversity
• technical fields
• the preserve of a privileged minority

Conclusions

• the legacy of literacy
• its interaction with political economic and cultural developments

The Renaissance Computer: The Gutenberg Press

• by 1455, Gutenberg had established the foundations of printing, to remain unaltered for the next 500 years
• 280 European towns by 1500 had the printing press; 20 million books by that same year
• information explosion
• it was a commodity, at the same time, new occupations: reading (instruction or pleasure)

Book	Computer
Cathedral/university library	Large scale institution/corporation
Indexing begins	Search engines
New databases possible	New databases possible
New forms and different commitment to space and new intellectual processes	Knowledge as discrete entity with own set of rules
Perpetuates the old	Perpetuates the old
Overlapping period scribal and print	Overlapping period – print and digital

Before and After

• borrowing privileges: books were chained up in libraries at the time
• scribes: only to create a few texts for the elite; too expensive to be purchased
• library was rare
• dramatic reduction in man hours, production goes up labour goes down

Print and the Public Arena

• Martin Luther and the power of the press
• Early printers: capitalists, publishers, agents, typesetters, retailers all in one
• Time period

Take the Reformation… Please

• reformation (1517FF) first religious movements to fully exploit potential of printing

“The Day The Universe Changed/A Matter of Fact” by James Burke

• we are cut off from direct contact from the world
• before 1450, life was local—people were intimate with nature because they required it for survival
• church was where they got the news about the real world—a teaching aid in stone, glass or painting (for the illiterate)
• being summoned to court, swearing to tell the truth, was all done orally—they remember dates or circumstances through real life happenings (how old are you? I was born the years all the cows died…etc)
• old people were the best witnesses—look up to the old because they were living records
• law only meant what custom and practice said it was
• memory theatre technique:
• rhyme in an oral world was the best way to keep facts in your head—letters were read to you… or if you could read… it would be read aloud (auditing)
• act of worship: scribes who copied scriptures – coped mistakes because words were thought of as untouchable images
• they didn’t not file things because they did not have enough—therefore you had to hunt around to find what you were looking for
• monasteries got visited once in a while with a book of the dead—whereby they would writes people’s names into it
• roads were built once the populations began to boom—produce and food flooded into the town and then they started to make things that people didn’t need but wanted
• 1400s paper—trades, professions, government used this
• The Indulgences writers were busy

German Goldsmith solved the problem of the indulgences

• Indulgence was given to people who confessed
• By climbing to the shrine on your knees you were rewarded an indulgence
• Fortune to be made from Pilgrams – sold trinkets, etc to them
• The Gutenberg Press – solved everyone’s problem as well as take away all of their memory
• Standardized, interchangeable typefaces – writing could be copied exactly as it was
• By 1490 printers had been set up in places like Naples, Florence, Rome, Paris, etc
• The Indulgences were the money maker for the presses – used the money to build St. Peter’s Basilica
• Con in Germany of the Indulgence
• 1517 Martin Luther created a list of complaints—sent to friends as well—it was all over Germany and in a month it was all over Germany and then found himself against the Pope – within one year the first scale propaganda paper was on
• Anti-Pope cartoons in his paper—he gave the people a chance to have their say to a live audience with safety
• Church hit back with a prohibited list of books, etc—book burning
• A new kind of thinking came about
• Everyone wanted books—set up shop where the money was—first capitalists—8 million books in the first year – revolution occurred
• Printing gave Europe the Florentine Renaissance
• Knowledge itself grew
• New careers in technical drawings
• Writing style became more direct and precise because of these drawings
• The Frankfurt Bookfair
• Technical books became popular
• The age of reliance of old people was gone for good
• Indexing became popular – cross-indexing—shows you how things or ideas interrelate

Take the Reformation…Please

• reformation (1517FF) first religious movement to fully exploit potential of printing (for better or for worse) – divides Christianity into Catholicism and Protestant
• propagandists and agitation
• possibility finally for pamphleteering directed at arising public support
• Antipapal Propaganda 1520

The Reformation Spreads

• England and Henry VIII
• Thos. Cromwell (English Minister) is as skillful as Martin Luther with propaganda and attracting a following through vernacular traditions – result of the printing press – that the lasting of anti-catholic church came about
• other consequences
• other effects—Aquinas/Mysticiam/Sermonology
• you could standardized worship – same order of mass, same rituals all over the Catholic board
• most important effects on Chritianity were the Doctins of Aquinas

The Vernacular—the local dialect

• the vernacular translations were very important
• when printing comes along the vernacular translations produce a national document (bible) – the translation of the bible provides the birth of some people’s languages
• people were now able to read scripture, gave the people a new dignity, and it was frequently the starting point of national languages and literature
• it dethroned the academic language of the time (Latin) and replaced it with national languages
• bible is nationalized…with mixed consequences
• latin universal language no more
• Vernacular Translation movements had a basic proposition that the liberal arts and sciences should not be hidden in the Greek or Latin tongue (locked away)—they should be made familiar to the “vulgar” people as well (the English) – printing presses gave them that opportunity
• English Revolution of the 1640s—translated books were NECESSARY
• Mass literacy and nationalism rule hand in hand
• Had tremendous effects on ordinary people—control the church had over people prior to the printing press was quite lax but now it was more tight
• Western Christianity embarked on a new path

Printing and Science

• carrying scientific investigation beyond existing limits
• altering the relationship between science and students
• did it advance the cause of learning? Yes
• data pools could be expanded by all previous limits (astronomers, mathematicians, etc)
• scope became world wide
• altered the relationships for the basis of scientific investigation

Backwards and Forwards

• from Monastaries, Universities and beyond
• new opportunities for all
• the advent of printing, scientific inquiries were all related to religious concerns about how to go to heaven—after the studies of the mechanics of the heavens were propelled in new directions—asking new questions
• freed science from the problem of translation—by visual demonstration

Science, Religion Part Ways

• religion becomes more problematic and starts to fragment—the vernacular translations had a hand in possible wars
• the effects of printing on bible study were almost the opposite on what happened to science

2-3 single spaced pages (5% of tutorial grade) Due: March 2^nd

provide a discussion, assessment and analysis of three readings derived from the assigned course material (course test and courseware). You are asked to focus on three readings that held the most interest for you and that in your opinion held the most significant to your understanding of the history of communication.

It should exhibit:

• well-written, scholarly, analytical, original

- rise of reading and development of reading has said to have given rise to the citizen reading public

Evolution:

• a single narrative of news itmes began to appear (Paris: occaisionals)
• 1620s we do see the rise of the newspaper as we might understand it
• a continuing relationship between the reader, printer and originator of the information
• The coranto
• relation
• The Diurnall
• Mercury/Intelligencer- appeared in the form of a book – penetrated as far as England—main places of distribution at fairs in major cities—the intelligencer as a newspaper derived from the German Intelligence Blatt
• Robert Rolls and Mr. Peck, their news was drawn largely from the affairs of parliament
• The press itself begins to take off in this period

A New Kind of Reading

• those information systems were never intended to envelope the common reader into it
• world or current events were none of the peasants business
• printing in the 17^th century made some powerful changes in the life of western civilization – scholars argue that a new public sphere was created that was separate from the state of civil society—it was also separate from the realm of public life – this allowed people to regulate and criticize both public and private spheres (art, novel, magazines were an important part of changing politics)
• more opportunity to read in the late 17^th and 18^th century—reading was relevant ina new way because print discourse was not separated and distinct from the state and civil society – important for individualism
• dissemination of the print and of print culture helps individuals make use of their reason
• enlightenment intellectuals loved print – in 1965 John Adams depicted the history of power as a history of knowledge
• What begins in the US is the idea that modern history is a story of human self-determination that comes through from self-reflection – print culture is decentralized (New York, Boston, etc)
• Technology of publicity whose meaning is civic and emancipatory (used to be private only for few)
• In ther American context the struggles that lead to the American revolution were taken by writers (pamphleteers)
• Engineered a newspaper and pamphlet war – written war against King George (Monarch of Britain)
• Print was a new weapon – paper war – helped to articulate grieveances, promote an intercolonial feeling in the US
• Public remained a public of readers and saw themselves as this
• Printers, newspapers and printing were the same thing – helped the west self-indentify the north atlantic world

Case Study 1: England

• newspaper need to obtain, publish and distribute news as fast as possible
• constantly trying new things to move the art ahead
• change major themes in the development of the newspaper
• British society is in egalitarian, patriarchic, male dominate, focused on the past
• Culture of print represented a potential threat to this cultural, social and political order—most serious threat in the religious sphere – opportunity to defy teaching
• News fit to print? Helped to explain life, religious culture, familiar tales and superstitions, security of repetition in an insecure world
• Elizabethan Period 1620- first English langage newspaper imported from Amsterdam – British are interested in Amerstam because of what was happening there (30 year war) – big events and they want to know—encouraged publication of Corantos
• Market demand for regular news
• Cultural shift is changing the way cultural news is being reported
• News serials – focused on development abroad –reflected the role of trade and the importance of what was happening in Europe
• Press kept under fairly strict control over a licensing system (for printers) (star chamber)
• The Penny Post – an important development – circulated paper and information faster
• More control, fewer freedom, less information is out there
• Newspaper was a commercial product—the medium itself did not allow for indepth analysis—most items were short and had no explanation
• Commercial pressures: production costs down, marketing
• 19^th century in England , the press became the main source where people could structure their experience

Case Study 2: Canada

• introduced in 1760s
• important press offerings: almanac, grammars, true confessions
• development of party political newspapers, class newspapers as well by 1840 a daily press
• rise of the newspaper in the 1840s is when Canada gets communication going
• the free press originated with the unofficial newspaper – untied to any organization
• all kinds of newspapers fluouished, political papers, agricultural papers, major sects newspapers, moral reform
• everything we were was in the newspaper, everything we were becoming
• people started to make money off of it
• journalism was a tempting profession—easy root to status—ability to read and write
• 1860s news business begins to take shape, advertising takes up 1/3^rd to 2/3^rd of the space—for enlightenment and amusement
• Canadian papers were biased, opinionated and that’s why people bought them

Case Study 3: India

• Christian Missionaries bring the press
• They use the press for political reasons
• Goa 1556 – first printing press – Doutrina Christa (first book) – childrens book written in Portuguese
• 1780 Bengal Gazette
• 1813 – 1818 Dig Darshan – 1^st Indian language paper
• Raja Ram Mohan Roy
• 19^th century—an idea that Indians themselves wanted a say in their culture—Indian National Congress in 1885—direct relationship to the growth of Hindu newspapers
• as India grew as a nation—it was reflected in the press
• printing for popular consumption came along more slowly
• relationship between Empire in India and Britain
• Empire in India is an Empire of Opinion
• British Indian/Anglo-Indian Presses
• mid 1800s: 14,000 newspapers and periodicals launched
• competition: handwritten newsletters
• no mockery was acceptable because you could not demean British character
• India had 382 Anglo- Vernacular newspapers – by Indians for Indians in English
• How culture mediates communication and vice versa
• Europeans introduced but Indians rapidly adapted the instruments of communication to their own purposes

The Economic and Political Organization of Communications: A Case Study of Canada, 1880-1910

• growing corporations, innovation, diffusion took part of that invention of the telephone
• development, scientific, how it was received in various cultural contexts
• the development of the telephone gives us the opportunity to let us look at the
• role of personality in history and
• the role of the firm and business
• it was in the 19^th century that business people diffused technology – important in the rise of contemporary institutions
• Bell, Nortel, AT&Tis still with us today (19^th century – now)
• Alexander Grahm Bells life was lived in the North Atlantic World
• The Scots looked overseas for employment—Bell and his family did the same
• He has a great body of work and an extraordinary life which comes into play in the development of big things
• Born in Edinbourough in 1847 to a family of shoe makers
• Become self taught elocutionists—teaching people how to speak properly
• Eventually the Senior Bells invented visible speech to help the death communicate – the Science of speech would become Bell’s obsession
• He was an average student but when he wanted to find out how things worked he had an appetite for it
• Machine could electrically transmit vowel sounds—Bell had completely misunderstood the article—but based on this he thought that electricity could transmit speech
• He moved to London and became known as The Teacher for the Deaf
• His two brothers died in the 1860s of Tuberculosis—moved family to Canada
• Bell family arrived in late 1870 and bought a house in Brantford
• In 1871 he was offered a teaching job at a school for the deaf in New England, especially Boston
• Boston famous for their universities
• Hubbard wanted to improve the telegraph
• Interests intersected (Bell and Hubbard)
• Teaching of deaf, sending message through multiple wires of a telegraph and the basic concept of the telephone
• In 1875 he had success in transferring sound
• June 1875 and March 1876 he had to work on the telephone—he needed to go where the money was
• He was falling behind with his work because he fell in love with Mabel Hubbard (student and Hubbard’s daughter)
• They plan to wed
• By 1876 he had been closer to transmit human speech—he needed to patent it
• Bell learned that he had to file a patent in London first
• He asked George Brown, father of confederation, to do this
• Brown was offered the world patent rights to the telephone and he turned the offer down
• British Scientific Opinion said it was impossible
• Brown in London lost interest in the Patent, and didn’t even file the application and did not inform Bell of this
• March 7^th, Bell receives the patent for the telephone, 3 days later he transmitted the first clearly intelligible sentence “come here Mr. Watson I want to see you” “Mr. Bell do you understand what I say?”
• The fight to depend the patent occurred, Western Union retained a team of lawyers to try to get the patent from Bell
• Defends it over 600 times until it expired in 1893
• Technology was verged on the miraculous—inventors were also showmen—the first showing of the telephone at the Philadelphia exposition in 1876
• Exhibitions, crystal palaces, competitions for bitter rivals
• Common north atlantic technical pool fed by capital that kept it all going—specialized knowledge and technical teams
• Bell founded the National Geographic and the first to experience with flight
• Bell was a kind of genius that was always willing to try a new idea—designed an apparatus for thought transference—pick up the brain waves of another person with an induction coil and transmit them to an assistant in another room
• Electricity is developed—light, power and railroads
• Inventor Entrepreneurs chose what to work on and met needs of society—it needs to be affordable to people
• They were as much concerened with commercial development and scientific development
• What pushed these systems into NA—mass market—at such a rapid rate—
• econo technical systems to the
• production and distributions methods
• the theatrical aspect
• in terms of Canada, the telephone system was the work of others—inventors working in competition with one another
• 1877 and 1878 the telephone came to Canada – Melville Bell brought it here
• Business people were really slow to respond to it
• Forbes and Theodore Vail built the system – start making the centralized monopoly of North American telecommunications
• 1880 Americans looking north—sent a man into Canada to buy off the little companies into one big system – he organized the company into regions and standardized procedures
• 1882 to get the Parliament of Canada—Bell Canada to work for the general advantage of Canada—huge protection
• wide gap between invention and commercial success—Bell invented a liquid transmitter
• Bell tried to sell the patents for 100000 dollars and rejected it because the telephone wouldn’t survive
• Telephone was meant for the urbanization of the country
• Birth of contemporary organizations
• A system that creates innovation and employs people on a large scale
• The Bell system is one of entrepreneurial success, financial managerial success as well
• No business schools, engineering professions, and they still created a working telephone system
• The decisions that made the Bell system were the culminations of the 19^th century business people and entrepreneurs who were creative, opportunistic and exploitive

Telephony talked about how it was turned from an invention to a communication system – describe that difference for an exam

Economic organization

Development of monopoly

What the government has to do with all of this

• Period late 19 and early 20ths century crucial in understanding institutional arrangements that got established
• railway act 1906—governed all of the telecommunications of this country
• Telecommunications utility sector took off in the 20^th century—provided essential services to their users—complex interconnections of urban life (utilities provide that foundation)
• Utility: hydro, telecommunications, transportation that supports us
• In the late 19^th century stocks and bonds formed—a key part in the engine of growth in the North Atlantic world
• Today, most powerful are in the utilities sector: Hydro Quebec, Ontario Power Generation, Bell Canada Enterprises
• Important role to the Canadian Capital Market
• In telecommunications, finance, insurance, banking Canadians were very good – we exported this to other parts of the world
• Telecommunications helped places like Brazil
• Gave rise to Canadian corporation—the Crown Corporation
• Problem: people were coming to see telecommunications as an essential service
• They have a federal charter and they can lay wire wherever they want
• Municipality were upset with the amount of wires strung around
• Who are the players? Business men in the utilities sector—the people who are pushing out the service—try to influence public policy in their direction—men of monopoly
• They essentially wanted to maximize their returns on capital
• Civic Populists have the most impact because they are the closest to government
• The city gave the franchise to the telecommunications companies
• The mid-late 19^th century was a high era of technological activity
• What was happening in Canada?
• There was a similar process occurring
• Canada was considered a region of the United States
• Main goal is to gather up as many of those telephone companies into Bell without involving too much money—road to monopoly
• Charles Sise founder of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada
• Occupy a territory and muscle out competitors
• Legislative protections prevented them from dealing with municipalities
• Business people had to make monopolies an act of will
• Investment in long-distance construction to one-up on the opponent
• In Dundas, local company offered free service to get rid of the competition
• Bell would undercut prices, drive locals out and then jack up the prices
• “dummy” companies—owned by the same company to create competition
• Toronto for example tried to get the Bell company to burry the wires—did not happen because they had a good legal department
• The only possible rival was the CPR
• Something happened for Canada—consumers began to get upset over the poor service and high rates
• City politicians were the first to hear about it
• Nationwide movement of Civic Populists—a protection against inadequate services by self-serving monopolists—this movement create the public response to technological change for the 20^th century- what is happening in this period sets the course for the federal government for 90 years
• Urban populism mounted a resistance against a dawning of a new era where huge corporations would dominate economic life – where once they used to be small companies
• Balance is changing and making people nervous
• First to experience its consequences because of its utility sector
• Civic populism is a local response to the fear that public corporations were about to be dwarfed in size, wealth and authority
• Most obvious in utilities
• The response is local control, public ownership

Operated on many levels

1. objections to quality of service and bad entrepreneurial behaviour
2. search for means to regulate and legitimize a new economic institution – the local monopoly
3. a struggle for power between municipalities and growing power of corporations

• launches a struggle, and throws a web around corporations

• SaskTel is a great example—took over Bell
• Process varied from city to city and province to province – moral outrage – bribery and corruption with the interaction between civic officials and private companies
• The calls for reform grew and grew—Toronto Transit Commission came out of this

Populist Arguments

• market failure
• excessive pries

What do to?

• dispute over remedies
• 1902 hamilton Ontario city council wanted to discuss the telephone question
• a committee was formed
• competition was desirable but maybe not in telephony
• search for another way? How do we find it?
• “choice of governing instrument”
• regulation arose in rural districts, in the city were suspicious of high prices, variation in rates from place to place, exclusive contracts with Northern Electric (Nortel) and Western Electric
• city council were under pressure for lower rates
• trouble started in Toronto at 1902 when Bell was up for renewal—they wanted lower prices and putting the wires underground
• Bell continued to charge higher rates
• Campaign started to get the government to run the telephone company
• They would look to Britain who had done this
• Federal Government would handle the regulating
• Outcome: the Federal regulation of the bell telephone company—they set the rates—other companies can connect to you with a fee but you have to allow that connection
• Tensions between east and west
• Bell could not keep up with the pace in the cities – another eastern monopoly trying to screw over the west
• Everything was more expensive to implement and deliver
• Nationalizing a company at someone elses expense why not do it? They Nationalized the Bell Telephone Company

The Politics of Telephone Regulation:

• a spectrum of regulation reflecting different actors and situations—different political games lead to different results
• two different games with different accesses to power producing a different result but with a common outcome (west and east)
• telephone movement in the west was a political movement was symbolic of the removal of an eastern monopoly

Conclusion:

• different styles and systems
• exchange economy—political market—moral economy nexus
• the range of regulation reflected plurality of situations
• this story of regulation more than any other affected the experience of communications in Canada.

Radio

The Marconi Company

• government regulation – radio spectrum
• governments and institutions, amateurs and marine traffic
• RCA formed
• Radio from the beginning only transmitted short bursts of radio
• Continuous wave radio transmitter- Fessendon invented this
• 1906 and 1918 the invention was a hobby—stuff of specialists
• American Marconi assumed a dominant position in the young radio industry (transatlantic radio service)
• The commercial and maritime point to point radio were obvious and dramatic and once the number of players become involved—government intervenes for regulation
• Radio airwaves were considered public property—temporarily allocated to people
• The first war created a new dynamic to radio in the US—though prior to 1918 not much happened
• After 1918 a lot changed
• In the US the idea of American Marconi controlling radio did not sit very well by Americans
• RCA formed
• David Sarnoff (RCA GM), had the idea that perhaps concerts and baseball scores could be broadcasted into other peoples homes—this is how domestic broadcasting was born
• The Westinghouse company was a major rival to RCA and it applied for a licence from the government to start regular programming
• 1921-1922 radio began to take off
• in Jan 1922 there were 30 broadcasting stations on the air and it took off from there
• as federal regulation brought order

The RCA Revolution in the USA

• in 1922 0.2% of US households
• 1930 45.8%
• 1940 80% of US households had sets
• in Britian the number of listening lisences grew immensely
• First emphasis on radio was point-to-point transmission
• Sarnoff and his idea of domestic broadcasting later
• Wealth and geography had radio

Radio as a Consumer Durable 1920-1940

• part of the durable trend
• radio becomes very significant to the GNP of where it spread
• it weathered the depression quite well—people would give up the telephone before the radio
• priorities of radio was much more dominant than telephony
• by 1940 radio broadcasting established itself as the preeminent communications medium
• the means by which the industry could sustain itself—who was to pay for broadcasting

Radio and Commercial Broadcasting

• struggle for business models
• opponents of commercial radio could not coalesce
• advertisers ambivalent at first…but catches on quickly
• Lee DeForrest
• The idea of radio exceptionalism (the idea that this medium is different)
• It should be a public service—policy makers felt that it used public programming, public service therefore it should not be tainted by advertising
• By 1927 it has become an accepted medium for advertising—boosted sales and improved product’s value
• By the end of the 30s there was the common one minute advertisement spot
• Newspapers held their dominence but radio was catching up – by 1937 it was the same as them and exceeded it soon after
• Advertisements were making radio free

London Calling

• based on the principle for public service—different from the US’s current advertising based radio that made it free
• the public service idea was a concept from the British Post Office
• Post-office wants order above all—the US had created chaos
• British Broadcasting Company created for this reason
• 2 features of the British broadcasting system= Licence Fee and Government Monopoly
• the real money to be made was from the actual production of radio SETS and not actual BROADCASTING!
• It should not become an unrestricted commercial monopoly

Development of the BBC

• dramatic contrast to the US—public utility
• potential power judged too important to leave in market’s hands but direct government control also unacceptable
• definition of public utility as national service
• John Reith a key figure in interpreting this mandate
• Wanted to bring all that they can to as much people as they can
• Avoidance of the vulgar and hurtful—high MORAL TONE
• An educative influence—fostering the spread of knowledge—it could prove to be a powerful means of social community (national ceremony and functions)
• An essential part of a mass democratic process—this technology gave opportunity to shape the future
• Compared to the states they wanted unity in broadcasting and maintenance of BBC monopoly in broadcasting in the UK

BBC and National Cohesion

• powerful means of promoting social unity and elevate public taste
• BBC as a monopoly (1922)
• Ideal of service—Victorian middle class ideals
• Means of social control.. in the “neotechnic’ age (in the words of Lewis Mumford)
• Better education and the humanizing of the masses was the responsibility of CIVIL SOCIETY (as well as social control but it was not just that)

Radio as a Social Expression

• The ideal—means of shaping egalitatian society
• Ceremonies and symbols of corporate national life
• A common culture—a sense of civic responsibility
• Lord Reith transforms these ideals into reality
• Mandate of national service—universally available
• Regional + national programming using a few very powerful transmitters

MOVIE: Empire of the Air

• sound is the first stirring of an infant, sound has a romance, establishes mood in radio drama
• radio made America a land of listeners (entertained, educated, angered)
• new ways to talk, dance and think
• brought the world into the living room, sold them things they never knew they wanted
• Marconi invented the father of radio
• Lee Deforrest liked to call himself the father of radio
• Edward Armstrong
• David Sarnoff

The Men and the Idea:

Lee De Forest the man most responsible for bringing American radio broadcasting to the public

They called him Monkey Face

Felt like he has a mission to perform

Held over 300 patents

1936 marconi sent a message

Lee De Forest asked for a job and was not responded to

He patented a device to improve transmission

Set up fancy demonstrations to show how fabulous wireless transmission was—sell stocks afterwards

Soon the De Forest Wireless station in Coney Island

De Forest lost a suit and no company—left with the audion tube—a glass device resembling a light bulb

He improved upon it and created the first radio tube—the foundation of all radios which would make the human voice transmittable

De Forest pretended that music on the airwaves never happened (by Canadians)

Armstrong

• set out to discover how the De Forest audion tube actually worked to increase his power to amplify—1912 he succeeded
• great amplification obtained at once
• he called his invention Regeneration
• single most important advance
• 1913 it was patented
• made it possible for it to transmit and receive music, voices and morse code
• David Sarnoff suggested that Armstrong’s invention should be lisenced to his company

Sarnoff

• thought the radio could reach the masses in their homes
• he was not an inventor—rather a corporate executive that understood the meaning of size
• RCA president
• Office boy at the American Marconi Company
• Soon he became Marconi’s personal message boy
• Believed in radio to be transmitted from one point to many points (the masses)
• 75 dollar radio music boxes and thousands could be sold in a year--- his boss did not respond to this offer but Armstrong was not discouraged
• Armstrong Super Heterodyne Sets sold well for RCA
• Armstrong won in 1921 and 1923 against the patent lawsuit filed against him by De Forest

Broadcasting

1926 the first national broadcasting network (NBC)

linked 24 stations

20 year war—Armstrong lost

fellow scientists believed he had been robbed

IMPORTANT: patent laws—regulation—governments—courts

News in America

• current events revolution—important element of democratic life
• sensational events—the Lindenberg baby (1932)
• international events—Chamberlain at Munich over the fate of Czech (1938)
• Elevated radio news—but growing hostility of print media and battles over newsgathering
• Radio news tended to avoid the emphasis on the boring, sexual crimes, refused to use the word “rape”
• The technology is shaping the type of coverage—radio was more cautious of news coverage than the newspapome
• er
• Radio could bring the news to the people instantaneously

Good Taste

• radio broadcasters and good taste—anything but socially and politically neutral—buttressed and existing balance of power—crowds out voices of dissent
• profound contributions to culture—ball games, price fights, jazz, preaching, symphonies, adventure
• the idea of the sovereign listener—a charisma
• radio audiences had more of an exposure to popular culture but their response was more segmented
• listeners could not participate in public events without leaving home
• new instituions, new legislation, broadcasters had to battle with ways to think about the new medium
• radio was assumed to be the most influential as the new mass medium
• radio exercised a strong influence on how candidates used it for their polical stance
• it was influential but it wasn’t disrupted because it did not change the distribution of power in society
• listeners were passive consumers
• radio turned citizens into consumers as well as listeners

MOVIE

• roosevelts fireside talks changed politics forever
• but because depression people wanted escape
• exciting shows
• soap operas
• people really connected with the characters
• helped refine the people
• symphony orchestra of NBC
• 1937
• lasted for 17 years
• amos and andy
• about black guys but actually white people
• people are really attached to the radio sets
• sell everything else but the set
• Zenith radio
• Powerfull
• Architectural design
• Strong bass
• Little Black box
• Elimated static with the little black box
• Frequency modulation
• Armstrong
• Before the onl AM
• Now FM could have wider range of sound
• Larger banded radio wave then am
• Sarnof
• Made announcement about television
• Backed by 50 million dollars of RCA money
• Armstrong decided to develop FM on his own (since sarnof kicked him out of empire state building to develop tv)
• Armstrong created his own stations
• Now listeners could hear the power of fm
• Sarnoff offered him on e million to manufacture.
• Armstrong said no
• Armstrong created yankee networkd
• Sarnof tried to crush FM
• It was working
• Armstrong should have compromised
• World War Two
• All inventors tried to help
• Radio shows tranfer to tv
• Many believed that tv would be the end of radio
• all sound would go through fm
• and again Sarnoff ruined it for Armstrong
• people stole his inventions
• and changed the fm frequency
• fought it through patent laws
• huge battle
• he would not give up no matter how broke and sick he was getting
• by 1953 he had spent 2 million dollars in legal fees
• he went crazy and beat his wife
• 20 years after meeting sarnof and Armstrong were now enemies
• Armstrong was defeated
• He killed himself
• Sarnoff died in 1971
• Marian took on Sarnoffs cause and won every patent

CHAPTER 40 important

• the diffusion to market is much faster
• we take for granted the electronic payment system (bank to bank transfers)—the instantaneous payment
• globalization
• the information you have the better it is

Crib Notes courtesy Jessica Fabrizio

NOTE: Our Classmate Jessica Fabrizio has been very kind and gracious to allow his class notes to be posted on the blog for the benefit of the class. Please feel free to contribute to our mutual learning by sending along your notes if you choose to do so.

Chapter1 –

Cro Magnon- sex, rank, age, images were made to be used—they had cultural purpose

* hunting magic—not a depiction or one thing it’s a depiction of the act of killing

Chapter 2-

Paleolithic came before Neolithic

Symbols – special meanings and allows us to conceive ideas (black – death, darkness – different for different culture—when a culture dies the symbol dies- meanings are arbitrary and cannot be conceived alone)

Sign- sub category of a symbol and conveys a meaning—no secondary meaning

* notches in bones or tools



Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic (VERY FIRST)

* notches were first seen here
* lunar calendars
* signs of accumulating knowledge with a specific goal
* functional use other than symbolic use
* allows the separation of knowledge from the knower
* issue of this—it was only known to the one who did the tallies



Neolithic:

* came out of the agricultural practice – clay token
* man made- in distinctive shapes—in different data sets
* created an actual Open- system

Advantages:

* simple system
* enhanced data manipulation
* tokens conveyed quantitative information
* one-for-one correspondence
* counting became quicker

Chapter 3

Stone to Papyrus

* shift from stone in Egypt to papyrus coincided with the shift from Democracy
* stone was difficult to do
* papyrus simplier
* writing from Hierloglphics to Heretic
* secularization of writing
* new religions that were less political—magic based
* army of scribes who could write – very respected—jumped social latter
* Egyptian culture became weakened due to social organization
* SUMER—fertile crescent – cradle of civilization
o Tigris and Uphertes Valley
o Many suggest writing was invented here
o Outgrowth of mathematics
o Cuneiform (stype of writing that was linear)—shift from a pictoral representation to a symbolic one – represented syllables so you could get a word out of it—it became uniform
o It was Slavic—but it was idiographic

Chapter 6

Alphabet – single letter represents a single sound

* Mesopotamia by the Simitic People
* The Phoenicians stablilizaed and spread it
* Not all is phoenetic:
o Phonetic
o Syllabic
o Logographic or ideographic

Chapter 7

* Greek alphabet thought they had something that everyone else can use
* It spread slowly and created two dialects- Eastern and Western
* Invented literacy for the people
* With literacy came a different way a thinking—democracy- everyone could share information
* Education became intense for teaching children
* Created a vernacular
* The fluency of recognition was key
* Primary purpose—the transcription of their oral history (Plato and Socrates)

Chapter 9

Primary Orality- sound exists when it is going out of existence

Pimary cultures—speech and language is so important that they see magic in it

Recalling was important in primary orality – mneumonic patterns—formulas to work through patterns

Secondary Orality—like primary it still promotes a group sense—people are hearing what you are saying

Primary orality is spontaneous and secondary is self-conscious because you can hear it again

Chapter 11

* controversy over paper
* the Chinese invented it
* T’ang Dynasty at the beginning of the Golden Age—the first emperors of China encouraged and supported literature
* Paper in Buddhist Monestaries—needed to transcribe religious texts
* All of this culminated to Block Printing and Paper invention—transcribing process took too long
* Stencil (or pounce) first kind of use of printing – favoured by the monestaries – do this on silk and paper
* Wood cut printing came thereafter – very complicated—entire picture on one stamp—images of Buddha was where you saw this most

Chapter 12

* important because printing would take human intervention out of the situation—process of printing was mechanized
* calligraphers were gone
* printing was uniformed-- unifying literacy
* hand writing took way too long – printing cut this time down
* books could not be spread as easily—very expensive
* printing took away personality from writing – the message itself is being delivered
* convey a message without any kind of interference

Chapter 15

* printing gave rise to periodical publication
* Pre Print
o Catholic Church-
o Political Authority- administration
o Commerical
o Towns

2 Key develpments that affected networks of communcation

1. postal service—expenseive and slow- one person to another person
2. printing – random- delivered on the street

Periodical Publications began to happen

* brought world to the people
* spread peoples horizons beyond where the originally live

By the end of it Free Press revolution occurred—government would tax free papers—made it difficult to send out periodicals

Chapter 16

Claude Chappe, invented in 1790- Optical Telegraph—different positions means different codes for different words or codes

* 2 main weaknesses—HUMAN—two diligent people who – NATURAL—too cloudy or fogging
* The war made it very useful



Chapter 17 Telegraphy, the Victorian Internet

* the telegraph exploded—very accepted
* expanded fasted in 1859 in the US
* used electricity
* Britian is was somewhat accepted—but very associated with the railroad—ran along the tracks
* Process of telegraphy- stations where people would wait on the line for a message—write it on paper—and a boy who would run it to the person it was sent to – long and tedious – needed to create abbreviations
* Caused a cultural shocoked—did not understand how one could get a message from a far distance
* Joined networks between countries
* Final frontier over water

Chapter 19 The Bell System

Alexander Graham Bell invented it 1876

* it took a long time to get this going—demonstrating it at conventions
* Making a business
* In 1877 – including Mr. Hubbard, an investor—seriously started to market the product under Bell Company
* 1978 – first switch board in New Haven, to make it possible for people to have a phone
* women got jobs because of this
* genius idea of Bell—because they could not manually control all the switchboards
* opened it up like a franchise—I pay a free to rent the switchboard and the phones and wires –
* in 1978- Western Union (telegraph company)– take a similar phone from Thomas Edison and tried to do what the Bell company was doing – they were sued—they settled – made a compromise
* phone had problems—crank-style—huge apparatus—1880—wanted to fix it all—wires tangled
* early 1990 rebuilds hardware ad fixes it all—revamps the product
* Theodore Vail – new GM of Bell—patent runs out and everyone can jump out—he was waiting for this so he needed to gain some future competitiion – technological and organization advances and long distance phones – upped the charges

Chapter 25

After civil war, cities exploded

reasons: EMPLOYMENT farmers and immigrants and CIVIL WAR

Reasons for Celebrity

1. leisure- money and time on their hands
1. Saloon Industry exploded , Vaudeville, baseball
2. shift in lifestyle
1. farm life—had a sense of identity
2. city life had a way of taking away identities—self-help books
3. must have a personality to set yourself a part
4. so Stars were called personalities—idea of what you wanted to be – romantic, energy, popular

Celebrity:

Stars: Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplan

Short, slight—supported fact that they were youthful, radiated energy, comedic

Movies would have happy endings – this is something people wanted to connect to

Technological advancements really supported this—photography image could be circulated, travel and be seen wherever they went, baseball players organized national terminates through communication, cinema close-up—connect to the mirror to their soul

Chapter 26 – Advertising and the Idea of Mass Society

Planned Obsolence- launching a ‘new model’ as a mode of ‘advertising bate’ – in clothes, typewriters, cars, etc—changes may be small—but the consumer will take an interest in it

Installment Buying—buying stuff in installments – not paying for the entire thing all at once

Consumer culture began to fall into place by both of these

* view of consumer sensibility – turn our thoughts into childish things—the business man wanted a BRIGHT RED AXE—impulse to guide ones actions
* market research began on comsumers to KNOW them
* admakers came out of a carnavalesque tradition: through persuasion, theatricality and trickery
* advertisers were concerned with the literary as opposed to the visionary arts

Chapter 27 Wireless World

* Titanic, expanded range, able to reach farther, radio waves transmitted through the air
* Create a global sense of grief—feel the pain of all those who died
* “global event” took a night to get around the world
* history: 1964 Maxwell acknowledged that radio waves could be used to communicate
* 1894 Marconi invented the transmitter and receiver was invented
* 1901- first message was sent across the Atlantic from a high powered transmitter in England
* News broadcasts by 1904



* Telephone had an even broader context
* Made it possible to be in two places in different times
* Sense of immediacy did not have to wait a long time to get a message
* No time to reflect—new sense of mediacy
* 1876—public broadcasts – subscribe to them
* entire city getting one experience – democratized



Chapter 28

Early Radio

* boys and men bringing it into the home
* only the wealthy had radio boxes
* the poor could make their own
* when it did explode there were not fixed stations or programming
* you actually had to work at the radio to find the stations
* exploratory listening- knew what was going on all over the place
* more difficult because for those who were transmitting – could not finance because there was no advertising
* was not until the 1920s when advertising became KEY
* new forms of masculinity
* technology produced secondary orality—reformulate their identities as individuals and as a part of a nation
* chain broadcasting came into play
* 3 Kinds of listeners
o DX – how far they could go with their box
o Music listerens
o Story teller listerens

Problems:

Amateurs were everywhere clogging up the airwaves—clogging up the navy

Too much traffic

After titanic issue—radio act of 1912—radio amateurs to be licensed only could use short wave – though they still grew

1914- grassroots coast to cast radio network – that allowed them to communicate amongst their peers

In WWI—they banned amateurs completely—but it didn’t work

DXers exploded as well as amateurs

Chapter 35

Thesis: WWII families were fucked but the television helped foster togetherness again—the way it was advertised—TV was the answer to these problems

Wives forced to go to work, kids had no one to come home to, television brought back that sense of togetherness because it replaced the emptiness

Media—advertised the TV as a way of replacing a piano, to fix the domestic situation after the war is why it was so successful

Chapter 39

Viewed Buraucracy as the most important Control Revolution

Occuring in US, England, France, Germany

Weber viewed it as a critical new machinery – for control of the societal forces unleashed from the industrial revolution

New information processing allowed for this social change—(i.e. microprocessor)

Before the industrial revolution control of governments and markets were face-to-face and personal interaction—BUT now it has been reestablished by means of bureaucratic organization – I.E. new infrastructures of transportation and telecommunication, system-wide communication via new mass media