Changing Concepts of Time

“[Innis] attempts to illustrate throughout these pieces one of his favorite maxims: the more the technology of communication improves, the more difficult human communication becomes.” –James W. Carey, from the Introduction

“Long out of print and now available in this timely new edition, Harold Innis’s Changing Concepts of Time was the last book published by one of the twentieth century’s most important media scholars. Less well known than its landmark predecessors, Empire and Communications and The Bias of Communication, Changing Concepts expands the media history perspective elaborated in those works and includes essays that speak even more directly to contemporary issues: ‘The Strategy of Culture’ is rife with ideas relevant to understanding the status of culture in debates about free trade, and ‘Military Implications of the American Constitution’ yields a historical critique applicable to an assessment of the American military’s involvement in today’s geopolitics. A new introduction by the eminent communications scholar and long-time champion of Innisian ideas, James Carey, provides a rich contextualization for the essays in Changing Concepts. Students in a variety of media-related fields will find this a valuable addition to their libraries.” –Paul Heyer, Wilfrid Laurier University